Friday, March 20, 2015

2015 Season starting from afar....

There is still three feet of snow on the ground but work on Phoenix is occurring either in Connecticut or Sri Lanka! I placed an order for a new Mainsail and a #2 (135%) Genoa with North Sails through local guy, Eric in Freeport Maine.
I'm having the mainsail built with 2 reef points, 4 leech battens, cunningham, foot skirt, triton insignia, sail number #190, and 3 draft stripes.
The genoa is being built with spreader patches, stanchion patches, 1 tell-tail window, sail number, and 3 draft stripes.

What finally got me going was while I'm wintering in Florida I gotten involved with the Lake Eustis Sailing Club racing on a Flying Scot 19. The Flying Scot is what they call a One-Design race boat. So we race against a fleet of between 12 and 24 other Flying Scots. I was lucky enough to team up with the local....I don't know what you call the local routinely fastest sailor so I'll just call him the "hot shoe". A term from auto racing.
I've found I really enjoy this kind of sailboat racing. We race twice monthly on weekends at LESC and Ray and I are also doing the Wednesday night, 6:25pm, racing with the Lake Monroe Sailing Association. We've also done a couple of regattas.
Returning with broken rudder after leading through leg 4 of 5 leg race:(
The LMSA racing is not One-Design however. At LMSA there are a variety of small sailboats, the largest I've seen is a Precision 27 this past Wed. They handicap the boats using the Portsmouth Rating The idea of handicapping is so very dissimilar sailboat can race competitively. We haven't done as well in the Wednesday night Rum Race series at LMSA with a 7th and 3rd.

But it's been so much fun that I've decided to race Phoenix this summer!!! 

I'll be racing with local yacht club, Northport Yacht Club, in Maine and they only do about 7 races but it's a start. This is also handicapped racing but under PHRF(Performance Handicap Racing Fleet) More on my rational for racing a 55 year old full keel Triton later:) Now just wishing the warmest winter globally on record would warm up Maine!