Monday 30 November 2009

30 Nov 2009

By way of a bit of feedback, I invested in a small roll of mylar sail-repair tape (£8.50 from Max) and used it to effect a repair on the sail. Because the leech tape was broken, I ran a good length of the sail-repair stuff down the leech on both sides, then put another strip along the length of the actual tear. I then put some stitches down the leech to dissuade the tape from slipping across the sail when the kicker goes on and the leech is tensioned.


Batten pocket in grey, rip in red, sail repair tape in blue

When rigging yesterday, we found out that we would be up against a couple of visiting hotshots plus Martyn, and they had spent Saturday doing boat-on-boat tuning to sort out the best settings for their new Alto masts.
Jez dropped by and commented that it would be interesting to see how my old Cumulus mast stood up to the challenge of the new kit. He then fell about laughing when I pointed out that it would be equally interesting to see if we managed to get round the course without the sail ripping in half.

Anyway, we had a couple of great races. There was about 10-12mph wind, so the crew spent most of his time out on the wire (which creates the most call for leech tension). The end result was that the sail was fine, the repair was still in as-new state at the end of the day, and we even won a race with it. Wooohooo !

And a good turnout too, for a change. Possibly it was a bit too good at times - there were a couple of 'incidents' and a bit of swimming involved 

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