A Busted Pole, a torn sail, and weekend of racing ahead

Well, the total damage to Iris from the night sail has been tallied. The most painful pain from the adventure has to be the damage we suffered to our mylar tapedrive headsail. Whenever I raise that sail, Iris goes like stink. In light wind, that sail will make us move better than Exlax after a bowl of prunes. We pass boats with the big 155% sail, and are rarely passed by other boats in our class. But maybe not so much anymore.

In the night race that sail took a helluva beating. it was flailed out of control, whipped, snapped, and overloaded. The sail was buried in the water and raked across the spreaders. At some point in that race, the sail took more than it couild handle, and it looks like a spreader punched through it. It now has a tear about 8" long in its upper section. I may be able to patch it, but the sail will be of limited use now. Very unfortunate.

Our other challenge is with the broken whisker pole. I need to get to re-drilling it and cutting off the broken end. I think it will be useful, and possibly even better than it originally was. "Half a pole, half a pole, half a pole onward..."

This past weekend, the guys at the marina walked through tuning my rig with me, such that the mast is now more raked, and the boat more powerful than it was before the night race. Once the rig was tuned the challenge went up to beat "The Screach," a sworn enemy on the water and genuinely nice guy on land. I hope I can, but I'll have to do it with half a pole and minus my favourite sail.

Beyond that, Chuck has invited a handful of her friends to come sail the race with us. We better do well, preteen girls are hard to keep happy and I'll have to get off the course in a hurry, or be the uncoolest Dad ever.