Sweet Saturn

Sailed the BYC distance race on the Melges 32 Saturn. I was very excited to get a chance to go sail with the Saturn guys. Even though the weather forecast was a little dicey at first, mother nature gave us a fine day of sailing. We started with the reaching spinnaker up and instantly the boat leaped forward to 14 knots. We had planed on getting lifted the whole way to the Thames River mark some 16 nautical miles across the lake but the wind held in direction and strength. We had to douse the reaching kite and put up the code zero. This was the first time I had been on a boat with a code zero that worked well and wow was it awesome. Wally Tsuha was kind enough to let me have a turn at the helm. It was a blast, reaching along at 14 knots all day long and a couple surges into the 15 knot range, the boat was so responsive and fast it is no wonder that they are selling like they are.


Picture of our big lead all of these boats had not made the final mark yet.

After starting an hour and forty minutes after the first boats we were the 6th boat to round the Thames River mark setting ourselves up for a 16 mile beat to PH1 across the lake. Within 1 hour of starting the beat we were now the second boat furthest up the race track. After making the turn at PH1 and putting up the sweet code zero we passed the first place boat within 15min, and never looked back. I cant thank the Wally and the guys from Saturn enough they definitely have a lot of fun on the boat and are just quality people.

Melges 24 Nationals are coming up fast, been pimping my Melges all Sunday since there was not enough breeze worthy to moth. 55 boats as of right now and the parking lot at Bayview is starting to show it. I can't wait it will be a full on war :)

Pimped the Bladerider too this weekend, made continuous control lines and put "Dog Bones, dude" on the cunningham so I do not have to untie knots to take the mast down, all of this is George Peet's technology brought from the Volvo 70 straight to the moth and Melges. I will have pictures tomorrow showing how to do this. Wind is picking up should be a good moth night.