First Day Out.......

I had slept badly but the sharp sun light woke me up and I was able to hang together a fairly rusty first sail on main again,.

Wind was light SSW between 3 and 9 knts, broken up over the western coast line and also going a little flatter out in the mid fjord.


We had a sailmaker on board, and he helped us with a good pretune up and especially gybing tecnique. Bow man is a cruiser who thinks he is quite experienced. He was unemployed a long time and I see why- a best-knowing norwegian without the actual skills to back it up. Anyway he now has santas little helper, who is erm, good and experiecned on bow from a J133. Nose out of joint and put back in place in one fil swoop.

Said norths' guy helped out to a very good start, and we managed to get some of our own air by stuffing in front of an IMX and a C&C 38. As soon as they tacked away we could make progress unhindered as the IMXs crept ahead.


The main learning points were gybing and keeping the boat moving on feel. I need to keep the main balancing the boat with power so that TG doesn't feel like wandering low to keep the sails full. So that is to say, hardening the leech in the lulls. I had problems getting the top tell-tale to break- the mast set up doesn't help this as I reckon it bends out sideways!


Gybing as mentioned went really slick willy, but this now entails running the main sheet and so big, wet gardening gloves for the gybes and bear aways. We were able to gybe through angles not much more than the trad' kites- so this year our gybes will be better and our angles deeper. The tack line gets let off when the boat digs deep enough for the luff to rotate around the forestay and this is actually in more wind than I had imagined and only out about 50cm to maybe a meter.

Mast needs a rethink- the v.light setting was overpowered and low in more than 7knts with about 12 apparent. The top tell tale needed mucho to get breaking, so there is an issue probably with side bend. The prebend is strange - the mast is almost 'kinked' in the middle.

Apart from this I just need my usual lack of attention to routine and detail to shake off and get folkens into doing the wee jobs on the main without me needing to ask.

These are: halyard, outhaul kicker for hardening up. Kicker out haul, backstay for more wind; backs stay batten for manøvres;