Early Bird Regatta

Me and my team have just finished our first Lightning regatta with our grant boat. It is Nickels hull number 15189 and is in great condition.  We have already been given a set of used North sails, 3 spins, and a slightly used Vermont Sailing Partners jib. We are also set to receive a new set of Quantum sails for big regattas.  So far, Bill Fastiggi has shown us how to rig the boat up in Vermont, and Brian Hayes from North Sails helped us out when we arrived for the Early Bird at Cedar Point Yacht Club with tuning and rig set up on the water.

Saturday's conditions in Westport ranged from 7-25 knots and shitfted through about 40 degrees.  It was most of our first times in a lightning and my first time since 2004, so the first two races were spent really just figuring out how to sail the boat.  We got our act together enough for the last race of the day to score a 4th.

Sunday started with 13-14 knots of wind and died throughout the day to about 5 knots at the finish of the last race. We worked with Brian more on Sunday with rig set up on the water. He talked to us about not using the backstay to depower too much in marginal overpowered to underpowered conditions and chop, because it can spill off the top half of the main too much. He suggested going to the traveler and mainsheet first while keeping the backstay set more for the lulls. That strategy seemed to work better for us.

We did well when it was over 12 or 13 knots but really struggled when it dropped below 10.  We also noticed people sailing the boat by the lee a lot downwind. We stated experimenting with that a little and felt that it was alright, except when the wind went really light.  In the first race on Sunday, when the wind was 12-14, we worked waves down by the lee and then sailed up higher to hunt for the next wave.  That seemed to be pretty fast as long as we headed back up before we lost too much power.

We had a really fun time at this regatta. We met a bunch of really cool people and Cedar Point provided a lot of food and great race managment.

For the next couple weeks we will be practicing for College Nationals so lightning sailing will have to wait until that is over.  Nationals are June 2-4 in Newport.  It should be a great event ,so if you can, come down for a day to check it out.

I'm not sure yet what our next lightning regatta will be, but we'll definetly be at the 70th anniversary so we'll at least see everybody there.