Summer Race #10

Wednesday 9/22/2010 Fluky wind, no race. I was a little held up at work and did not get to the boat until 17:30. We quickly drop the lines and headed out to the course. I finally brought everything I needed to see what was wrong with the prop. The water was comfortable at 72. It helped that it was close to 85 this evening. When I got under the boat and saw the prop, I was surprised to find it completely covered in barnacles. I did not have my metal scraper on board, so I had to use a file to scrape off the barnacles. They were everywhere. It took a good 10 minutes to completely remove the barnacles from the prop and shaft. We later noticed a quarter knot improvement in boat speed due to cleaning the prop. Oddly, the waves were big enough that once or twice the boat hit my head. There was not much force, but I did not feel quite right after I got back on board. Once I got my bearings, I realized there was no wind and we would not be racing tonight. I still held out hope since some weather was coming, but its arrival was too far away. At 18:30, racing was cancelled for the evening. This goes against the letter of the instructions that give an 18:45 hard time for the first opportunity to cancel, but fit within the intention of the instructions. I will see if I can get that changed to 30 minutes past the first signal or just remove it completely. Perhaps instructions for canceling due to no wind should make the RC wait 30 minutes, but in severe storms it would be nice to have the flexibility to cancel 18:15 or even earlier. The RC was excellent in communicating the postponements and abandonment. We headed in after watching a nearly full moon rise over Croton. It was shitty sailing weather, but a decent evening to float on the river. We headed over to Minisceongo for pizza night and enjoyed their hospitality. I may have been talked into racing over there this weekend, but we will see. I would like to thank John Nonemacher for being the force behind putting this Wednesday Night racing together, John Edwards and John Beck for scoring and posting the scores, and everyone who raced for a great season. Wednesday Night races are a great time on the water. It helps break up the week and keeps us out sailing all season long. Our fleet is very competitive and everyone seems to have a good time. I am already looking forward to next year. So with the end of the season will come of the end of this type of blog. I plan to continue posting some information over the winter. Please check back here in another week or two and I should have some idea of what I will write about over the winter. My past attempts have failed miserably, but I’ll give it another shot.