USOM FIFTH EVENT RESULTS –SATURDAY  19 AUGUST – MANSFIELD HOLLOW SITE

   The sage sailing advice says that if you are trailing the fleet you won’t catch anyone if you just copy what they do, (unless of course they make a mistake). So you take the opposite tack or go all the way out to the layline and hope for a wind shift at that point to give you a big lift and you pass the fleet. Of course that does not happen often, but so what, you were behind before anyway.  Given that I am in that position in the season standings, I decided to try out a small rudder on my Valkyrie, hoping that the reduced drag would give me some downwind advantage or something. What I found out is that small rudders don’t work very well. One, on the upwind leg I had to hold 10 degrees on the rudder to keep from rounding up. Two, on making the upwind mark turn, the small rudder caused the boat to make  wide turns, thus allowing way too many others to turn downwind inside me. Three, in the prestart maneuvering the poor response of the small rudder caused me to hit another boat, sorry Ron. Fourth, the small rudder allowed the boat to go into irons very easily. When backing up to get out of irons, the small rudder did not deflect the boat enough to flip it around and refill the sails to start again.  As for any advantage, I still could not pass anyone going downwind. Curses!!

   Fortunately, the weather was very pleasant and the winds were steady and moderate, with small and not persistent shifts. We get so spoiled by this racesite, we are ruined for racing at other ponds. Ron Rhault came up with an idea for our racing day. He suggested that we start racing at 11:30, then stop for lunch at 12:30 for about 45 minutes. Then continue racing to about 3pm. I, for one like the concept, except for the difficulty in getting people back in the water after the break. I suggest that we try this change in the procedure next week at the IOM regatta on the 26^th.   The race results are shown below. I fixed some errors in the previous summary standings. It looks like Ron Rhault will be difficult to dislodge from his first place standing.