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Thread: What Worked? What didn't?

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  1. #30
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Posts
    284

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    Although I feel that I was in the company of far more experienced and accomplished (not to mention gracious) sailors during the race some neophyte like me might take something from my experience.

    What worked: Westsail 32. The first 3 days were probably well suited to my boat, the best run during that time was 172 miles...somewhere around a 7.3k average on the third day. I was simply along for the ride and spent most of the time napping. Top speed 10k that I saw. My tiller snapped off at the heel on the first night but the boat just kept on sailing at 6.5k (did come up slightly but only about 5 degrees)
    After those 3 or 4 days I heard I was doing ok, so ran around trying to be a sailor and fell 3 positions in the standings. Sorry Elizabeth Ann.

    Light 4oz genoa from Lee sails worked well poled out until I broke the whisker pole in half. Symmetrical spinnaker from minneys worked well as did the pure white (cheap) symmetrical from Island planet.
    OpenCPN with grib overlay plugin worked well. I figured out how to use it (the grib overlay) about halfway across when it didn't really matter anymore. Before that, I relied on Daniels demonstration of Adrena aboard his boat before the start, and Ken. I'm not ashamed to admit I basically followed Ken to Hanalei and had huge amounts of fun talking to him and others on the radio every night. After the race talking to Lee I admitted that I had just followed her Dad. Her response "Well if he doesn't know the way, the boat does" hahahahaha

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztU10DbuDi0

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnoYEsXRK5Q

    What didnt work:The Raymarine evolution A/P was not so great. It only has 3 settings, performance, cruising and leisure. Yes leisure. Using leisure setting resulted in feelings not so leisurely as the corrections were way too slow and small. "Cruising" was also frustrating. The "performance" setting was too aggressive. On the way home I finally figured out that I could fine tune the response with the hard over time setting.

    Would love to hear from Daniel, Brian, Barry and others who have not written about their experience here.

    Thanks again to all involved. Rick, you are my favorite to win the next race. Yes, I know - the kiss of death.
    Last edited by WBChristie; 11-15-2014 at 11:03 PM.

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