Racing – 6/10/25

Hi All,

Here are the results for the first night of racing.  Conditions went from light moderate to light to hardly nothing at all over the course of 2 races.  I had good luck working the left side of the course, as the wind seemed to be dying from right to left.  I wish I had paid more attention to where Tom Zalac was on the first race, as he beat the second place boat by over 2 minutes to take the first win of the 2025 series.

I was more focused on the other MC Scow on the course, skippered by Joe Terry.  Joe helped me out by walking over the top of me on the windward leg of the first race.  What a discouraging feeling to hear the chop, chop, chop of his bow getting closer and closer as we worked up the leg on port.  Even worse as he passed me and took my wind.  But then I noticed that his boom was sitting out over the corner of his transom, while mine was sheeted near the centerline.  Once I eased my sheet like Joe, I immediately picked up speed.  In retrospect this made sense as In light air, the air flow over the water is laminar, and the speed of the wind over the water changes with height.  Because our boats sail on the apparent wind,  this means the wind flow at the top of the sail hits the sail at a different angle than it does the bottom.  Thus, you need to have twist in your sail to match the twist of the apparent wind.  This changes as the wind increases and turbulence mixes the high and low wind together.  At that point, twist becomes undesirable (unless you are trying to depower your boat in heavy air). Leech tell tales are probably the best way to tell if your sail twist matches the apparent wind.  If all of your leech tell tales are periodically streaming, you are probably in the right ballpark for mainsheet trim.

Big thanks to Mike Koss and Cody Fritz for handling race committee duties.  And also to everyone who came out to sail.

-Dennis