The August Series continued this past weekend on beautiful Deep Creek Lake. On Saturday, the right kind of wind arrived — an 11 mph breeze from the west with some gusts that reached 18 mph. On the committee boat this past Saturday was Pro Ed Halley along with Alice/Ed Kemp and Beth Halley.
Emma Halley/Cole Watson manned the patrol boat. I thank all of them. The course was set in the usual spot, and 28 boats were racing which included three ILCA (Lasers), 10 Gold, six Silver, two Master, and seven Challenger Fleet Flying Scots.
Quoc Tran sailed with me all weekend. As we rounded the first windward mark, we were in the mix. Then the first spinnaker issue happened.
As I raised the spinnaker, I managed to yank the spinnaker halyard too hard, getting the ring caught at the top of the mast. Quoc wrestled with the spinnaker and was able to get the top unstuck from the mast, but at this point we were already at the halfway point of the downwind leg. As we neared the first leeward mark, we took down the spinnaker early on the starboard side so we would have plenty of room to make a good rounding close to that first group of boats.
The second spinnaker issue then occurred at this time. While taking down the spinnaker, Quoc managed to place the spinnaker on the wrong side of the jib sheets. We spent too much time off course trying to correct the second spinnaker issue.
We could not raise the spinnaker until we were halfway down the last downwind leg, so our finish was dismal. We went .