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I haven't been getting much TOW. It was two weeks between trips to BIB this time, and I moved here to sail 4 times a week! Anyway, the wind hasn't been very good and I had to move again. I HATE moving. The house we were in started cracking and shifting and though we were told this sort of thing happens in TX, darned if I was going to plunk out a bunch of money for a house about to tip over.
Anyway, we moved and I've worked, worked, worked. I bought a new board on 10/1/01 from Oliver at Cline Street Sailboards. It's a two year old, but new, Seatrend Allstar 70. I wanted a board in the 125-140 liter range and this fit the bill. Oliver wanted to unload it, and I wanted it.
So, I stuff it in the van and head out yesterday. Forecast calls for light wind and I figure that I might as well go out and see how little wind it takes to get it going.
Again, it took awhile on the beach to get going. I seem to have some sort of trouble every time I go out. This time it was replacing all the inhauls and outhauls for my booms. I bought some new line as the old was getting fraid and worn. Then, my camber problem reappeared. I fiddled and tweaked and about 45 minutes later finally got on the water.
Everything felt funny. The sail wanted to do this, then that and didn't seem balanced at all. The board was very floaty -- uphauling and tacking were super simple -- but didn't get going in the gusts like I hoped. I'm sure this is mostly unfamiliarity with the board, though. I move the mast back a bit and that seemed to help. I have one of those very, very swept back Curtis weed fins and I think the CE was too far apart for the sail.
At any rate, I didn't do much more than slog. I got in the straps once, but for only a moment. Mostly everyone was slogging, except one 130 lb woman on a 6.0, about the same size sail as I have. I did tack the sucker about 20 times, and it was really easy. I forgot how easy a fast tack can be, especially on a larger board.
When I got in, I pulled a camber from my smallest sail, a 3.5 Sailworks Quaddro that I'm sure I'll never use. I replaced my top cam in the 6.5 with it and re-rigged. It looks like that might have done the trick. Now, hopefully I'll be able to just pull up, rig up, and be on the water in 15 minutes next time. And, hopefully the wind will be perfect for my new board, too!
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