Race 1 (actually race 2 of the RPNYC spring series) was a _very_ short windward-leeward, wouldn't have been a long Optimist dingy course. At that time we still had a keel controller that occasionally misbehaved and a battery management system that was behaving erratically sometimes. Our first tack with a temporarily bewildered keel controller took us down to 2 knots for about 30 seconds ( just slightly below our estimated polar of 8.3-ish!), followed shortly after by the lovely opportunity to dip the whole Div1 fleet.
We gybe-set, and then the downwind run and the next upwind beat were uneventful, but with the short course we were quick enough back upwind that we re-rounded the top mark with the kite still being packed. Not fast. We ended up 4th on line, but predictably last on handicap.
Race 2 for us was a far-more-suitable harbour course, which included the most amusing part of the day. After the first upwind mark (Ngauranga) on the way towards the harbour entrance … we rounded and put up the A2 in light air which gradually built, started having trouble keeping ahead of Wedgetail, even thought they might roll us at one point and wondering if we would clear the other end of Kau bay without having to drop the kite. This went on for almost 1/3 of the leg, until the eureka moment when we remembered we had a canting keel. Once we put that out to windward we were much faster (!), steering was much easier and height wasn't a problem any more.
Even better we found that could hold our lead on Wedgie upwind, they are a really well sailed boat that points quite high. We were first on line, first on club handicap, and 2nd on PHRF.
Race 3 last Saturday, in sunny nice if cool weather, 6-13 knot southerly. Mike Perry couldn't come out with us because he has his work-life balance all wrong, poor chap, but did pop out to the shore to take the pics (the ones from off the boat). Llewellyn from McRaes Global who had fixed a minor programming issue for the keel's brain the night before came out for the race too, and took all the nice pics from on the boat. The keel behaved impeccably - and no doubt will always from here on. Not only that, but the Shaun from Tasman Auto Electric who have been helping customise the Lithionics Battery installation helped make them work nicely too. So no interesting moments from the keel or battery perspective.
In terms of our competition, we'd probably have preferred more or less breeze, we weren't changing gear as well as we might have, and somehow we seemed to be in the wrong part of the course too many times -- we watched other boats around us hook into spectacular lifts that we didn't see much of. Our boatspeed and angles were OK, but I suspect not as good as they are going to be once we are used to extracting full performance from Blink. Meric on Wedgetail (Welbourne 42) did a spectacular job of sailing around us on the last upwind leg, and Ran Tan II, the 50-foot Elliot canter spent most of the race ahead, so we were 3rd on line.
I'm about to upload a time-lapse video of the last race. This lasts about 30 mins (I ran out of time to edit) so scrubbing/jumping through some bits probably a good idea.
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