On September 15, we did our first long distance race on our boat. In a straight line, the race is approximately 8.4 nautical miles. The wind was south west which means that we could pretty much do it in a straight line. We did two tacks going up in order to avoid a shoal and that was it. My friend Joan, who I've been racing with on Phoenix for the last 15 years, came with us today. She was a great coach for Dave and I for this first time.
We used our #2 which is our middle size sail because the wind forecast was for 12-14 knots. Perhaps we could have used a bigger sail but most of the time we were keeping up with another Mirage 24 which was using a #1 genoa. So not bad for rookies.
The start of the race was a bit scary for Dave as there must have been at least 30 boats of all sizes.
 |
| Can you tell? | |
|
|
 |
| This is the other Mirage we kept up with. |
|
We lost Muskad (the red Mirage) at the mark rounding because we did a very poor job of it! But I think we caught up with her a bit. The final results will tell us how far behind we were.
 |
| Suzie Q behind Muskad and all the faster boats on the horizon! |
|
