Windy sail yesterday: I blacked out.

I went out twice yesterday and each time the wind gusted up to a level where I was not sure if I could right the boat and make it back to the beach. I did twice with no real damage to the boat, but I want to coin a new phrase. If you wipe out you crash. If you black out you crash and have no recollection of what really happened. The boat is at some strange angle and some distance away and your shins hurt thanks to the cheese wiring they got. It all happened so fast is was like it did not really happen.

I blacked out a couple of times and once I had about 1 kg of mud stuck to the bow. At one point had the thing going downwind fast and in control. I was hiking not so that I would go faster but so that less of me would get cheese wired and was starting to enjoy it when I hit a fish and the rudder was nearly torn from my hand. I saved it but my short glimpse of self confidence was gone.

So I can not say I really learned much but at least I tried and had about 30 mins where the wind was low enough to actually sail and drive the boat rather than trying to slow it down.

I had reduced the lift on the rudder more and that made it much easier to drive the boat hard downwind, my maneuvers are getting better slowly and I am getting back in to the sailing routine but I till need a lot more time in the boat so I do not fall out of it so much.

There is no wind today so I do not want to spend 2 hours in a car to go lowriding on my own. So I will catch up on a few tasks at home. One of which is to sort out Tomahawk so that I can sell her. Hopefully this will lead to another Austrian Moth sailor as it is much better and more fun to have a group dynamic for training.

I have been playing with Goolge Calendar and it is so cool. I plan to make the IMCA events a remote ical file so that you can view them in your calendar software dynamically. This could be really cool but I am not sure if I should make this a members only service. What do you think?