2008 Puget Sound Spring Regatta (PSSR)

Off to Seattle once again for PSSR, a great race to kick the season off with some tight racing and a decent fleet. We went into a nine boat fleet as scratch boat, something that happens a lot to us, and looked like some decent racing. We had our good friend Nate and the olsen 25, two moore 24s, a holder 20, a U20, and a martin 242 (along with some others). I was excited to see how the boat did with the newly sanded bottom and keel. Too bad the conditions had other ideas....


Joe decided to burn some of our down time with his renditions of popular George Michael hits.

The wind filled in for two races on saturday and since we had the H1 on deck, we all decided that no one wanted to get the L1, so we raced with the heavy sail. Due to our laziness, we placed 6th and 4th......not some of our finer work.

After Joe signaled to our competitors via sign language, that we were out of beer, I decided to engauge in a pre game ritual that had gone by the wayside on Saturday....easy cheese...

Ahhhh...much better - With easy cheese pumping through our veins and the L1 up, we managed to sail a very solid second day nailing all the shifts and pulling off a 3rd and 1st place finish, moving us from 6th on sat to 3rd overall for the weekend...I'll take it!

2008 Frostbite

After all the work that we put into the boat, it was time to see if things paid off. To do this, we sailed in the local WINSA series frostbite regatta in March. It was an exciting no holds death match against bob......yes only one other boat to race in the flying division, oh well. Here was the intense action looked like on board...!!!

We had fun mostly and consumed a lot of easy cheese. We ended up winning the series and clinched the victory when we shoveled the snow off the deck and went racing the last day when our competition was a no show.

Winter Repair

After our run in with the big red boat, we had some work to do. I decided to undertake the glass repair since I felt I was partly to blame and even though the other guy offered to pay for it, I figured it would be a fun winter project anyway. We also decided to do some work to the bottom and keel. I started out by making a mold of the exterior of the boat with some peel ply and plywood. I then glassed from the inside against this mold and build the layers back up to the original thickness. After that, some fairing compound and some gelcoat, and we are back in business. I would bet it is now the strongest part of the boat!

I also decided to see if we couldn't address the small but persistant crack that forms on our keel between the fiberglass stump and the lead section. I was convinced this was caused by low torque on the six keel bolts, and turns out I was right! They were barely snug, so I reefed them down and now feel much better about the keel. We even made a template and faired the keel from top to bottom and spent a good amount of time ensuring it was symmetrical.

Joey approves of the glass work and he finished the repairs off with his magic gel coat touch. I think the words "looks factory" came out of his mouth.......