Sunday 17 August
Today we welcomed Will, Jules and Fiona for a sparkling sail on the shimmering Solent. The sun shone and the wind was a happy force 3.
We are trying out a new sail configuration: Main, Cutter and Yankee which is what we expect to use for the ARC. Our ARC is now postponed until next year as our boat isn’t ready yet.
Upwind we tacked with the Cutter staysail towards Cowes, with some help from the tide, and everyone took a turn on the helm.
The Cutter isn’t as big as our usual jib but it means we don’t need to reef as soon as we would normally.
When we turned back downwind we tried out our new Yankee for the first time.
The Yankee is a high cut jib which is perfect for the trade winds we expect on our Atlantic crossing.
We also used our spinnaker pole for the first time to pole out the Yankee goose-wing.
We learned that we needed a pole downhaul so David rigged one.
With our new preventer on the main we felt very stable.
The Yankee gives a good view forward and it was very helpful having extra crew to help with the pole.
And we even had Prosecco on the foredeck!
Thanks for joining us and helping try out our new kit, hope to have you back again soon.
