This is about 8 minutes of our final downwind leg on Race 1 of the Jfest regatta.http://www.thenyc.com/racing/regattas/2018-jfest/
For the beginners, a regatta is a weekend series of races where they tally up all your results and score you on the regatta as a whole.......Gold flag for the winner, Red for second place and a Blue one for third. A downwind leg is when the wind is at your back, and our fleet flies the Spinnaker which is the big puffy colourful parachute looking sail to catch the wind and pull the boat down wind.
This day, the wind was heavy and steady, we were wearing our ugly (read:fast) shirts, and it was my first regatta with a go-pro. I couldn't put it on a headband because the wind was too crazy and I feared knocking it off and losing it to Davy Jones' Locker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Jones%27_Locker So it is a little hectic at times and you bounce around the ride with me.
My main role here is to keep that chute full, reef on it when we are on top of a wave for some surfing, and generally keeping that top edge from curling in. In heavy wind, you can see me struggling a little as I am trying to hold the go-pro handle and bring in the spin sheet.
Things go nuts at about the 3:00 mark as it usually does when it is time to Jibe. We have to turn the boat to a new angle, switch the pole over to the other side, and move the sail over without the pole while keeping it ful of air. Shit can happen here and sometime does but the wind was strong enough and the trim was done well enough that the extra time getting the pole on didn't hurt us.
Generally there is a little more yelling and colourful language here and the skipper seems to realize this at about the 4:00 mark.
The horn sounds towards the end after one last battle with the chute and we finished in 3rd I think by a hair (you can hear the honk a few seconds earlier of the boat we were chasing.)
After this, it is a chance to talk about the race, chug a beer and plan the next race which will probably start within 30 minutes.
The next one, I am going to have to throw some music on top of as the wind increased and upwind legs are just loud blowing in the mic.
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