Santana 22 Nationals 2013 Richmond Yacht Club, ~ A view from the back of the pack~

We never finished last in any of the five races, but we were consistently at the back of the back.  It leaves room for improvement.  The big questions is, "Do I really want to improve?"  A new and relatively unpracticed crew and me being a novice skipper didn't help matters.  Regardless, I am actually very happy to have competed, finished and not been dead last.

I my own defense, I forgot my radio, thinking, " Oh, I really won't need it as they'll shoot a gun off.  I'll be able to set the starting time as needed."  Of course, the race committee ( who did a great job otherwise ) used a horn and a whistle.  A good percentage of the fleet could not hear the start signals except by radio.  There you have it, three races where we basically watched and tried to jump in when it looked obvious the start was coming up.  This didn't work out so well for us.





The last race of day one we folded our whisker pole. I had always wondered how this happens.  Tom and Javier swore by their carbon fiber poles.  Tom said he had folder a two inch tubular pole.  I wondered at the mechanics of it.  Well now I know one way.  We were getting ready to drop the pole, it was out to port.  We were running downwind when for some reason ( my helming ) I headed up to port maybe even back winding the jib, though I don't think so.  The pole folded easily.  We stuffed it below and pulled out the spinnaker pole for the remaining races.

The video above is 3 different clips hung together.  I literally got too busy to turn the cameras on on the second day.  It's too bad as the real excitement was on that day ( other than the MOB, broken boom and lost rudder from Saturday ).  With the radio we were in the thick of it and saw a couple of boats kissing it on the line.  Amazing that people kept cool heads and we only heard some relatively light shouting.  Santana 22 sailors are great.  

I will write up some more, but this is what i have at the moment.

~Keay