Capt. Mooron wrote:

The fastest I've seen was on a tight starboard tack, pinching up into
a gust...... it went around us so fast it knocked us over flat to the
starboard..... spreader to the water.... loose the sheets.....
sprung back up.... set and got flattened to port....... that's
slamming a full keel double ended crab crusher spreader to spreader
in under 20 seconds.

I'd say ours on Wednesday was faster than that - but we didn't have the
spreaders in the water, and I'd imagine that a fin-keel Sonata is a bit more
tender.


The coamings on Overproof kept us dry on both knock downs. I lost my
beer..... casualty of war.

The short legs of our round-the-cans club races (0.5 to 1 mile or so) mean
that we just don't have time for beer - by the time we've rounded a mark and
trimmed, we're immediately looking for the next mark and spotting threats
from other boats. And our gusty conditions mean that we're often heeling
rather too much for a beer to survive (we tend to over-canvas a bit to keep
the speed up in the lulls). I keep a small bottle of water in my pocket and
sink a cold one back at the clubhouse.


--
Wally
www.artbywally.com
www.wally.myby.co.uk