wrote in message
...
"Capt. JG" wrote:
Sounds like fun! I was teaching today on the lake. The winds were light,
never over 5kts.

The Holder 20s should move well in that, even with blown-out sails.
The thing about light-air sailing is that it takes patience & finesse,
it really isn't like "normal" sailing IMHO. But it's good practice
since we can't always have *real* wind.... well, you can in some
place

Yeah, some of the patience involves sitting on the boat about 40 feet from
the dock, waiting for the "real" wind. LOL

Works for newbie students I suppose. There were three couples, so I split
it
men vs. women. The only two with any sailing experience were two of the
men.
This was the class' second day on the water.

The course was beam reach, port tack to the first mark, then tack to
close
hauled to the second, then down to the third, a jibe, then home. The guys
got smoked for all their experience. They just couldn't work together
very
well, and ended up hitting the first mark, so I made them go around it
again. The women had trouble getting into irons at one point, and they
lost
the lead briefly. The gained it back on the run, trimming properly, and
the
jibe, taking time with the latter and getting it right. The guys did a
poor
jibe and rounded up badly (there was a strongish gust) when they forgot
to
ease the main. They never got their lead back and lost by five boat
lengths.


It's definitely a team sport, working together is more important than
brilliance. And hitting the brakes with bad maneuvers.... either
because of skippers un-smarts, or because of crew clumsiness... takes
a long time to get back up to speed. In a PHRF race you simply can't
ever gain back lost time.

It sounds like a good teaching exercise... would the school ever
invest in new sails, or maybe get some 2nd hand but better sails from
Holder 20 owners that have upgraded recently? There is a class
organization, that might help.

Not in my lifetime. Some beacon of brilliance used electrical tape on the
docklines to keep them from fraying. Do you have any idea what happens to
electrical tape after sitting in 100 degree for a week?




--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com