Starts at Windward
By ASW Day 3, we had found our groove on the committee boat. We believe that what few hitches we had weren’t noticed by the competitors. We all had a grand time.
The big Volvo fleet was sent off on a single race that lasted almost 4 hours, and they had a chance to test most of the sails that they had aboard. Likewise, the bareboat fleet was sent on a longer single race for the day. The rest of the classes had 3 races to do.
This meant that we had our work cut out for us aboard the committee boat. At least this meant that we had less downtime while waiting for the boats we’d sent out on their way to cross the finish line.
Waiting
Instead of waiting in the swell, Paul suggested we motor upwind to the vicinity of English Harbour. This would allow us to watch the racers go downwind under their chutes. But when I tried to start the port engine, it wouldn’t fire up. The technician had been aboard the previous day and adjusted the idle, stating that this was the likely reason I’d lost power. It turns out that this wasn’t sufficient. I contacted the Sunsail base and then tried to start the engine again, and this time it managed to grudgingly start ticking away. We got off our mooring and went upwind and close ashore. This meant we avoided the ocean swell and drifted for 1-2 hours, close to the shore and cliffs.
Return to shore
The engine had cut out again when I shifted from “idle” to “idle reverse”. I got it started again tested out the error condition. If I went from idle to 1/3 throttle in reverse, it would keep running, so I wasn’t worried about docking. Much.
Docking was no drama, although the engine did cut out again. The Sunsail manager, Corrado, was on hand with a technician, and they went right to work. After diagnosing the problem as a combination of a somewhat dirty filter (the Racor was clean, but the secondary on the engine was contaminated) and an electrical cut-off issue, they repaired everything. We’re all set for the rest of the week.
Dinner
Tonight’s dinner choice was Paparazzi. We had a large group, including our race manager Jamie. The pizza was excellent – Paparazzi has never failed us. We started late, and upon returning to the committee boat, we were all tired enough to call it a night, despite tomorrow being our Lay Day.