Salsa Verde and her 4 only crew (Jon, Erdem, Ted and me) available to race yesterday sailed out to Epping Forest in 15-20 kt from the NE. The sail there was longer than expected and the brown splashes of the St John’s were often over our heads. The clean bottom showed us high numbers on the lock! We were all positive that we would do great in that race! For once…

We missed the skipper’s meeting at Epping, but Rosanne from Liberty Call generously gave us the info. We had the #3 and the full main out. Right after the start, we had to gibe around marker 5… And that was the end of it. The main halyard splicing gave up on the hard gibe.

So we took the main down, the #3 down and hoisted the medium #1 for a fast sail downwind to Julington Creek. On our way south we were looking at the competition being slammed down with their spinnaker in the water when the strong gusts were hitting… Some more conservative went under jib only, still pretty fast! We saw up to 9.8 kt on the lock under #1 only!!! Fun and exausting day regardless of the poor racing performance…

Thanks to Cheetah (John and Bubba) for letting us use their lift while they were out sailing today!

On the way there, Nicole winched me up the mast so I could sand the sides of the sheeve box of the main halyard. It had been shaffing for a long time, and I should have done this before… Before the halyard was too scary to be hoisted on!!! Not smart…

We raised Salsa Verde out of the water to investigate the dirt situation… In brief, there was a lot of “gew”, algue, small blisters and some barnacles. Yes, some of them survived since last summer probably! How great! Nicole and I got really messy (especially me, I have to admit) scraping and scratching while practicing some adventurous climbing manuvers under the boat.

When we had covered most of what we could get to from the lift structure, I went and got an optimist to float under the prop, rudder and bow for some more yummy scraping. The ride along the dock in the optimist (standing up and pulling myself along the dock) was not as hard to do going than coming back in stronger wind and waves… A generous helper (Walter) came along to the rescue and pulled us all the way to the boat ramp. This unfortunately cost a few more scratches on the poor little boat each time a wave was just throwing us on the friendly barnacly pilings! But without Walter, we would still be there I think! Thank you

Salsa Verde seemed to sail much faster on the way back… Maybe the dark clouds behind us had to do with it?