TunaMegabyte

Flat, fast. Weight aft, slow. No hands, fast (and fun.) 3 knots, hard Cunningham, fast. 6 knots, hard Cunningham or none, undetermined . . .

Yesterday, I finally had the pleasure to meet Steve Berger after a couple of months of online exchanges relative to setting up the new Mk II rig on our Megabytes. He had invited me out for some boat-to-boat on the water tuning. I'd never done this before in any boat--it was great and surprisingly fun despite the light and variable winds. I think we both came away with a better feel for our boats, how slight changes in hull and rig trim can affect boat speed.

Next on the agenda as I learn to work this boat around the race course? Basic boat handling--maintaining speed through tacks and control through gybes.

Small Boat Midwinters!

The weather was pretty dang good in Richmond this past Sunday considering the storm that blew through here a couple of days earlier. We got 8 to 10 kts. with no rain and nice flat water inside the breakwater. I pulled off 6 bullets, but that's not saying much considering the only other boats in the Open class were FJs and CFJs which rate slower than the Megabyte. They could just about hang with me upwind, but I smoked them going downwind.

Although not in the same class, we shared the starting sequence with the three-boat Snipe class. The Snipes seemed to be well sailed and made for closer competition than the FJs. I was able to beat one of them each race and another a couple of times out of six. Upwind, they were markedly faster than I was. I certainly couldn't point as high as these sloop rigged boats. Downwind, I gained slightly but not enough to catch them.

Hopefully we'll see a few more Megabytes from Fleet 3 at the Feb edition to make for some closer boat to boat racing.