Big Wind Blow

Well this week's Wednesday night racing sure made up for last week's! A nice 8-10kt Northernly allowed us two good races, Zoe came in 7th and 5th. Then on the first downwind leg of the third race it came on hard, really hard. Rounding the windward mark our spin had fowled so I was up on the bow with Will, by the time I got back to the helm the puff had hit and we were doing about 8kts says Tim. Under that much sail Zoe almost felt like a dingey: lively, responsive and FAST. A quick look around showed that most of the other birds to windward were either in the process of dropping their chutes or almost being knocked down. We tried to drop ours to, but couldn't with so much pressure on the sail, then our gennoa got wrapped around the forestay when we tried to blanket the spin. At this point we were well below the lured mark and we decided to abandon and just focus on saving the sails. All and all, I feel pretty luckey that we came away with no injuries, manoverboards, ripped sails and only minor damage to the spin pole. The crew: Tim, Katie, Will and Brad did awesome considering it was the most wind some of us have raced in yet. We look forward to the next big wind day on the Lake, becuase next time we'll be ready.