My first one design regatta in the San Juan 21 was the Lake Monroe Sailing Association Kettle Cup. The race drew 7 boats to our class. There were 3 competitive boats. I finished behind them in 4th. Which was the last boat to complete all 5 races. The other 3 included some good racers but they had equipment failures and dropped out in the 4th or 5th race when the winds started to approach 20 MPH.
SJ21 owner Steve S. agreed to crew on Blackjack. Both of us are very green when it comes to the San Juan 21 and racing in general. I made my share of mistakes that slowed us down. I really have no idea how to properly trim sails for optimum speed. At one point I was concentrating on our own sailing a little too much and failed to notice a Catalina 22 on starboard tack approaching rapidly. By the time the other captain yelled starboard I had to make an emergency course correction that almost knocked Steve out of the boat. It was a major error but one I can learn from. Still our fiddling around kept us finishing within a minute of the fast boats. Primarily towards the end of the regatta.
I found a few things that I will need to correct on the boat. The spinnaker halyard likes to twist so I need to replace it or put a swiveling snap shackle on there that will keep the sail from going up like a corkscrew tangling the sail and lines. I also need to run a few lines aft. I had to go forward too much during the race. If I can avoid that we may transition faster at the marks. It also rained on Saturday night revealing that I have leaks on my deck. That's going to be a lengthy job of finding and fixing the leaks.
Here is a little video that Steve took. I believe it was during the 4th race. We got a good start on this one. It was fun to be in the lead even if it was only for a few seconds.
