Skip Johnson's "P52" Cypress, Texas


 

Finally Friday May 30th got P52 back to Lake Sommerville to try out revised sail and telescoping ama.

 

Here's the GPS track of my initial 4 mile excursion, winds are light out of the SSE. Course is more or less counterclockwise

and I saw 8.6 mph early on a broad reach before the wind died down. The downwind run was easy, but winds were light.

First shunt was uneventful but you can see where I drifted quite a bit on the second shunt when the tack slide jammed.

I got better at unjamming slide in subsequent shunts. There was a little lee helm but winds were light.

 

 

Overall first sail went well, but with light winds and the crab claw jamming on the shunts, I was ready to call

it quits but decided to try out my back up 48 square foot jib on a balanced club boom, that's to be an additional

downwind sail (set flying on the ww side with a spare haylard, tack to oarsocket) and heavy weather sail when

reefing the crabclaw just isn't enough. With the crabclaw pulled I jury rigged the jib tack thru the mainsheet

blocks and took off.  Initial sail was very promising 48 s.f. in light winds is very underpowed but the sail pulled

hard relatively speaking and shunting was easy except for the one time I let the tack get away and started emulating a kite.

There was about the same amount of lee helm as with the crabclaw, understandable since CE is about in the same place.