Never Trust the Weather Forecast

I looked at the weather forecast.

It said dry until 4pm and then 60% chance of rain and thunder showers in the evening.

So I decided to skip Tuesday night racing in Bristol with my friends and go for a practice by myself earlier in the afternoon on the Sakonnet River.



I sailed from Seapowet Beach upwind to Fogland and back to Seapowet a few times.

Downwind I was trying to do all that ziggy zaggy stuff like John Emmet in the video on my post How to Sail a Laser Downwind in Waves.

Only I was using less rudder than him and trying to turn the boat as much as possible by moving my body weight and heeling the boat, especially on the up-turns. That also enabled me to accelerate the boat by flattening it at the end of each upturn.

I noticed that during the up-turn as I sheeted in and turned on to a broad reach I could time the speed of the turn so that the "flatten" helped me to catch the next wave.

And that during the down-turn I could do a few "release and stop" movements with the sheet to get a reverse pump on a few little waves.

It felt faster than the video looked but what do I know? Maybe my way was illegal?

I was certainly moving faster through the water than I would have been sailing in a straight line but who knows if I really had faster VMG to where the leeward mark would have been in a race?



The weather was misty with a light drizzle.

It reminded me of San Francisco.

When I got home the sun came out.

It would have been a good evening to go to Bristol after all.



Oh well! At least I didn't have to use one of my 265 excuses.