Pensacola FL Sailing Blog - sailingnightwatch

One of my neighbors is racing to Mexico next spring and is starting to put together his crew. I was invited to crew, but had to turn him down because of having a habit of eating and therefore having to work, and the date is about the time for our first grandchild. All that aside, I did go out on the boat with the crew to date. A couple of the crew had never steered a sailboat. Yesterday was a good time to start getting them some steering time. This was also the time to try out a brand new asymmetrical spinnaker.About the time we are about ready to leave, a heavy rain squall ran over us. It was about a half hour later we got underway. It still was a good day to train. SSE wind around 10 knots. We get out and set sail and there is another squall to our SW. We head east and it misses us to the west.We turn around and head west and decide the wind is low enough to try the spinnaker. I helped bag this think last June when it was delivered. We have one of the new helmsmen on and sure enough, it goes up and has a rap. Almost had two, top and bottom. The bottom came out easy, the top one came out as a gust hit us and almost put a rail in the water. Not a way to treat a new 10 knot max sail. The helmsman relinquished the helm and it did take concentration to keep the boat on course. It was fun. We had to be near hull speed on this Pearson 35 foot ketch. As the wind began to build, we got the shoot down without incident. May have not been to American’s Cup standard, but everybody and everything survived.The rest of the sail was pretty routine until one of the many squall nailed us. 150 Genny and full main with 30 plus gusty knots and we had a good rail down sail. And it did rain.