Flew the jib only. With the jib rolled out all the way, the boat was heeling over as far as 35 degrees and seemed to be working hard. The leeward rigging appeared fine. The aft lowers went slack, of course, given the low tension. The forward lowers appeared to have some tension still as did the cap shrouds. Clearly both the forward lowers and the cap shrouds were looser than at dock due to the force of the wind on the sail. With the jib at about 306 square feet and 18 knots of wind, the force on the jib sheets comes out to be about 425 pounds.

With jib only, in winds this strong, the boat has some lee helm. The developed waves, of two to three feet, kept knocking the bow off course. Did not press the boat to windward as there was enough strain on the boat already. First time that I have had Constance out with the anenometer hitting 22 knots.

After passing the Annapolis weather buoy, used the roller furler to put four turns of the sail onto the foil. The boat eased back to 15 degrees of heel, lost a bit of speed, but not that much. Much easier sailing; far more pleasant. This is something to look into more throughly. Does rolling the jib affect point ability? If so, to what extent? As Constance crossed the mouth of the river on the last upwind tack, the Woodwinds were coming out of the river under jib, mainstaysail, and a single reef in the main.

On the very broad reach back into the river, spotted Nimble #67 coming from a bit up bay of me. Flipped over from starboard to port tack to close, passed Nimble port to port, and flipped back around to chase Nimble as she made her way towards Mears Marina in Back Creek. Nimble was sailing with single reef in the main and a heavily reefed jib, down to about 1/3" of full luff. Broke off as we reached G "2E" to form a course to clear Horn Point.

GPX formatted Track distance: 6.83nm, average speed: 4.2kts, duration: 1:37


Constance as seen from Nimble, apparent wind has dropped to about 11 knots