New Rudder Head

Jen here,

Well, after all of the hullabaloo with shearing our rudder head at Worlds, repeated attempts at fixing, and then ordering a new one all the way from New Zealand, we finally have a functioning rudder head! Today was a great day in that regard. We arrived down to the sailing site where Sam had the boat ready to go. We stepped the mast, tuned the rig and went for a glorious sail. Well, it's not that easy-as I'm sure you've all figured out, the 470 never is. In truth, as we tuned the boat and tapped new holes in our jib cars it poured rain. We were an intrepid team, however, and managed to get our day's boat work accomplished in time to see the sun return and go for a quick sail. It really is a good thing that the sun finally came back. I spent the whole deluge whining about being cold and threatening to go back to Spain so that I could sun myself on a rock like a Spanish lizard. Erin just laughed at me and told me to rig the spinnaker system.

We went for a quick sail around four o'clock because we were dying to get out on the water and try out our new rudder head. So far things seem excellent. The system works very well and there is zero play in the rudder head (for non sailors, picture driving a race care with a loose steering wheel and you would get an idea of what a problem that is). It was quite breezy while we were out, roughly 20 knots, but flat water and the boat felt good.

Tomorrow we head out to train with Teddy and Jono, the Canadian boys from Halifax, and hopefully some of our other pals from the fleet. As we speak, Erin is baking fresh chocolate chip cookies for Sam, as our thanks for the help with installing our new rudder head. Yum!

Jen