First Race - First Post

We raced our first race on thursday. It wasn't very windy and what wind there was died off a bit the race went on. Before the race I had decided I would be happy if we didn't finish last on handicap. It's been a lot of years since Tcy and I raced and whilst we have been doing as much sailing as possible lately it's a whole different thing when you're racing against other people.

Our 420 is called Hydrotherapy and is quite old. I bought it from St. Andrews Uni. Sailing club for a very reasonable price last year and spent last season repairing some minor holes in the hull and fitting it out.
Funny thing.
There are upwards of 50,000 420 dinghies in the world but not very many lying in dinghy parks to scrutinize if you're wanting to fit one out.
I'm not going to describe the 420 in too much detail here because it's done far better elsewhere like:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(dinghy)


Basically it's a two-man trapeze and symetrical spinnaker high performance racing dinghy.
It's a junior training boat for the olympic class International 470. It goes pretty quick in a decent wind and can be a real handfull in waves and high winds.

Things I like about it:
It's lightweight. (easy to pull back up the beach after a hard sail)
It feels fast.
A little weight goes a long way. (My crew and I are a quite light so we're grateful for this)
It's reassuringly bouyant. (It won't sink even if the cockpit is filled with water. This is true. We have tested this. Inadvertantly mostly but there you go.)

Things I don't like about it:
It decidedly skitish. Because it's so light it lolls like crazy. The crew can be flat out on the trapeze one second and have to swing in and get inboard the next just to keep from capsizing. I've not sailed another boat that demands quite as much athletics as this. Everything seems to happen on fast forward.

If it capsizes it will turn turtle. (huge amounts of bouyancy in the tanks means if it goes over it will go all the way over everytime. Bummer. It can be pretty hard to get back up as well though nowhere near as hard as an enterprise or any other big heavy dinghy.

It has no spinnaker chute. - WHY IS THIS.
If I could change one thing about the boat this would be it. It's a complete pain in the arse having to calculate which side to take the spinnaker into when dowsing it based on the launch for the next off-wind leg. Launching the spinnaker from the wrong side is possible but not so easy and tends to result in twists and tangles.

Anyway enough about the 420.
The race went alright. We didn't make any major mistakes though we did get caught up by the squib fleet which was a bit of a pain. Dodging keelboats is not conducive to sailing as fast as is possible. In the end we came ashore convinced we'd come last by a pretty hefty margin however it turns out we were second last. More importantly we were within 7 minutes of the next boat over a 2 hour race which I was quite pleased with.

Less encouraging is the fact that there were no disasters or big mistakes that we can easily correct for next time. We sailed pretty much as good as we have ever sailed so there will be no quick fixes to propel us up the fleet.
I'm pretty determined to be midway up the fleet by the end of the season. I don't think that is an impossible target. The boat is solid and though the sails are a bit blown out they can be flattened to some extent by the vaious control lines.

Next race is in couple of weeks. Can't wait.
Ed.