Hot Rum #1 = Carnage

Today started off great. It was forecast to blow pretty hard and everyone was pretty excited to get some heavy air sailing in. We got a little more than we expected, but we'll get to that later.

We started off great at the line and were quickly passing boats on the first leg of the race, which was supposed to be a reach out to a buoy off of 3SD. The wind was cranking with probably a solid 18 with gusts to 25 with some bigger gusts to 30. We had a full main and the #3 jib up and were averaging about 6.8 or so heading out of the bay. We were still picking off some boats and were in pretty good shape for our class when we started hearing radio chatter about a missing mark. We looked around (the waves were pretty big) and realized we could not see the mark either. A couple of minutes later we also realized that we were at buoy 1SD, which is past where the mark should have been. Some mild cursing and we decide we should round 1SD and head downwind for the next mark. Thankfully most of the fleet is still looking for the buoy and we are still in excellent shape.

We take off on an epic downwind run. The waves were too big for us to set a kite and keep the boat under control so we are heading downwind doing 8's with a top speed of 11.54 on one of the larger waves. I can't easily convey how big the waves were out there today. It was insane, edge of control, fast sailing. We had one surf where the wave caught up to the transom and filled the cockpit with water, but aside from that things were going smoothly. We were in great shape looking to round the leeward mark in second or third place overall (or so we thought). We set up for the last gybe around the mark and the boom decides that it is done playing and snaps at the vang attachment point. While we are getting the boom down below and the main off the jib halyard decided to part. Awesome, so we are sitting right next to the leeward mark with the boom in two pieces and the jib in the water to leeward.

A true credit to the crew, no one is hurt, and we are all still pretty calm. We get the main down, the jib down, and then check for lines overboard and get the engine on. We are making all of 1.3 knots towards home with the engine on. We start to pull out the #3 jib but realize it has a tear in the luff, so we pull out the #2. I have to tell you, the boat was extremely well behaved with the #2 and no main, and in fact we are passing boats and hanging with a lot of boats that should have been faster than us but just had up too much sail area.

We tack to get around Zuniga jetty and the starboard runner parts also. Awesome, thankfully the other runner was still snug and we continue home under the jib.

So the damage for today was:

1) Boom in two pieces
2) Jib halyard
3) Running backstay

Good news. It was epic and a ton of fun up until everything went to shit. No one got hurt, and everyone was encouraged to put on life jackets as we got out into the big waves. The bad news, the RC abandoned the race before we even headed downwind but we were so far out we couldn't hear them. So in reality we could have just sailed home and it is entirely likely we wouldn't have broken anything.