Silver Heel Sailing

Say what you will about the Silver Heel, but she moves right along in the breeze.  This is proven year after year, as our best performances come when the breeze is up.  Depending on whom you talk to, you’ll hear either that she’s a dog or that she has plenty of potential in the light stuff (I belong to the latter camp), but no one denies that the Heel likes the wind.  Which is all a round-about way of saying that we were pretty psyched to see the whitecaps foaming on our tow out to the course.

Well, psyched and a bit nervous.  I think that I can speak for several on the crew in saying that log canoes have a funny way of toying with your nerves.  Even though the vast majority of the crew have raced dozens of times in breeze and know that they can handle it with little problem, there is always that doubt that creeps in as the tow line is thrown off and the sails brought back to be rigged up.  This encroaching bout of the nerves invariably goes away as soon as the boards are thrown for the first time and the boardmen begin occupying their favorite spots 10 feet to windward of the rail, but those pesky nerves are always there until that moment (at least for me).

Once the sails were up and drawing, though, we were zipping around in a steady 13-16kts with gusts a bit higher, and despite going without a jib, we were looking forward to a great race.  Peter Esslinger, our skipper, swears that the Heel points degrees better in breeze jib-less, and despite a few grumbles, the crew was behind the decision.  We had a few greenhorns on board, as well, and the slight loss in power would do well to acclimating the less experienced boardmen with the breeze.  As the first race would prove, the lack of a jib could hardly be counted as a handicap, for both the pointing and board-work proved quite good.