Ft. Lauderdale

Our first race is tomorrow, where we will race from Ft.Lauderdale to Key West. The course is about 160 miles and it looksto be mostly downwind again this year. We will start at 1 pmtomorrow and get in that night. The forecast is for 10-15 knots atthe start and building to the mid 20’s by the end of the race. Sowe should have some good fun. The focus right now is on downwind.We have lightened up the boat taking minimum upwind sails andmaking sure we are ready for some downwind sailing and sailchanges. Yesterday’s practice was a fire drill of 3 hours of sailchanging. We started by sailing upwind a bit on starboard tack. Wehave been working hard on improving the rig set up and we wanted toget a feel for it in those wind conditions (about 18 knots). Wetacked over on port, bore away, and hoisted the A7 (a fractionalkite). Then to be honest, it was a blur of trying differentstaysail and jib set ups while going down wind. We then sailed withthe A2 for awhile, still working on staysail combos. Then peeled tothe A3. After all that, we finally turned around and had a longsail back to Lauderdale. As we are doing all this prep we arekeeping our thoughts on the downwind sailing we will be doing onthe west coast. But, the focus right now is to do well in this racetomorrow and win.