so this saturday was the cumerland run, a race 15 or so miles down the coast. We all got our boats in the water and took off, but the winds were horrible, and they just kept getting worse. So we were crawling along while a few guys with enormous spinaker (or however you spell it) sails were cruising past us but even they weren't going very fast. Just then a nacra came by with just normal sails that was somehow catching alot more wind than the rest of us. We tried to follow him but no matter what the sail angle, i couldn't even get the wind to permit my boat to go that directing. Then the wind litterally stopped dead for about 3 hours. We could look out on the horizon in all directions and see other boats that had tried different routs, but all were stopped. We sat there and bobbed around and baked in the sun, and eventually we picked up enough wind to crawl along barely enough to fight the current. The guys with the huge extra sails had already made it out of that area by the time the wind was dead, so they were waiting for us and most of the other boats at the finish for FOREVER. It must have been the most annoying sailing day ever. On the way back, the exact same thing happened. It was almost dark by the time I got home. How was this one guy able to get more wind than the rest of us? I tried just tacking almost perpendicular to the wind for a while but the wind was so weak that my block was sagging down and hitting the rudder crossbar, the wind was weaker than the weight of the block. I could have swam to Cumberland faster.
