Don't Ever do that to me Again!

I think Skipper got his daggerboard from here

Skipper decided to do something nice for me, but like a typical man, he fouled up on the execution.  He is getting my daggerboard patched up, and he was supposed to bring his spare to use for racing today. He couldn't find it, so he had to borrow one.  Not a good move.  He managed to get one that was home made, maybe even for another class boat, and was way too fat to fit in my daggerboard trunk. Only about two feet of it was actually in the water, and it stuck up so far in the air that he had trouble tacking.

We did really well downwind, but every upwind leg was an exercise in frustration. We would point about 5 degrees better than the other boats, but we would slide so far sideways that they would open up huge leads on us. By the last race we figured out that heeling way over to windward would let my chine help out the daggerboard a bit, but it was too little too late.

I wish that I could say that we didn't make any mistakes.  Well I didn't anyway.  Skipper made two huge mistakes on port/starboard crossings, one that cost us second and pushed us into last because two boats passed us while we were doing turns. Another time we were first at the mark, but we had to duck a starboard boat, and ended up being the last around the mark, because we kept sliding sideways into it.

Since Skipper made a couple of bonehead tactical mistakes, and we lost every race on the upwind legs, I know what USA 17 feels like racing in the America's Cup. Can I change my tactician?

Finishing First in the Middle of the Fleet

By Skipper's logic, we're winning this race

I'm worried that Skipper is losing it.

We've been on a roll for the past two weeks.  Two weeks ago, we had a really good week at the races. This weekend we raced with 23 other Sunfish, which was awesome. The wind was perfect, and we didn't make any really bad sailing mistakes.  We finished first in all of our races. We haven't finished any lower than 2nd in three weeks.

Skipper has been treating me really nicely. He has been really gentle with his tacks and gybes, and we're actually starting to roll tack. Most important, he has stopped yelling at me. He yells at the wind now, which worries me. All weekend he was obsessed with keeping up with a skipper named Dave. And when we talk about where we finished in races, he babbled incoherently about "alternate scoring" and "parallel universes".

According to Skipper, both of these statements are true:

• We won 8 out of 9 races races this weekend and came in first for the regatta
• We finished in the middle of the fleet for the regatta

Unless we sailed the course so that the same number of boats were always to the right and left of us, for the life of me I can't see how we finished in the middle of the fleet. We brought home a trophy that says "First Place", but skipper says we finished behind this elusive "Dave". Actually, there were two skippers named Dave, and Skipper says he finished behind both of them. How can you finish behind someone when you finish first?

I think Skipper is sailing with his rudder up