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I think it's fair to say that this past weekend marked the real start of blokart racing in Wisconsin. We had two nicely windy days and explored our new favorite site near Delavan. Hopefully we will secure official permission to sail there soon, and get the NABSA insurance for it.
Saturday we had S to SE winds of about 11-13 kn, gusting to 18 kn at times. We sailed a number of races on an oval course about 500 feet (150 m) long. The two legs were roughly a close-reach/beat and a broad-reach. Wayne Schmiedlin, Jim Nordhaus, and I sailed a number of informal races. Interestingly, the fastest cart was a beater frame from the east-coast and a really used sail from Go Land Sailing
Sunday saw higher winds, S to SSW at 13-18 kn, gusting into the mid-20's regularly. Kyle Metzlof, new blokart owner Ken Ametani, Wayne, and Geoff setup their blokarts. John Scott stopped by (in his custom street-legal Indy car!) to give the blokart a try, too. As the "lightweights" Ken and Wayne put up 3.0m sails. I wimped out and also set a 3.0m sail for most of the day. Kyle put up his 4.0m with fiberglass top-sections and his POD. After sailing around the lot for a while and trying a couple of course layouts, we finally ended up with ~1100 foot (335m) windward-leeward course and ran a couple of races. John and Kyle, sailing the 4.0m and POD, quickly pulled ahead of the pack. Wayne and I ended up very closely matched in speed, despite a significant difference in body mass. Go figure!
Kyle had to leave early, so Wayne and I shortened the course to about 950 feet (290m) and ran a number of informal races. At the end of the day I finally "manned up" and put up the 4.0m. I discovered that when tacking upwind and gybing downwind (compared with close-reaching) the extra power was no problem for me. Strangely, my upwind speed (against Wayne and his 3.0) was no faster with the 4.0m than it had been earlier when I was sailing the 3.0. Downwind I was faster on the couple of laps we tuned together, but I think that was a result of catching a couple of good blasts, rather than any major speed difference.
Kyle posted a couple of photos and a short video on our club's Facebook page, and I posted my GPS tracks from the two races along with tracks when I was sailing the 4.0m rig (and going more for speed that VMG...).
Saturday we had S to SE winds of about 11-13 kn, gusting to 18 kn at times. We sailed a number of races on an oval course about 500 feet (150 m) long. The two legs were roughly a close-reach/beat and a broad-reach. Wayne Schmiedlin, Jim Nordhaus, and I sailed a number of informal races. Interestingly, the fastest cart was a beater frame from the east-coast and a really used sail from Go Land Sailing
Sunday saw higher winds, S to SSW at 13-18 kn, gusting into the mid-20's regularly. Kyle Metzlof, new blokart owner Ken Ametani, Wayne, and Geoff setup their blokarts. John Scott stopped by (in his custom street-legal Indy car!) to give the blokart a try, too. As the "lightweights" Ken and Wayne put up 3.0m sails. I wimped out and also set a 3.0m sail for most of the day. Kyle put up his 4.0m with fiberglass top-sections and his POD. After sailing around the lot for a while and trying a couple of course layouts, we finally ended up with ~1100 foot (335m) windward-leeward course and ran a couple of races. John and Kyle, sailing the 4.0m and POD, quickly pulled ahead of the pack. Wayne and I ended up very closely matched in speed, despite a significant difference in body mass. Go figure!
Kyle had to leave early, so Wayne and I shortened the course to about 950 feet (290m) and ran a number of informal races. At the end of the day I finally "manned up" and put up the 4.0m. I discovered that when tacking upwind and gybing downwind (compared with close-reaching) the extra power was no problem for me. Strangely, my upwind speed (against Wayne and his 3.0) was no faster with the 4.0m than it had been earlier when I was sailing the 3.0. Downwind I was faster on the couple of laps we tuned together, but I think that was a result of catching a couple of good blasts, rather than any major speed difference.
Kyle posted a couple of photos and a short video on our club's Facebook page, and I posted my GPS tracks from the two races along with tracks when I was sailing the 4.0m rig (and going more for speed that VMG...).
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