Went for a sail last week and blew out the mainsail. The wind was a steady 20 knots with gusts to around 25 knots when I pulled out of the marina. As the boat was beating to windward, short rips appeared almost immediately above the clew. I headed the boat into the wind to put in a reef and then tried again. The wind was quite strong and I had to put in a lot of sheet tension to flatten the sail and the clew on the first reefing point ripped right out of the sail almost immediately (see picture). Although the boat is only a couple of years old, the sail seems quite frail. I can't afford a new one at the moment, so will take it to our local sail maker and see if she can keep it usable for another season or so.
Since the wind was blowing hard, I thought that I would take the opportunity to test how my 5hp Honda outboard would do against 20 knots of wind and a couple of knots of tide. I could only manage about 1.5 knots, and that was bearing off about 30 degrees from the wind - the boat would come to a "stop" if I tried to bring it directly into the wind. On the other hand, the motor "ventilates" at anything above half throttle, so I am going to change out the prop for the spare which has a smaller pitch to see if there is an improvement - in theory I should be able to use more revs without ventilation/cavitation.
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