Sunday's bay race

On Sunday I was on Steve and Steve's Hunter Formula One, Sparkle for the Scarborough Yacht Club's Bay race. The conditions were pretty much ideal for racing with a F3-4 SW wind (the flags were flying more than 50% of the time and there were a few white caps in the bay) and little or no swell. The course was Southerly start, with a long downwind leg from the green boy in the south bay out to the Scalby outflow boy at the north end of the north bay. We went with the No1 genoa and no reef in the main. I was on the main.
On the downwind leg we opted not to raise the spinnaker but goose-winged most of the leg. This turned out to be a good decision as a lot of the other boats were having trouble maintaining control and I think were overpowered. We certainly didn't lose much ground over the opposition.
On the upwind leg we were definitely over-powered. There were a couple of occasions where we were on our beam ends with no power at all in the main - the Gennie was knocking us over. I think we should have gone with a No.2 and a small spinnaker (I don't know whether we have one). Upwind we may have even benefitted from taking in a reef on the main.
Note for next time: try pulling the outhaul right out for the upwind leg