CampbellSailing.com

Monday Morning Tactician: 21 Sept 2009

September 21st, 2009 in Regattas, Monday Morning Tactician.

What a regatta Sail for Gold ended up being! Yikes. It didn’t seem like we were able to get any breaks throughout the event. The strong northeasterlies forced us to sit ashore for a day and a half of what could have been very good racing. When racing was possible, our course was one of the toughest and squirreliest of the lot. Mistakes seemed rampant in the fleet, but the proximity to shore really made for tricky breeze. In particular Brad and I were having a tough time getting the boat into the right spots, and even when we were in the right spots we could rarely capitalize. On the final day we made a nice comeback to round the last windward mark in the first race and were going down the run in fourth with a significant side-swell and got a rule 42 penalty from the on-the-water jury for rocking. I’ll admit that we were working as hard as anybody to stay with the pack, but having to do a 720 didn’t help our series at all at that point, we finished 12th in the race.

In the final race of the event we got off the line in great shape beside Freddie Loof and Iain Percy and held for seven minutes on their windward hip giving us great confidence that we were doing alright for pace. They eventually tacked and ducked us, we continued 10 or 12 more boatlengths further into what we thought was a left-hand shift. When we eventually came back together the fleet forced the three of us further left. The starboard tack advantage they had gained on us allowed them to squeak around the front of the major part of the pack, and we had to take a big duck behind the group going into the windward mark. The differences between a race in the top 5 and a race in the bottom 5 was often less than a boatlength on the first beat. Getting your nose out in front at all in the final approach to the first windward mark was by far the most important factor to having a good event. Anybody rounding in the body of the fleet could finish from 5th to 15th without any trouble. The fleet was absolutely top-notch and very much humbled me as much as the wind conditions.

So what are the major lessons from our first trip to Weymouth:

1. Settings from one tack to another often needed to be very different, due to confused seastate and proximity to the shore-line. Sometimes port would be straight into 1 meter swell, while starboard was extremely smooth with waves loading and unloading the boat to the point that the crews were in the water very often if the boat wasn’t properly powered at all times.

2. Geography has a major impact on the game. The valleys and cliffs surrounding the sailing area make enormous impact on the shifts and Portland Bill makes a huge impact on the current (it causes a 6 knot run of current at the end of the point during max ebb and max flood, thankfully we don’t have to race out there).

3. Racing inside the breakwater can be scary for the starboats in heavy air! Not having waves makes it incredible difficult to unload the main for gybes. Conclusion: I’ll probably need arms like Arnold for next year!

4. Everybody has bad races. Recovery wins regattas. This is a college sailing lesson. Chipping away when you’re up front as well as when you’re behind is the only way to win long series. When things aren’t going your way, just keep showing up until they do.

5. Bring more fleece next year and a thicker wetsuit to dive on the bottom. Sailing in England in September makes you realize why the English started sailing everywhere else in the world to find their empire (Barbados, BVI, India etc.)

So, we finished 16th this week, 7th in the World Cup standings, but are steadily climbing up the World Rankings (27th before the new rankings come out) so this season has turned out to be an incredible learning experience in the new boat.

It won’t stop here though. We will ship a boat out of Miami in two weeks to be ready for the South American Championships in November and lead-up to the 2010 Star Worlds in Rio in January. But first… the Hinman Trophy and US Teamracing Championships are this weekend at Beverly YC in Marion Mass with Team SDYC, Tyler Sinks & Briana Provancha, Adam Roberts & Nick Martin. I’m racing with former Georgetown All-American crew Nick Deane. Bermuda Gold Cup Match Race Grade 1 in three weeks. Melges 24 Worlds in Annapolis at the end of next month. Can’t wait. Stay tuned.

0 comments.