Overall a great job by everybody, sailing as a new team and our first time together in a true match race event I felt really good about the team work and the attitude of everyone onboard. This made the sailing really fun and everyone remained great friends while working towards the goal of improving and performing up to our potential.
I am going to go through the different aspects of the races piece by piece to identify areas where I feel improvements can be made:
Starting
Time and distance – I need to do a better job with time back to the line, we will be able to dictate the tempo of the race and control our position better if our timing is better. I would like to work on controlling our speed and sailing full speed toward the line and timing it very carefully so I start getting in my head if we are early or late or right on time.
Pushing – We need to do a better job pushing our competitor while remaining under control and in a strong position. Too often on Sunday we were too aggressive trying to get the hook and draw a penalty the outcome was we received penalties or we put ourselves in weak positions. We can push to get into a nice safe controlling spot to weather and then let our trimming, timing and driving work for us. Must remember the goal is to start even and in a position too execute our upwind strategy.
Dial up – When we enter on Starboard and dial up I think we can do a better job holding our position to weather of the port enrty boat. I think Don’s team did a very good job of this. In our training I would like to get into more downspeed maneuvers and dial ups. When we entered on port I thought we did a very good job escaping and getting back into a control of the start, good job by Nate and Dave in those situations.
Build angle and acceleration to gain distance in the prestart – Sometime I felt that we were not driving trimming or hiking as well as we could have been to get the separation. When we were chasing I thought we did a better job closing distance and staying right in the lead boats quarter wake.
Overall starting was strength but as we sail against better teams we have to do a better job being under control and conservative in our choices in the pre-start.
Upwind
We had good upwind speed all weekend. There was not a team out there that was able to hold a lane on our hip off the line. We also did a very good job executing our strategy sailing the other boat to the longer layline and then pressing on them the whole way to the weather mark.
Positioning of tacks – We can improve our tacks by making sure that we find a nice flat spot to make the turn. We can also do a better job of identifying which direction the wind is shifting if it is left we can extend longer on port before setting up the loose cover and vs versus. I saw bill do a nice job of this in the last race.
Technique - In breeze where keeping the boat flat is most important to acceleration out of the tack centering the traveler and having the vang set to control the leech in the flatten I think is that way to go. Tacking and dropping the traveler doesn’t depower the boat enough to flatten in anything above 14 knots. The jib needs to come in no luffing, no back wind in above 14 knots. The only way to improve our tacks is to do more in a variety of conditions and understand the different adjustments for the condition. In breeze if I already have the main sheet in my hand I can go straight to hike instead of leaning back into the boat to get the mainsheet out of the tack. I am sure this was factor in our tacking issues on Sunday. If we find a flat spot to tack the turn up to head to wind can be paced slower with the rudder. The boat will hold its pace through a very slow turn if we can find flat water.
Lay lines I felt between Nate and I we did a real good job on identifying where the laylines were and using them to our advantage.
Mark Roundings
I think our crew work got pretty tidy as the weekend progressed we made good adjustments with the changes in velocity. At the leeward mark the boat that can get cleaned up first and have the whole team hiking has a strong advantage. If we are leading in the downwind this means an early drop whenever possible and getting as much sorted before the turn to head upwind. I think our team handled the chute better then anyone else in the regatta. Including Don’s team who had a complete cock up at the leeward mark in race one with a big knot in the halyard.
Keeping the boat flat around the leeward mark in breeze was fast. We have to make sure that jib is luffing 30% to 50 % as the bow swings up into the breeze this goes for circles in the prestart as well. Speaking of circles I think we can back wind the jib harder during this maneuver to help push the bow down.
Downwind
95% of the time our downwind communication was good and we protected our position well. There were a few tough spots where the trailing boat was able to bring pressure from behind but over all we did a good job staying between our competitor and the finish.
One area we can improve on is understanding where the lay lines are downwind in relation to where we are on the course. This way we can protect our lead safely without engaging the trailing boat, which can be risky.
In tight spots we have to continue our communication loop so that decisions can be made using the best possible information.
Any errors that we made during this event can be traced back to making aggressive decisions without having complete information. Patients, patients, patients!!!
Conclusion
We accomplished our goals for this regatta. We earned good points for a 2nd place finish and dominated for 95% of the event. At the same time we have a lot of room to get better and continue to keep our rate of progress at a higher level then our competitors.
