Friday, September 18, 2015
Race: Beneteau Cup 2015
I went into this weekend with a secret thought we might just win but a hard weekend on the water left us in fourth place after five races - just four points off first place! The bay once again was our undoing we just don't know it that well and combined with one bad race on the ocean where we lost our headsail during a start sequence and were over early (so had to double back and start again, painfully slowly) - somehow we still clawed our way back to 5th. Of course we benefited from issues on other boats too so overall it balances out.
Most importantly there's a huge difference in how we raced this year against last. The fleet has got more competitive as it establishes itself as one of the few big boat one design classes in San Diego and as that's happened we've also improved and are no longer sailing to survive and just make it around the course. We're starting to knock the rough edges off our gybes and tacks, our trim is in the ballpark and we're pushing the other boats hard.
The ethos on Kraken has always been to learn together, to bring a group of people up to a high level of racing, myself included. This has proven hard in some ways and the temptation has always been to just get out there and find the best sailors I can to make up for my own deficiencies on the helm ad turn Kraken into a win stick but the journey is the destination.... Kraken is fast - when we get it right we get rewarded. She makes up for our errors in some ways and keeps it fun.
So right now I'd say I'm equal parts frustrated by our last result, proud of where we've got to and excited about the future races. We've got a couple of tweaks left to Kraken that will get us faster for next year, and I can feel that we're very close to tacking and gybing efficiently. Tacking is all in the helm and initial acceleration, gybing we need to work on trim transition from side to side.
But we're SO close!
/PeAcE
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