CYC Fall Regatta

A fun weekend sailing in the South Bay again left us in a bad position in the regatta - and pretty much every race. We worked our way into good places and lost them, sailed badly downwind on day 1 and started badly all weekend. Coming out of a serious cold running into the regatta my foggy mental state and lack of experienced tactician to force me to sail in the right direction when I'm going the wrong way. Luckily we still had a few minor victories and enjoyed racing in wind from zero to fifteen knots - going from one to the other within thirty minutes at one point.


Highlight of the weekend was watching Melokia almost fall over when hit by a fair gust while on an unexpectedly tight reach. Also fun to sneak away from a becalmed fleet overhearing a voice from behind wonder how we were moving away like that.
Good positions lost through:

• Not sailing well downwind on day 1

• Not covering the fleet upwind on day 2

Bad positions gained through:

• Not starting well all weekend, had to double tack to avoid a collision with a port tack boat on one start had a windward boat refusing to lift up and get out of the way and for the other three races I was late and buried in every start. Regarding those boats the former took a turn even though I didn't protest which was very civil of them the latter admitted wrong doing later on. The way I've been treating boats is they get a single shot - a good apology will go someway towards future leeway on transgressions otherwise the flag hand gets twitchy. A few of boats in the 36.7 fleet now get my flag hand twitchy....

• Sailing in bad air. I'm starting to get to grips with how critical this is but tacks are costly too and the balance is not yet clear (also vs shifts etc).

Lessons:

• More aggressive starts, being over early occasionally is worth it if you're getting decent positions. At the moment we're never over early, and setting ourselves up for bad races.

• Be proactive downwind - if we're slow fix it we shouldn't be slow, we're not slow unless we're not setting our sails correctly.

• Don't throw positions away. Cover, consolidate, cover. Worry about what you've gained more than the one or two positions you might get while letting everyone else potentially threaten you.

• Gybing

• I'm not sure how this came to be but we've had trimmers swapping lines on Kraken during gybes. This is now a banned practice. We can swap them later if needed. Swapping adds huge confusion and at exactly the wrong time. Trimmer needs to push the clew forwards and add wraps as it goes ready for the pressure of the pole, the pole gets brought back, wraps taken off when the sail is well rotated and pressure is lower. I'm open to having the more experienced trimmer take control of both lines through the gybe if that's needed.
• Don't turn too fast. I don't want to stop my turn, but getting ahead of the trimmers is not helping. So my current stance is "I don't want to stop the turn so please trim as fast as possible but I am going to stop".

• Takedowns

• Headsail up earlier in stronger winds

• Pole down earlier, especially in stronger winds. We've done worse in the past but still an issue. Doesn't help when you have to put in an unexpected gybe right at the end but I guess we need to be quicker at saying just jump the pole, headsail up, round the mark and profit.

• Use stretch and blow when reaching above 10 knots 

• In a drifting fest clear your air, even if if feels like you are going the wrong way if you are moving its an advantage and clear air is king. Don't wait 20 minutes before thinking about this.

• Strategy

• Read the forecast again before every race in a regatta, compare with experience, make a guess on what's coming, go in with a plan, every race. This probably would have had us covering the fleet tighter and not getting punished by a 20+ degree shift.

• Random

• Tuning - every race, do it and create a table of settings and conditions