Girlfriend

Kraken's PO Greg Lynn followed up with a 42ft trimaran that he had a hand in designing - Girlfriend. Launched in the last few months videos are starting to come out of her moving.

Hopefully we'll see her taking on the larger boats for line honors in the coastal races - keep your eyes out for her!

Weak Wednesday

I'll admit it, I haven't been trying that hard in our Wednesday night race instead treating them as a good way to build some crew skills. We've had fun but just made outrageous mistakes through lack of application (not knowing the course, being late to the start etc). With this race though we went in with a strong crew and I decided to try properly thinking we'd have a good chance of challenging for the lead. At the end of the day we were significantly behind Shamen and the following are some notes on where I think we were losing out.

• Start - lost a couple of boat lengths right away. Should have been more aggresive about keeping position, less early. Starting on the second row would have been just as good as where we did start. 3 boat lengths, and lack of tacKtical initiative.
• Tacking - I was too aggressive going into tacks. Tighten main, loosen headsail slightly, let boat round into tack without forcing rudder. Try to steal distance to windward. Maybe half a boat length per tack, 4 boat lengths total.
• Post tack - Acceleration wasn't great despite a solid breeze. Trimmers need to use a power position and then trim more consistently.
• Gybing - need to smoothly move the spinnaker around the boat. Turn will follow the spinnaker. Keep it moving until we're on the other side - we can't complete the turn until the sail is around the boat and it gets the guy closer to the bow for pole attachment. Might have lost 2 boat lengths.
• Bottom mark - pole down a little earlier, spinnaker down faster (start it coming down even before the gybe). Fore deck was right they wanted this. In wider out closer so we have a bit of time to power up into the beat. 1 boat length.
• Shifts - Wind likely very similar this Saturday, it was oscillating in about a 10 degree range and we weren't tacking on it. Limit tacks to two per short leg, four per long leg but try and get the shifts. Boat lengths? Unknown... a few. Let's say 4 but it could be more.
• Bottom - no-one likes a dirty bottom. It'll be clean for the weekend - Boat lengths - 1.
• Pole - Need to be more aggressive moving pole and pole height. We saw significant increases on speed when we did actually adjust it. Boat lengths - 2.

17 boat lengths ~ 500 ft. Could have been the difference to first place.

So  - before the regatta this weekend we'll have a little team talk.

Main - Tacking - when tacking we're going to tighten up slightly and we're going to loosen the jib an inch right after.
Helm - going to drift into the tack, then chase the telltales to keep driving to windward as long as possible.
Trim - Tacking, Power position first, then trim in as speed builds.
Main -Tacking, Power position first, then trim in as speed builds.
Trim - Gybing - Sail needs to move smoothly from one side to another, we shouldn't be waiting to get into good positions to see the sail, and we have to have it trimmed to the new side faster so we can rotate the boat under it.
Pit / Mast - Pole height needs to be considered right after setting the spinnaker and right after each gybe - it may vary on each side. Look up at the sail and see where the break is, it should be center or slightly above center if it isn't push the pole height the opposite way you want the break to move (up if the break is too high, down if it is too low).
Tactician - Wind shifts and pressure! Also in the start make sure we a) know our course, b) know the favored end and c) give the other boats a hard time!
Tuning - check and adjust rig for conditions at start of every race.

Let's follow our Weak Wednesday with a Strong Saturday!

Matchracing Skills

If you haven't seen it and enjoy racing the Alpari Matchracing Tour has some great videos.

This is a nice example, the boat control is just supreme. Watch the spinnakers fly through the gybe!

Foilers - coming soon to water near you!

With the moth firmly established but on the extreme end of sailing and the Gunboat firmly out of most people reach its nice to see some foiling action starting to come closer to my reality.

Courtesy of the Yachting World you tube channel meet the Whisper:

What about the laser? There are so many of these lying around just awaiting a new set of blades..

 And this is pretty interesting...

2015's JP Morgan Round The Island Race

One day I'm going to take part in this!

More Coastal Racing

We took Kraken from Oceanside to Dana Point and back over the weekend. This was two races one in each direction and follows on from our DNF earlier this year, stranded by low winds. As no-one else finished that race everything was still to play for.

Nine boats entered and our troubles started early when I got to the boat and realized that mis-communciation with our diver left a carpet on the underside of the boat, with the rudder looking very bad. Having anticipated a fairly leisurely setup instead I found myself with a brush strapped to a boat pole and my head in the water seeing what I could scrub off!

John, Sarah, Jordan and Jonathan all appeared and we set off.

Wind initially was good and the normal adverse current was missing and after our 11:42am start it seemed for a while that we were making good ground, might be in in the top four boats out of nine and could be sipping cold beer before four in the afternoon.

Instead of building though the sea breeze steadily backed off and stayed abeam. Boats flying asymmetricals or code 0's took off and we sat in second to last for most of the race. Having settled for this everything changed right at the end - proving that even when there seems nothing to fight for its well worth pushing hard. Shamen tried to go above Obsession and got taken to the moon, at the same time the breeze started to really shut down and there was a nasty reflective chop. We snuck under Shamen, and Obsession and Hanky Panky in the last few hundred metres finishing half a boatlength ahead of Obsession in 5/9.

Dana Point harbor was pretty busy, Tuna Crabs by the thousands, people milling around the restaurants and boardwalk. Small sharks, cats on kayaks and Orange Counties limos finished the scene but we were all pretty sun drained and hit a fairly early night.

The next day we came back on a line much closer to shore and had to take some imaginative lines through kelp beds. Shamen rolled us about half way through the race and pulled away but we were able to come in third and for a while as the wind shifted behind us our inside route looked like it stood a chance of getting us back into a fight with Shamen, but not to be. Third it was.

Not sure exactly what order boats finished on the Saturday - our final position for the weekend was somewhere between 2nd and 4th.

Lessons learnt - verify diving schedule corresponds to races (I normally do!), sail faster.... We got a better reaching shape on our #1 on the Sunday with a different outhaul position but seeing slower boats who we'd been about to reel in pull away with their asyms was a bit annoying, confirmation of the known hole in our sail inventory.

Waiting

Planned to bring Kraken back up post Yachting Cup yesterday but glad I didn't. Planning on coming back tomorrow now when this has settled down.

The normal "safe" channel between waves is middle of the picture.

The Yachting Cup was an up and down affair. A couple of second places (listed as third on one race but successfully protested the second place boat for a fairly extreme port starboard incident), but also a couple of last places. Things got better on the Sunday and it was a relief to end with a happy boat at the end of the weekend.

More to come on this race later.