End of ISAF Sailing World Cup Hyeres

Well, the second day of finals for us was discouraging, we made a lot of mistakes, and capsized on the run in the last race even though it wasn't really that windy.

The last day however, we started to put together the pieces of the lessons that our coaches have been trying so hard to get us to learn and execute. Our goal for this last day was always look forward to what our next move was, and make gains. We really need to switch from learning mode to race mode. So, we finished with our best day of racing. It was a great fun day with medium breeze and interesting tactical decisions. We were right in the mix the whole day.

Kristen and I are now on our way to Kiel, Germany, with our car, the "petite fromage" and boat and trailer. The equipment will all stay in Kiel until our next European regatta in June. In the meantime, we will be training hard in San Francisco working on boat handling and developing confidence. We will be going to Kiel to compete, not just learn.

Thanks for reading! See you on Saturday in San Francisco for the Elvstrom Zellerbach!

Finals Day 1

Today was windy with steep chop. We capsized A LOT. But we made it around the course, and tomorrow we will do the same thing in full race mode. Something I have learned from Lasers but have to learn again is that when it is knarly just sailing the boat, you can't forget to race! Keep your head out of the boat and make smart decisions. Just sailing a 49er FX in 18 kts and chop is pretty hard, and it's easy to lose confidence in your ability to sail around the course. Today we learned a lot of new styles of crashing, and tomorrow is a new day - game on.

Here's the US Sailing Team rundown including our post-race interview:

http://sailingteams.ussailing.org/News/2013/Day_3_SWCHyeres.htm

Qualifiers over, Finals start tomorrow

Well, our results were horrible for 5 out of 6 races in the qualifiers. You would think that would be discouraging, but we are actually encouraged by a lot of the things we did today and yesterday. In many of our races we were at one point in the top ten or top 5, but dropped to last or almost last from a disaster of some sort.

The results "carry forward" tomorrow, which means that our 18th place finish in the qualifiers will now count as an 18th place in one race of the finals. We can't throw it out, but it is only one race, so that helps us get back in to contention if we can post some better results. Our big goal tomorrow? Sail clean, and eliminate the things that cause major losses.

Number 1: We had good starts! Our starting procedure, communication, and execution has totally changed, and we are getting in a good place and getting off the line in the front row. We can also hold our spot better and crab to windward sometimes.

Number 2: We are able to hold a lane off the start now! Actually, our ability to point in light to medium is really good, so it gives us lots of options.

Number 3: We are finding good lanes upwind, and fine-tuning our boatspeed.

Number 4: We are passing boats downwind. We are focusing on finding the fastest mode for the conditions and repeating it, as well as staying in clear air.

Stuff to improve for the finals:

Layline management. - Both upwind and downwind, our biggest losses are when we don't have a solid plan for how to deal with other boats around the laylines and approaching the mark roundings. We are working on how to communicate with each other and paint a good picture of what is coming up so that we anticipate what will happen.

ISAF World Cup Hyeres - racing begins tomorrow.

First 3 races scheduled for tomorrow. We are scheduled to start at 1:00 after the mens blue and yellow fleets. Looks like we have some potential for sitting around the next few days. This is our forecast for the week:

GFS 21.04.2013 06 UTC Su 21. Su 21. Su 21. Su 21. Su 21. Mo 22. Mo 22. Mo 22. Mo 22. Mo 22. Mo 22. Tu 23. Tu 23. Tu 23. Tu 23. Tu 23. Tu 23. We 24. We 24. We 24. We 24. We 24. We 24. Th 25. 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h 05h 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h 05h 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h 05h 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h 05h Wind speed (knots) 8 8 9 14 12 10 10 6 3 4 4 5 6 6 4 3 1 9 11 17 19 16 11 9 Wind gusts (knots) 9 8 9 14 16 11 10 7 4 6 6 6 7 8 5 4 2 10 20 25 25 22 19 15 Wind direction *Temperature (°C) 11 12 14 14 15 12 12 14 15 15 15 13 14 15 16 16 15 14 14 16 16 16 16 15 Cloud cover (%) high / mid / low - -     12     12     17 7   9   82 19   76 13   26     25     79 62 6 65 51       6     16   20   92 5 11 *Precip. (mm/3h) -                                               Windguru rating                                   GFS 21.04.2013 06 UTC Th 25. Th 25. Th 25. Th 25. Th 25. Fr 26. Fr 26. Fr 26. Fr 26. Fr 26. Fr 26. Sa 27. Sa 27. Sa 27. Sa 27. Sa 27. Sa 27. Su 28. Su 28. Su 28. Su 28. Su 28. Su 28. 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h 05h 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h 05h 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h 05h 08h 11h 14h 17h 20h Wind speed (knots) 13 17 17 17 16 17 16 15 17 18 14 7 6 6 10 10 14 20 23 26 29 25 28 Wind gusts (knots) 23 26 28 28 31 30 30 27 27 26 21 8 6 7 12 12 17 25 30 31 33 31 36 Wind direction *Temperature (°C) 16 18 18 18 18 16 15 15 15 15 15 14 14 15 16 17 16 11 11 11 12 13 12 Cloud cover (%) high / mid / low 93 23 20 89 20 37 93 33 19 99 75 13 97 72 17 100 100 74 100 100 65 100 100 60 100 99 78 100 100 98 99 98 85 85 88 99 76 59 99 69 19 78 42 38 71   23 14   28 9   94 44   67 26 *Precip. (mm/3h)           0.9 3.5 2.7 9.2 6.5 1.3 4.7 1.3         0.8           Windguru rating           Lat: 43.0538, Lon: 6.124, Alt: 0 m, Timezone: CEST (UTC+2) 06:46 - 20:22 15 °C  [Detail / Map] [Archive] [Link]

One more practice day before ISAF World Cup Hyeres starts

We have been doing short practice races for the past couple days. Tomorrow is our break day, and one more practice on Sunday before racing starts. They call this place "8 or 80" since it is either light or full-on. "3 or 30" accurately describes what we have seen so far - some days we have seen 3 knots of wind, some days 30 kts.

Our biggest goal for this event is to improve our starts. The dynamics are similar to Lasers, although defending your space is harder, as is all maneuvering.

Check back to see how the racing goes!

Hyeres, France

We are back into practice mode here in Hyeres, France. We have made some major strides the last two days on our boat handling. Tacks are getting faster and smoother. The water is flatter here than in Palma, so the racing will be totally different. We have seen two different wind directions. The Mistral is out of the West with dead flat water and super windy, and today we had Southeast 17kts dying to 8-10kts with some chop. It is a beautiful place to sail. So far we are the only FX here, hopefully some tuning partners will show up in the next day or so.

Palma - finished last day pretty well.

Our last day of racing went alright. Finally, we started putting together a lot of what we have been learning. We sailed three races in a row without huge major fumbles (although not always the best starts) and picked our lanes, communicated the plan to each other, and even passed some boats. We were in the mix all day and it felt great!

It's very exciting to be on the steep part of the learning curve along with an entire fleet doing the same thing. The sailors who dominated this regatta are a little ahead on this learning curve, but the rest of us will catch up soon, and the competition will get tougher.

Today we are watching some medal races, and packing up the boat. We are on the 11pm ferry to Barcelona. When we arrive in Barcelona in the morning, we drive to Hyeres, France for some training and the next event.

Palma day 4 - building breeze

Started yesterday in 8kts which built to 12 for the first race, and 14-16 for the second two. Results weren't good but we learned some important stuff:

Don't get too close to the line too early.
Use the back-up-double-tack as a tool to move to windward in our hole, not to back up into a hole.
C- focus super hard on weight and jib trim pre-start - keep the boat flat and use jib for pre-flow.

Find a fast groove upwind without pointing too low (need to improve holding our lane off the start).
Keep the boat flatter upwind.

Swing weight out of the tacks!

Anticipate crossing situations more (boats that tack in front of you basically stop, so a duck gets extra hard).

Pay better attention to which side won the beat.



Light air forecast for today, plus a late start. Working on perfect main trim and vang trim upwind, perfect amount of weight out, and pointing.

This is our last day of racing, saturday is the Medal Series, which will be interesting to watch.

Light Air

Tough conditions transitioning between double trapping and crouching. Working on maintaing perfect sail trim for max power without stalling, and matching that with perfect weight and steering. Maintaining a lane upwind and down is key, and of course a good start too. In light air hit the edges downwind coming back in to the gate. As for starts, we improved from the first race today and focused on timing and "pre-flow".  Scores weren't great, but tomorrow is a new day - all our previous scores carry forward as one race. We want to implement all the good stuff we have learned from our mistakes in the qualifying series in the finals series.

Some cool pics from yesterday:

Palma day 2 - races 1-4 - Trial by fire

Race 1 - We made it around the course, but with some issues! This was our first experience with the chaos of 36 skiffs on a course together. We are learning how to deal with other boats. Ducking will be our friend from now on if it means we keep a good lane upwind. We are also learning to anticipate when we have to adjust our speed and angle ahead of time to make sure we can cross another boat or go behind them instead of gybing (this is super hard since the speeds and angles change with the waves and puffs).  Laylines are hard to call - working on that too. We had a major raft up with another boat at a gate mark in the first race (they did their turns). We think that's when we put a big hole in the bottom of our boat. After that we were in last, and just finished our laps. Positive thing about that race: we made it around without capsizing, and our communication to each other was good.

Race 2 - Got caught trying to back up at the start since we were too close to the line. Ended up on port behind the fleet right after the gun. Headed out to the right, which worked out well. Should have gone farther right than we did, but we made it around the next 3 legs smoothly. The wind picked up and we were a little slow upwind since our setup wasn't quite right. Finish - 16th - Okay! We know we can still do better.

Race 3 - We started late, but with a good amount of space around us. We had changed our rig settings and were tuned for more breeze. Our speed was good, and we motored to the left corner, tacked, and motored back to the windward mark. Rounded in the top ten, narrowly missing a capsized boat at the windward mark. We didn't set the kite right away since we wanted to get settled and stable first (the waves were big, and we were planing - Kristen kept saying "I can't see! Tell me where to steer!" Anyway that ended badly in a capsize, and we spent a while righting and capsizing over and over. We are working on how to make sure that we keep the boat upright as soon as we right it. One thing is that we need to get more speed going in to our first bear away, the slow speed bear away isn't working that well even though we do it during pre-start maneuvering just fine. So DNF in race 3.

Race 4 - We stayed on the beach grinding and laying fiberglass while the FXers went back out late in the day. We left the boat upside down with the epoxy curing and we will check it in the morning.

Forecast for tomorrow is light, hopefully some sea breeze fills in!