Last Day of 49er FX Europeans

No racing for us. We sailed out, waited, started once, abandoned, waited and towed in. No wind. While we waited we got some very very light air practice in. It's hard to be smooth and precise in this boat because you aren't sitting down. In light air I crouch on the bow, and kristen is bent kneed either in the boat or on the wing.

All in all a good regatta, our race proficiency is improving. Thank you thank you thank you for reading and supporting us!

I am headed to the Gorge for the Blowout - a downind Laser race, and Laser PCC's. Psyched to be back in a Laser for the weekend, I know my legs are going to be sore.

49er FX Europeans Day 5

We spent most of the day waiting around for a little wind. Sailed two races in the afternoon.

In race one we had a decent start, held our lane and sailed a good tactical beat playing the major shifts and getting to pressure. We rounded in the top 5. We continued to sail heads out of the boat looking for pressure and paying attention to angles for the rest of the race. Could have sworn we finished top 10 in that race, but the results posted say 14th.

Race two started on a poor note when we fouled two boats at the start. The lesson there has to do with pre-start communication. I broke a major rule by making a suggestion at about 3 minutes that we switch to a port tack start since we were having a hard time getting to the boat in time to get a spot on starboard and we wanted to go right for pressure. It was doomed from the beginning because once she accepted my suggestion, our roles were unclear, and our actions were becoming a discussion instead of one person making decisions. We ended up in indecision on the line at the pin head to wind at the gun because we were each expecting the other to be decisive and say what we were doing. Lesson learned.

The plan now is to practice and discuss port tack starts during our training so that we can add it to our repertoire, and to use it when it is our game plan, but to keep it Kristen's job to make the starting decisions so that we can execute our boat handling decisively.

49er FX Europeans Day 4

Finally some wind! We were prepared and tuned up to go fast. We misjudged our time and distance to the line every start. In the first race we were late to cross the line at the start. We sailed fast, but capsized in the first gybe on the first run. In race 2 we were again late at the start and played catch up. In the start of race 3 we overcompensated and went over the line early. We circled back to re-start, but again followed the fleet trying to catch boats. Race 4 started in the biggest lull of the day and being set up for 18 kts, we accelerated slowly and were again late to start.

Positives for the day: We felt very fast at times upwind, and made gains downwind. We only capsized once when many boats were capsizing. Even when we had poor starts, we were racing and not panicking or being too cautious.

49er FX Europeans Day 3

Very light winds today and again hard to predict. We had many general recalls and postponements. In two races we had good starts, but failed to capitalize on them. It's really amazing how much better our starts have become in the last month. The next step is to improve our upwind boat speed so that we can hold a lane and have options. Right now we just aren't quite fast and high enough, so we end up tacking in places that aren't ideal.

Important lesson from today: Look hard for pressure up the course and pay attention to the boats that are far away from us on the other side of the course in case they are getting some important new breeze.

In race one today we followed our game plan out to the left side, but it turned out that the right side got a lot more breeze, and we didn't really figure that out until we got all the way to the left corner and tacked back. We were too committed with tunnel vision to our plan. In Luther's words "Pressure is King" on a day like today.

49er FX Europeans Day 2

First start - holding our place, countdown, go, full speed, another gun, it's a recall, then suddenly we are  hit by another boat from above. I think they bore away into us without looking, and they hit us hard with their wing and bow. After some yelling we sail away. I take a glance for damage, but don't look that close, I tell Kristen to focus on the next race and forget about it. The other teams coach call us over to look for damage, but the next start sequence has begun and we get lined up for our start. We have a good lane at the pin, and once we are out on the wire we can see a big hole in our boat that I didn't see before. So we sail the whole race, but we are slow and finish dead last. We check the hole and discover that I can put my fingers through the boat, so we sail back to the dock. Drain about 40 gallons of water out of the boat and cover the hole with packing tape and sticky back. Made it back out in time for race 3. Start in the middle, maintaining our place on the line. Another good start. We weren't the fastest upwind, but we sailed ok. Passed some boats downwind. Even though we were struggling to find speed and balance upwind and never felt fast, we sailed a solid race. Did I mention it got windy right after the start? We are racing where it is shallow, so the waves stand up, they are short and steep. Quite a few boats capsized downwind.

At the end of the day we were given redress for races 1 and 2 today because of our damage. (Average points) So, tomorrow is another day.

Lessons learned:

Check for damage and if you have a big hole, go in right away to maximize your chances of making it back out to compete in more races. (I was too stubborn about racing race 1 when we were sinking - we should have bailed and might have made it back for race 2)

Get your setup right - we were still on our light air rig settings from the morning at the start of race 3, and that might have been the source our our upwind troubles with speed.

If you see a bubble in the main upwind, ease jib. Also, use the vang to flatten the front of the sail. (we were sailing too eased on vang and too trimmed on jib. Our rig settings were light so the main was too deep, and our jib tack was high so the leech was too tight.

Better settings might have been: down on the tack, tighter jib halyard, tighter shrouds, tighter outhaul, car 5 on the jib (maybe), vang harder.

We are just recovering from almost capsizing to windward in bad air as we cross the finish line in race 3

Here we are at the Europeans - Day 1

Day 1 of racing in Aarhus - Light, flukey winds with hard to predict shifts and pressure changes.

First off, we had some great starts today. We really put to the test our ability to hold a spot close to the line without sliding sideways, and it turns out we are pretty good at it!

Tactics were really hard today, race 1 went okay. Race two we made a lot of bad decisions and some of those bad decisions led to more bad decision. Race 3 was our best race, we finished 11th after a good start and simple tactics both upwind and down. We went to the edges, kept clear lanes, and didn't tack or gybe too much.

Hoping to put together more races like that tomorrow, with more solid finishes we can move up a lot in the scores.

The forecast is calling for 13 kts tomorrow from the SSE. That seems more similar to a windy practice day we had here, so looking forward to more wind where we have better boat speed.

Gybing near the finish:

Starting:

Launching in light air: