Finished 14th at Melbourne World Cup - moved up in world ranking

A 14th place finish is enough to move me up in the World rankings to 26th!

I was psyched to watch Ali Young from GBR win the regatta in Melbourne with a big margin.

Regatta end - Melbourne

So my regatta ended in an anticlimactic way. No racing on the last day - so I stay in my finish position of 14th place. Despite all the shoulda' coulda' woula's  about how I could have saved points here and there to finish higher,  I am pleased with improvements to a couple key parts of my game: namely starting. My awareness of the fleet positioning upwind is also improving. My upwind speed in flat water and chop was good, but now I know that I really need to work on technique upwind in big waves, and as always I need more work on downwind speed. I am also going to do more research on how to identify a persistent shift, so that I can be more confident deciding whether to take sterns to get to a side or be patient knowing that the wind will oscillate.

All in all a great experience. The Laser Standard Medal race is about to start, and the Radial Medal race is after that. A great crowd up here on the race deck overlooking the stadium course. Wind is about 8 knots out of the south with some clouds.

Melbourne day 5 medal races

Everyone is out to watch the '9er medal races. So cool.

A new direction - Day 5 Melbourne

The last two days have been windy out of the South - today is windy out of the North. The forecast is for the sea breeze to mess with gradient, so who knows what we will have at 3pm when we sail on the South course - a deeper course area than the last two we have sailed on. 49ers should be heading out soon for their medal race.

Day 4 - Melbourne

My best day yet, 11th and 7th. The breeze started around 7 knots and built to the high teens I think. The waves never got as big as yesterday, and I discovered that I was very fast upwind. That helps me narrow down my diagnosis of mediocre upwind speed yesterday to wave technique. Here's what I think: I tend towards a bow down speed mode of upwind sailing. I think that it is well suited to a day like today with small chop and oscillating shifts. The low fast mode works well on a shifty day. Yesterday was shifty too - but the waves were big. I suspect that the low and flat mode is not as effective in big waves. I'm not totally sure why - maybe the low mode gets way too low if the waves are pushing you sideways. Isabella was fast in the waves yesterday and told me she was focused on keeping the boat balanced, and a constant angle of 'happy' heel. 

Anyway today was good - I had two good starts at a crowded end - one where I bailed out at 30 seconds and gybed around to find a spot last minute - and one where I held my spot and pulled the trigger just right to be really punched out. That race I maintained 3rd place all the way around the course until I choked at the end of the last run and let a pack of 4 boats pass me. I panicked that they were gaining and I was on the right of them, so I sailed left to be on the inside, and in doing so I think  I went sideways too much and gave up vmg. Then I went slow because I was worried about them instead of just doing my thing.

Despite that frustrating end to the race, it was really cool to do most of a race very well - particularly the starts!

Day 3 recap

Okay, so I'm not as fast upwind in 25 knots and big waves as I thought, but regardless, today was awesome! The upwinds were grueling, I have some more work to do on the wave technique and fitness. The reaches were just as hard, since they were tight enough that it was hard to decide when to surf a wave down, you could only surf a few, most of them you would have to let roll under you so you could stay high enough. The down winds were amazing. Sort of in between big Santa Cruz waves and steep San Fran or Gorge waves. The wave surfing was really really fun.

I can't wait to do it again tomorrow! The forecast is similar, although starting later in the afternoon. We are back on the Green Point course with an early start. I'm anticipating a tamer version of today, which should be just as fun.

Oh - results - I moved up into 14th place. It might take a miracle to get in to the top ten for the medal race, but I am trying.

Dinner:

World Champion Heiner from NED and BEL dueling at the front of the men's fleet:

A new day - day 3 Melbourne World Cup

So this was yesterday:

 We waited on shore and on the water until a late afternoon breeze filled in under overcast skies. Our two races were tricky, and I think I overcomplicated my thinking. It's hard not to be discouraged and get down after a day of poor decisions that cost you many positions in the regatta.

Today is a new day - I am psyched to be here competing regardless of the conditions or having a bad day on the water. I walked down to the boat park to find this:

I am sitting on the yacht club deck overlooking the stadium course. The mens laser fleet is about to start. Can't wait to race after them! Reminds me of San Francisco.

Today's mantra: Dominate the start and keep it simple. There is nothing better than racing on a day like today, getting good results would just be icing on the cake.

Melbourne Day 2

I have been watching the tracker from today's races and it is painful! I made a couple big very bad decisions - see below.

I started at the wrong end of the line in race 1 thinking that the breeze was starting to shift back to the right. In retrospect I didn't have solid evidence of this.

In race 2 I was leading for a portion of the 1st beat but decided I thought that we were seeing a persistent left shift. Being afraid that I was on the outside of the shift, I continued to the left taking sterns until I had a lane to the left of the fleet to tack into. I think it was a hasty decision, again I didn't know for sure that we were seeing a persistent shift - I was just guessing since it seemed to be winding slowly. Looking at the tracker, I should have tacked and crossed boats to get left as soon as I could cross them, but when I couldn't cross them I should have tacked back instead of assuming that the shift was persistent, I should have hedged my bets since I really had no idea what the wind was going to do. The thing is, I think it was a persistent shift, but there were some small shifts as well and my timing was just bad - I sailed the wrong tack at the worst time.

Feeling discouraged after two days with time spent at the top of the fleet only to post scores mid fleet. I hope I can put it together tomorrow and post a top ten race!

Tomorrow:
pre-race homework
have a plan
worry about the left side
execute two good starts
be patient with tactics

Melbourne World Cup Day 1

Sail Melbourne - Day 1 - Wind 14-17 kts SW ish

In 12th place at the end of the day. Not too bad, but would like to improve. I had potential to have to single digit finishes today, but had a couple slow runs where boats passed me. I nailed 2 out of 3 starts. (The second race was abandoned half way up the first leg when the weather mark was moving or something, so we re-started that one.) Third start I had a nice hole to leeward, but got a little too head to wind and let my German friend Sophie steal my hole. I think she was getting me back for not letting her cross me on port the race before! After tacking out to the right I was looking okay for a while on the right side of the fleet, but the left came in and I was never able to make gains on the leaders.

Goal for tomorrow - 2 more good starts and try to find a nice rhythm downwind.

Melbourne World Cup

Got to Melbourne a day later than planned - but managed to register and measure in, set up boat and go sailing before walking home to the airbnb house where I am renting a room. Today is Sunday in Australia, I have one more practice day and then racing begins.

Fall Update

I have been in Newport, training hard and preparing for the Melbourne World Cup. It was great to do a training session one on one with Anna Tunnicliffe. We worked on many things, but my biggest takeaways were learning how to hold my boat in one place, the importance of building confidence, and breaking everything down in to little pieces so you can attack them one at a time. I also learned the importance of measuring everything, from settings to fitness to progress.

I have been practicing the things I learned during our session, as well as going to cross-fit to work on strength and toughness. It has been really cool to practice new skills on the starting line in the frostbite fleet. I leave on Thursday for Australia and can't wait to execute some great starts in a world cup event!

I have also had the opportunity to work with professional photographer Matthew Cohen CohenPhotography.com. Here are some samples of his pics. Look for them to show up on this website and on Facebook.

-Christine

Starting and light air - advice from the experts:

Here is what I picked up from coaches and sailors during the worlds. I will be focusing on all this stuff for the next few months:

You must be able to execute perfect starts and roll tacks in light air so that you can always sail in clear air. Otherwise you are screwed.

Light air modes upwind in the Radial: 

• mega vang vs. looser vang
• Marit sails with mega vang - Luther argues twist.
• Look at the sail and see the luff and knuckle, also see the leech.
• Vang bends mast which helps flatten the entry (luff) - it sort of opens the leech by pulling material forward except that it also pulls the boom down which tightens the leech.
• Vanging in light air is a compromise between flattening the luff and opening the leech.
• Once flow and pressure are established over the blades the mega vang may work great, but twist helps acceleration and it may make sense to ease vang to accelerate when you are slow.
• The most important factor to overall upwind speed in light air is applying pressure (leaning out) as much as possible without stalling. To do this you must have a good sense for flow over the blades. More flow means you can apply more pressure. Too much pressure on the rail means you heel to windward and lose your grip on the foils. 
• The bow knuckle helps establish flow and grip - so sit far forward. (over the daggerboard
• Ease-Hike-Trim - this applies in light air too. When you have slowed down, moving in to the boat very slowly allows you to heel the boat a bit without losing flow over the blades - ease main at the same time slowly to establish twist in the sail. When pressure starts to build again in the sail, apply pressure to the rail and slow squeeze the mainsheet in again.

Starting:

• Be able to hold flow over blades at very slow speed. The better you can do this the better you can hold your spot on the line without slipping sideways. That way you build your hole to leeward.
• Be bow even - not bow forward and not bow back
• To do a good acceleration you must have grip on foils (flow)
• Beat your neighbor - a good acceleration involves 1) bow down, 2) heel, 3) flatten
• Two good roll tacks after the start can help you build an awesome lane with clear air.
• Starting at the ends in light air is important - there is more wind at the ends.
• Starting at the ends also gives you a better sense of where you are on the line.
• The only time you can start in the middle is if 1) you are a lot faster than most of the fleet - especially the boats starting near you, and 2) you know exactly where you are on the line.
• Nick Thompson starts near the ends when his confidence about where he is on the line is low.
• Robert Scheidt starts a little farther away from the ends but he is extremely fast. - he was also OCS in one race in this series
• Starting in the middle when you have no line sight is risky in light air because: 1) it is hard to know if you are on the line so you risk being over early, or late, 2) the wind always fill in from one side or the other, 2) if you have a perfect start you might make it to an edge in clear air, if you don't you will either get bounced up the middle which is slow, or you will have to sail in a lot of dirty air to get to an edge
• If you start at an end and have a bad start - at least it is a little easier to get to clear air on an edge - which is where you want to be in light air.
• Erika Reineke was successfully using reverse line sights in this Worlds to get good starts (looking over your shoulder at the committee boat and a sight on land) - practice this. 
• Also practice looking at the eyes of the person sighting the line from the committee boat.

The Move:

• Accelerations are the key when the line is crowded.
• Bow down - heel the boat (step on the deck) - flatten hard and trim in.
• experiment with mainsheet and vang trim for this move
• Pre-flow helps your acceleration
• know how long it takes on any given race day for those conditions

Roll Tacks:

• move back in the boat when entering tack to maintain flow over the boat and foils all the way through the tack
• when jumping to the high side jump forward so that the bow is dug in to the water for flow over the boat.
• hit the perfect exit angle and flatten the boat coming up to close hauled when fast.
• be super smooth

Regatta Wrap Up - Radial Worlds in Santander, Spain

I am back home and have had some time to reflect on the Laser Radial Worlds - Here are my thoughts:

Thank You! - First of all I want to say thank you so much to all of you who have supported my campaign. This regatta was a bust - I am disappointed with my performance, and I was upset with the poor regatta management. That being said, I did my best to learn what I could from the event and I have some important things to work on as a result.

The Bad:

• My starts were poor and I was playing catch up - not really racing.
• Poor regatta management made for a frustrating event.
• I only sailed 4 races.
• Didn't make Gold fleet.
• Had to spend 4 days sitting on shore watching beautiful sailing conditions but not being allowed to race!

The Good:

• I had the opportunity to sail with some top competition for practice before the regatta started.
• I got some excellent advice from good coaches.
• I watched the Men's and Women's Laser Medal races.
• Santander was beautiful and I got to practice some Spanish.

Lessons Learned:

• Right away I learned that I have a major weakness when it comes to starting in light air without good line sights. I talked to a number of excellent coaches and sailors about their perspective on light air starts and I have a bunch of ideas that I will write in my next blog post outlining what I learned from them. These things will be the focus of my training for the next couple months
• My speed relative to other boats in light air was variable. Sometimes good, sometimes not good. I learned that being in tune with load and flow on the blades is important - but also paying attention to twist in the sail. I need to spend some more time experimenting with adjusting vang tension while sailing upwind in light air and looking at my leech. (Ease for twist when slow, tighten when the speed is there?)
• My speed downwind has improved tremendously since the worlds 2 years ago in Boltenhagen. I am really excited about this! I feel like I am on track to improve my downwind technique more now that I have a much better sense for flow/pressure on the sail.

Here's a pic and clip from the Laser and Radial medal races:

After the medal races I hiked out to the point to check out the view of the 470's and Cats racing on the ocean courses:

Worlds in Santander - Tuesday

Three days in a row with no racing!

With so many fleets and courses, I can imagine it is a tough job to  try to fit races in with all the fleets getting behind. Being in Silver fleet, we are low on the totem pole, so it figures that we have to wait our turn.

Today there was a really nice breeze in the early afternoon for the 49er FX's on the Duna course which is right in front of our boat park. Then it died and we were still waiting. Then it picked up again at around 5:30, but I guess it was still light out on the ocean. They cancelled racing for us since there was no chance that there would be enough time for us to race. The wind filled in to 16 knots from the south, so I rigged up and went sailing in the harbor for practice. It died slowly, but I had some great tacking practice and nice downwinds in short waves. I did a bunch of accelerations too.

According to Josefina who I am staying with, the south wind comes from the Sahara and it is hot and dry - which was the case today. When it is really strong, it even brings sand. She said that the wind leaves the desert and rises high before it comes back down to Cantabria. Madrid doesn't get the same desert wind that Santander gets because the wind bypasses it up high.

Here is tomorrow's schedule. You can see how complicated it is since they are trying to fit in extra races. If tomorrow is like the other days then everyone will be postponed and the later fleets won't get to race. Pray for wind!

NOTICE NR.15

Date/time: 16 Sep 14, 19:00

Issued by: Nino Shmueli, Principal Race Officer

Affects: schedule

FROM: PRO TO: All Competitors

SCHEDULE OF RACES - WEDNESDAY 17th


FX Yellow (old) RACE 3
Course Area: DUNA
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

********************************************************

FX Yellow (new) RACE 4
Course Area: DUNA
Warning signal: 11:45 hrs

FX Yellow (new) RACE 5
Course Area: DUNA
Warning signal: 14:00 hrs

********************************************************

FX Blue (new) RACE 4, 5
Course Area: DUNA
Warning signal: 12:30 hrs

********************************************************

49er Yellow (old) RACE 3
Course Area: SSANGYONG
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

********************************************************

49er Yellow (new) RACE 4
Course Area: SSANGYONG
Warning signal: 11:45 hrs

49er Yellow (new) RACE 5
Course Area: SSANGYONG
Warning signal: 14:00 hrs

********************************************************

49er Blue (new) RACE 4, 5
Course Area: SSANGYONG
Warning signal: 12:30 hrs

********************************************************

RS:X MEN Gold RACE 6, 7, 8
Course Area: FREIXENET
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

RS:X WOMEN Gold RACE 6, 7, 8
Course Area: FREIXENET
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

********************************************************

RS:X MEN Silver RACE 6, 7, 8
Course Area: FREIXENET
Warning signal: 15:30 hrs

RS:X WOMEN Silver RACE 6, 7, 8
Course Area: FREIXENET
Warning signal: 15:30 hrs

********************************************************

NACRA Blue RACE 2, 3
Course Area: HP
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

NACRA Blue RACE 4, 5
Course Area: FREIXENET
Warning signal: 14:00 hrs

********************************************************

NACRA Yellow RACE 3, 4
Course Area: FREIXENET
Warning signal: 12:30 hrs

NACRA Yellow RACE 5
Course Area: FREIXENET
Warning signal: 15:30 hrs

********************************************************

470 M Blue RACE 3, 4
Course Area: TELEFONICA
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

********************************************************

470 M Yellow RACE 4
Course Area: TELEFONICA
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

********************************************************

LASER RADIAL Silver RACE 5, 6, 7
Course Area: TELEFONICA
Warning signal: 12:00 hrs

********************************************************

LASER Silver RACE 5, 6, 7
Course Area: TELEFONICA
Warning signal: 13:00 hrs

LASER Bonze RACE 5, 6, 7
Course Area: TELEFONICA
Warning signal: 13:00 hrs

********************************************************

LASER RADIAL Gold RACE 7, 8, 9
Course Area: MURIMAR
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

LASER Gold RACE 8, 9, 10
Course Area: MURIMAR
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

********************************************************

470 W Gold RACE 5, 6
Course Area: MURIMAR
Warning signal: 15:00 hrs

********************************************************

FINN Yellow and Blue RACE 2, 3, 4
Course Area: LANGRE
Warning signal: 11:00 hrs

Monday - Santander

Only one fleet of boats held any races today - the 49er blue fleet held two races. The rest of us either never rigged our boats - or some sat on the water all day.  The weather patterns are supposed to start changing - but it is unclear whether that will mean any wind. I will keep you posted.

No racing on Sunday

They held us on land all day, and then finally sent us out to sail on the RSX course at about 5:30pm. By the time we started our first race thunderclouds were looming and the lightning was striking before we reached the first windward mark. They abandoned the race and sent us in.

It is hard to keep your head on straight when you spend the whole day ready to race any minute. I made sure to stay hydrated and fed and stay in the shade a lot. I think I changed between sailing clothes and shorts and a t-shirt 3 times trying to guess if they were going to send us out soon or not.

Forecast for today is similar - we are scheduled to race after the 470's on the Murimar course. It is the farthest course out. I'm hoping the 470's get there races off on time so that we can actually race today!

Worlds Santander day 2

Today was tough. Once again I found myself playing catchup in both races soon after the start. Needless to say it is impossible to "catch up" when all of the the sailors you are racing against are excellent. It seems that I have a couple major issues - one is that I don't have a good sense of how far I am from the starting line when I don't have a line sight (we were looking out to sea), the other has to do with getting up to speed quickly and I may be over vanging for light air accelerations.

My results today were 24 and 47 (I get to throwout the 47 combined with day 1 I have a total of 86 points which puts me in 70th place. Not good enough to make gold fleet. So I will be sailing in silver fleet for the rest of the regatta, and the best I can possibly do is to win silver fleet and finish 61st overall.

I am disappointed that I didn't qualify, but mostly that I never raced a good race with a clean start and clean lanes. I have some guidance from Luther about setting my sail up with more twist for accelerating in light air. I will experiment with that tomorrow before the start - and I think I will also try checking over my shoulder for a 'reverse' line sight. I hope to at least improve my starting abilities in an elite fleet over the next few days and post some top 5 scores.

Day 1 of Racing Laser Radial Worlds, Santander, Spain

I am sitting in 57th place out of 120 today after scoring a 23 and a 37 in two light air races. Speed was okay, but my starts were not good and I found myself playing catchup early on in both races.

Tomorrow:
Focus on starting - separating the defending my space phase from building a hole phase once we are locked in. See both ends of the line.

Looking to improve my scores tomorrow. Today's conditions were a very light sea breeze after morning fog burned off. Tomorrow may be similar. Swell and current made for interesting sailing.

Thank you!

THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to my campaign! I would not be here at the Worlds without your help so I am bringing you with me on the water. I am extremely fortunate to have the most amazing team of friends and family behind me.