Nationals Day 2

The conditions today were similar to day 1 except windier, and coming more from the south which means coming off the city. The gusts were bigger and the lulls were bigger too. As usual, short tacking up the seawall was important but going away from the wall worked if you had more wind and a lift. My scores were 2, BFD, 7. In the 1st and 3rd races I did exactly what was working for day 1 - start near the boat - tack up the shore - look for puffs on the downwind - blah blah blah. BFD stands for Black Flag which means that I was over the line at the start in a race where you can't restart.

Here is how a black flag start works: The race committee wants to add a penalty for being over the line because they have done too many general recalls and they just want to have a clean start, so they hoist a black flag during the starting sequence. Everyone knows that if they are over early, they are disqualified from that race. (usually you can go back and restart).  If one or two people are over early, they just find out at the end of the day. If lots of boats are over early, they do a general recall - which means that they do the start over. But they don't let you get away with being over even though lots of people were. They write down everyone's number who was over early and post it on a board. If your number is on the board, then you are scored BFD (last place) and don't get to sail that race.

So I had to sit around and watch race 2 with a few other boats. I realize that I need to break down my starting technique for black flag starts. It is extra important to make sure that the race committee doesn't get a chance to read your sail number or recognize that you are close to the line in the last minute before the start. I need to make sure that I am farther back from the line, and trim in earlier than the boats next to me. I was trying to take advantage of having a good line sight and lots of line sag during our black flag starts, so I was hovering closer to the line than the boats next to me and that made me exposed. I was pretty confident that I was right on the line, but not over, but obviously they got me.

Currently my scores for the regatta are: 22, 3, 1, 2, BFD, 7, and that puts me in 10th. We get to throw out 1 score after we have sailed 4 races so I am throwing out the BFD (which is 54 points) for a total of 35 points. After 10 races we get to throw out another score. My goal for the rest of the regatta is to have great starts, no black flags, and consistent top 7 scores. If I do that I could break the top 5. We will see!