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.

Only one practice day left - Santander

If you haven't been following, I am currently in Santander, Spain which is on the North coast in Cantabria. I am about to begin racing in the Women's Laser Radial Worlds which is also part of the ISAF Sailing World Championships (only happens every 4 years). It's like the Olympics, but only for sailing. In my class, the Women's Singlehanded (aka: Laser Radial), there are 120 competitors from 58 countries, 3 of us are from the USA.  There are a total of 10 Olympic classes here competing for World Champion status and everyone is working hard in anticipation of the Olympics in 2016.

Olympic Sailing Classes:

Women's Singlehanded (Laser Radial)

Men's Singlehanded (Laser)

Men's Heavy Singlehanded (Finn)

Women's Doublehanded (470)

Men's Doublehanded (470)

Women's High Performance Doublehanded (49erFX)

Men's High Performance Doublehanded (49er)

Mixed Multihull (Nacra 17 Catamaran)

Women's Windsurfing (RSX)

Mens Windsurfing (RSX)

We are racing on the Bay of Biscay - which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. That means we have waves! Today's practice was beautiful again, warm, sunny, a beautiful strong sea breeze (about 15 or 16 knots) and nice waves. There are a lot of weeds in the water here.

Racing starts on Friday, so we only have one practice day left. I can't wait for the competition to begin! You can check results and info about the regatta here: www.Santander2014.com

As you can see from the photos, it is a beautiful place to sail and a beautiful city. We are sailing on course HP and Freixenet the first two days.

Tomorrow night is the Opening Ceremonies.

Santander update

Used my new race sail today and it is amazing the difference between new and old. All my settings are totally different. Yesterday I was slow upwind in light air and I hope it was due to the old sail. Today was beautiful! 15-17 knots and nice waves! I am all measured in and mostly registered. Just have to keep practicing the next couple days and get over my nerves and own some practice starts.

Sept 7th - Santander

So after no wind this morning a nice sea breeze filled in. We had practice races and starts in 14 - 17 knots and some medium waves. My goal for tomorrow is to raise my confidence level. I have to say I was intimidated by all the good sailors and did not sail like I was in charge. A few good practice starts, but pulled the trigger a little late for the actual races and had to tack out and duck boats. Speed seemed fine, but for some reason I was letting doubt about all kinds of things get into my head. Tomorrow that will change and I will sail with confidence and initiative and focus on killer starts.

On a side note - Santander is a beautiful city especially from the ocean. There are city rental bikes and I rode all around the waterfront yesterday evening. There are some big hills.

Our launching area is about in the middle of the picture, and we sail on the ocean off the picture to the right.

In Santander

I got to Santander last night and met the hostess of the apartment I am staying in. Her name is Josefina and she is very nice. She is helping me with my Spanish, which is terrible, but hopefully it will be better when I have been here a few days.

Today's Program:

• Woke up at 3am
• Tried to sleep until 7
• Ate breakfast
• Walked to Sailing Center
• Found boat
• Put boat together
• Had lunch
• Waited for wind
• Light air sailing
• Walked to apartment
• Groceries
• Run
• Dinner
• Computer time and making new vang
• Can't go till bed until 10 in order to sleep the whole night - eyes are closing...

Packing to leave

In town

The harbor

Old dry dock next to our launch ramp

The Spanish sailing center CEAR

Somebody launching early (no wind yet)

In town

In town

A market

My room

Laser Atlantic Coast Championships at Sail Maine good prep for the Worlds

A great two day regatta at Sail Maine in Portland. 5 races the first day in 8-16 knots, and 2 races the second day in 0-7 knots. The conditions were sunny and beautiful.

I won the regatta with a good margin, but it was not an easy event. John Kirkpatrick who I have been practicing with all summer, Corrinne Peters from Halifax, Graham Kilvert, Connor Bayless, and Giovanni Ronco were putting the pressure on all weekend. I credit my success to a good mindset which led to good decision making. I applied what I learned at CORK, and what I have been reading in The Inner Game of Tennis.

I haven't finished the book yet, and I learn more every chapter I read. I am starting to understand how to let go of my frustrations. It seems that all my distress over bad decisions made during a race is usually a result of wanting something. This weekend I focused on seeing clearly 'what is' - no wanting allowed! - It goes hand in hand with awareness and 'head out of the boat' sailing. I am excited about this revelation because I think it will help my consistency in big regattas. - If I can stay in that frame of mind.  It was awesome to practice this mind set right before leaving for the Worlds. I know that it will be much harder to stay un-emotional when I want (see that word?) to sail to the best of my ability and show everyone what I am capable of.