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
No comments:
Post a Comment