Day 4

Finally, a day with wind, and a day with pretty good execution on my part all around! I am really excited about my starting. I feel like I have figured out how to do it well, and I just keep doing it. This is now the 3rd day of confident starting on my part, and I am doing the same thing repeatedly. I am starting just to the left of the dense pack of boats near the committee boat in every start. Typically we have one start that is a recall, and I am in or just to the left of the bulge causing the recall. Then they put up the black flag for the next start, and everyone holds back. I sail down wind from above the line through the middle of the line with about 2 or 3 minutes to go and sit on port below the middle of the line so I can watch the majority of the the fleet approach the line from the boat end. Once a lot of people have set up on the line, (about 1:30 left in the sequence) I set up in a low density place and begin to work my hole. I am paying close attention to seeing the pin and the boat - which means I am looking over my shoulder at the fleet to the right of me a lot - a lot more than I used to. I am relying on the line sag developing just to the right of me. (I now understand why it starts there, the first few boats are on the line because they are close to the boat, then, the rest of them start lining up bow even with each other, thinking 'I'll be protected by the boat next to me'. It is this line of bow-even boats that sags away from the starting line. I am trying not to push forward too soon, and drag boats with me. I think letting them think they are on the line and pulling the trigger early is better. Anyway, it is working, so I will just keep doing it until something changes and I will try to apply the same arm-sighting technique to pin end starts.

Racing today involved sailing fast in the 16-19 knot breeze with pretty big choppy swell, not tacking too much, and picking the right side. I definitely had room for improvement on a few areas of todays races. First, I lost a couple boats on the reaches, partly because my setup was not perfect, and partly because I chose to surf down a wave or two that actually caused me to slow down, when I would have stayed faster to keep planing at a high angle. Downwind, I found my speed was pretty good, but there were people who were faster, and I think that I was missing opportunities to make fast upturns while surfing a wave. That meant that I often ended up to the left of the gate marks and had to reach over, losing a little. My biggest loss today was going right on the second upwind of the second race. During this time I sailed through some lulls (16 knots maybe?) where I didn't power up my sail. I think this was really slow. With the waves that we had, my flat 19 knot sail setup was really slow in 16 knots. So - bad choice on the side of the course to sail, and slow boat speed for part of that upwind netted a loss of maybe 5 boats.

All in all a good day, with some really awesome downwind sailing. Looking forward to almost as much wind tomorrow - hopefully full hiking and some waves again.

 I wish we had Dynamic Dollies here, the heavy Euro dollies are hard to pull up this long ramp!