One more practice day before ISAF World Cup Hyeres starts

We have been doing short practice races for the past couple days. Tomorrow is our break day, and one more practice on Sunday before racing starts. They call this place "8 or 80" since it is either light or full-on. "3 or 30" accurately describes what we have seen so far - some days we have seen 3 knots of wind, some days 30 kts.

Our biggest goal for this event is to improve our starts. The dynamics are similar to Lasers, although defending your space is harder, as is all maneuvering.

Check back to see how the racing goes!

Hyeres, France

We are back into practice mode here in Hyeres, France. We have made some major strides the last two days on our boat handling. Tacks are getting faster and smoother. The water is flatter here than in Palma, so the racing will be totally different. We have seen two different wind directions. The Mistral is out of the West with dead flat water and super windy, and today we had Southeast 17kts dying to 8-10kts with some chop. It is a beautiful place to sail. So far we are the only FX here, hopefully some tuning partners will show up in the next day or so.

Palma - finished last day pretty well.

Our last day of racing went alright. Finally, we started putting together a lot of what we have been learning. We sailed three races in a row without huge major fumbles (although not always the best starts) and picked our lanes, communicated the plan to each other, and even passed some boats. We were in the mix all day and it felt great!

It's very exciting to be on the steep part of the learning curve along with an entire fleet doing the same thing. The sailors who dominated this regatta are a little ahead on this learning curve, but the rest of us will catch up soon, and the competition will get tougher.

Today we are watching some medal races, and packing up the boat. We are on the 11pm ferry to Barcelona. When we arrive in Barcelona in the morning, we drive to Hyeres, France for some training and the next event.

Palma day 4 - building breeze

Started yesterday in 8kts which built to 12 for the first race, and 14-16 for the second two. Results weren't good but we learned some important stuff:

Don't get too close to the line too early.
Use the back-up-double-tack as a tool to move to windward in our hole, not to back up into a hole.
C- focus super hard on weight and jib trim pre-start - keep the boat flat and use jib for pre-flow.

Find a fast groove upwind without pointing too low (need to improve holding our lane off the start).
Keep the boat flatter upwind.

Swing weight out of the tacks!

Anticipate crossing situations more (boats that tack in front of you basically stop, so a duck gets extra hard).

Pay better attention to which side won the beat.



Light air forecast for today, plus a late start. Working on perfect main trim and vang trim upwind, perfect amount of weight out, and pointing.

This is our last day of racing, saturday is the Medal Series, which will be interesting to watch.

Light Air

Tough conditions transitioning between double trapping and crouching. Working on maintaing perfect sail trim for max power without stalling, and matching that with perfect weight and steering. Maintaining a lane upwind and down is key, and of course a good start too. In light air hit the edges downwind coming back in to the gate. As for starts, we improved from the first race today and focused on timing and "pre-flow".  Scores weren't great, but tomorrow is a new day - all our previous scores carry forward as one race. We want to implement all the good stuff we have learned from our mistakes in the qualifying series in the finals series.

Some cool pics from yesterday:

Palma day 2 - races 1-4 - Trial by fire

Race 1 - We made it around the course, but with some issues! This was our first experience with the chaos of 36 skiffs on a course together. We are learning how to deal with other boats. Ducking will be our friend from now on if it means we keep a good lane upwind. We are also learning to anticipate when we have to adjust our speed and angle ahead of time to make sure we can cross another boat or go behind them instead of gybing (this is super hard since the speeds and angles change with the waves and puffs).  Laylines are hard to call - working on that too. We had a major raft up with another boat at a gate mark in the first race (they did their turns). We think that's when we put a big hole in the bottom of our boat. After that we were in last, and just finished our laps. Positive thing about that race: we made it around without capsizing, and our communication to each other was good.

Race 2 - Got caught trying to back up at the start since we were too close to the line. Ended up on port behind the fleet right after the gun. Headed out to the right, which worked out well. Should have gone farther right than we did, but we made it around the next 3 legs smoothly. The wind picked up and we were a little slow upwind since our setup wasn't quite right. Finish - 16th - Okay! We know we can still do better.

Race 3 - We started late, but with a good amount of space around us. We had changed our rig settings and were tuned for more breeze. Our speed was good, and we motored to the left corner, tacked, and motored back to the windward mark. Rounded in the top ten, narrowly missing a capsized boat at the windward mark. We didn't set the kite right away since we wanted to get settled and stable first (the waves were big, and we were planing - Kristen kept saying "I can't see! Tell me where to steer!" Anyway that ended badly in a capsize, and we spent a while righting and capsizing over and over. We are working on how to make sure that we keep the boat upright as soon as we right it. One thing is that we need to get more speed going in to our first bear away, the slow speed bear away isn't working that well even though we do it during pre-start maneuvering just fine. So DNF in race 3.

Race 4 - We stayed on the beach grinding and laying fiberglass while the FXers went back out late in the day. We left the boat upside down with the epoxy curing and we will check it in the morning.

Forecast for tomorrow is light, hopefully some sea breeze fills in!

No racing today (Palma day 1)

Racing was eventually cancelled for us today. We waited for the boys yellow fleet to finish two races, although only a few boats made it through the second race. Winds in the twenties with some major gusts and massive waves meant that many of the 49ers had a hard time going downwind without the kite up, and the ones that made it came in with some injuries. The blue fleet didn't sail, and us FXers didn't either. We are the first fleet tomorrow - starting at 11:00. Forecast is for 15 kts.

We are in this promo video from the practice race - just a couple short clips of us sailing upwind. (we are wearing black wetsuits with white rash guards.

http://youtu.be/f_7pkNn3ruI

These pics are from the early part of the day when the boys yellow fleet was racing, later the wind picked up and the waves got huge.