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.