I'm not one of those people who can give you a tack by tack recap of a day's racing, so I'll make my comments fairly general. My first word of advice is to show up on time - something I clearly need to work on since I missed the first race. But what I did notice on the way to the course was that there were some significant southwesterly "puffs" interspersed with the light (but gradually building) southerly breeze. Since there was a race in progress when I arrived at the course, I had time to follow the fleet up their second beat. At that point there were definite shifts to the right, but there was more pressure on the left, and on that particular beat boats seemed to do better on the left side. However, as the breeze filled in the right side became more favored because of the persistent right shift, but if you went too far right you sailed out of the breeze altogether - no reward for being greedy. Over the next couple of races the wind kept veering to the west, so I would favor the right side of the beats unless there was a big difference in wind strength from one side to the other. At the same time I kept in mind the usual light air dictum of maintaining a clear lane upwind (something I managed to do very well in my second race by being about 15 seconds late for the start). Likewise, the downwind legs were a matter of staying in clear air and trying to find the side of the course with more breeze. I spent about as much time looking aft as forward on the runs - keeping an eye out for puffs and attacking boats. Windward heel and forward weight are essential in the light conditions - I try to heel the boat until the helm is neutral, and steer the boat with heel as opposed to rudder. At around 2 pm the breeze seemed to settle into a more westerly direction, which meant lots of smaller shifts since the windward mark was tucked into the west side of the cove. At that point I tried to stay in phase with the oscillations, favoring the left side for pressure, staying off the starboard tack layline as long as possible since there were a lot of light spots on the right side. As for boat setup, I kept everything pretty loose upwind all day. The vang always had slack in it going upwind, I used just enough cunningham to take the wrinkles out of the luff, and main was sheeted with about 6-12" between the boom and traveler blocks, depending on the wind strength at the time. Thanks to Barney (and Jennifer and Robert) for doing RC! |
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