admin Aug/ 26/ 2015 | 0

Soo day three!

It was an absolutely gorgeous day sailing today.  Imagine just about a perfect day and that was exactly what we had. Sunny, fabulous wind, open water venue, big fun waves, warm, GORGEOUS. I was thinking “oooh wouldn’t it be amazing if we got to sail in this all the time”, and then I realized that it wouldn’t be special if days like today were the norm! But it was sure one of those rare absolutely fabulous sailing days!

We started some team racing today. Morning was some more boathandling with a blender drill (lots boat boats crossing each other close together with lots of tacking) and some upwind/downwind whistle work. But that wasn’t the interesting part of sailing today. Interesting was the afternoon.

TEEEEAM racing, in 8-10 knots with ~4 foot waves. Sooo much fun. Sydney (from Harvard) is a great crew. It is team racing with a crew that knows team racing! If we need to slow slightly or max power up to stay bow forward on someone she knows what we’re doing nearly before I do and is already doing it! Rather lovely.

Also something about college sailors, we are all at a level where we can be thrown in a boat together, do a few practice tacks to get in sync (even better with a part of a day of practice) and then go team racing. Nearly no warning crash-tacks and all!

Sydney and I were temporarily Italian and Addy and Lindsey (Ireland Team) sailed with France for the purposes of team racing teams. Sono italiano, destra? (google translate cheating) Despite still being rather new to Z420s everyone was team racing rather well!

My two big takeaways from practice today,

1. if you’re in the 5 you really need to gap the 6. “No gap is big enough”
(If you don’t seriously seriously gap the 4 is coming for YOU)
2. the job of any place but the 6 is to play back. You are attacking the boat behind you. The opponent behind you is your man!
3. if you are being slowed there is most likely someone that you can also be slowing, go slow them!
4. execute before you are executed! (Act first and with aggressive moves)

Note, I can count properly but as I was writing I thought of 3 which I learned at debrief and 4 which is a good summary.

Here’s some LP pictures of the day & sailing

Fab day overall!

After sailing, school bus back to the hotels. A short 2.3 m jog loop & shower/change back on the faithful school bus to head to the “The Graduate Club” (old fancy city country club-ish building)

for “a light buffet” (dinner) and the Skippers Meeting for the next three days of sailing (shortest skippers meeting I’ve ever been to).

In reality the evening was actually “we all get to hang out, eat dinner and socialize with our friends from Canada, Italia, Ireland & France” I should make a point of getting to know the Oman and Japanese teams better! They stay to themselves more than the other teams but I should say hi more.

Anyways, sleep time for me now. Racing in the morning!

Best,

-Robyn