 Dana is awesome! Dana is great!
It's not everyday you find yourself being threatened by a schoolteacher, and normally Dana is one of the kindest people I know. But I guess she turns into a devil on the water.... see what I did there? Dana's competitive juices were flowing on wednesday and she sailed quite the killer race to put some proper distance between her and the remainder of the J24s and high PHRF boats. Following the race she said that I better put her in the write up, so here we are! All joking aside, Dana kicked our butts. Talking to her after the race, we found out that she was just prioritizing clean air, and keeping the boat speed up. Sounds simple right? It's what everyone knows they should do in light air. However, last night everyone's competitive juices were flowing. I don't think I heard a single start go off without some hooting and hollering back and forth between boats. Some of it was internal to the fleet, some of it was external. What all of these people had in common though is that they were not worried about their own boat speed, but rather other boats. Who wasn't worried about other boats? Dana. She was focused on boatspeed. And she won. By a lot. Sometimes it pays to focus on yourselves and not get too worried about pushing other boats around. The J24s and high PHRF boats that started at the pin found themselves fighting with each other, fouling each other, and eventually getting stuck in each other's air, but Dana just started mid line, cleared her air and kept going fast. So here's my advice: Keep Calm and Sail on. Make sure your boat is going fast before you worry about others and the rest takes care of itself. Thanks to a stellar race committee from Melges 24: Area 51 and Beneteau 235: Slainte! Members included Ben, Danny, Kate, Caroline, Bill, Kyle, and Maggie! Next week is a dinner week! We'll See y'all there! P.S. I noticed a lot of conflicts during the starts regarding boats in different fleets being 'in the way of other starts.' There is not an official definition of this in the racing rules of sailing. However, boats are given up to 5 minutes after the starting signal to complete their start. Boats are also defined to be 'racing' after the 'P" flag has been displayed during their start sequence. It is common courtesy on Wednesdays to keep the line clear if you are not starting. However, due to the nature of our rolling starts, there often ends up being some overlap between when boats should be occupying the zone. During these times, by rule, unfortunately we can only default to the right of way rules (port/starboard, windward/leeward). This past week amplified some of the issues due to the light air and pin favored line. Boats needed to stay close to ensure they would be able to get back to their start. It seems that we were able to sort these issues out on the water with relative ease. However, please be courteous of others on the water. Stay out of each other's way as much as possible, and when issues do occur, try to stay calm and work it out with reason. My advice for navigating Wednesday starts: make a box around the starting line that is five boat lengths in any direction. After checking the course, stay out of it until your warning signal (start signal for the fleet prior). This should keep you relatively out of the way. But also remember you may not be the biggest boat on the water and your 5 lengths may be different than another boat's (sorry, I'm guilty... the 22 feels like a mouse compared to some of yall). Second piece of advice: get on the line. Starting is one of the most fun and rewarding challenges when you learn to maneuver your boat close to others and if you're on time to your start, you don't have to worry about the boats in the next start. You probably don't need to be more than 5 boat lengths from the line during your sequence. Third piece of advice: Losing the start doesn't lose you the race. It's okay to give up a little position for cleaner air or just to be courteous and understanding of others. Don't lose your head at the start. What matters most is the remaining 99% of the race. Keep Calm and sail on. As always let me know if there are any corrections needed to the scores! Thank you, Kyle ____________________________________________________________________ Comments are closed.
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Results by Month
September 2024
Results by YearScorekeeperDana Stewart | She Devil |
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