Prep before Sail for Gold

The last few days have been very productive here in Weymouth with some quality training in breeze varying between 8-25knots over the four days. Over the course of the training we seen many different combinations of wind conditions and sea states as we have split our time between inside and outside the enormous breakwater.

Though we haven’t sailed as much as we would have liked with other teams, we definitely set and achieved our goal of hammering away at the boat handling. We were able to really focus on our tacks and gybes, and with the variant wind conditions were able to set different priorities in the respected condition. After some seriously long up and downwinds we finally felt a sort of understanding into the mechanics of the maneuvers.

And, on a side note, we were able to keep pushing our comfort zone to new levels, as one of the days was a steady 20-25knots with higher gusts! Not just trying to “survive”, we continued our boat handling mission in the breeze with some success. However, on more than one occasion, we were pleasantly reminded of the power of the 49er…. BUT, the biggest positive of the breezy day came following our experience over the next couple days in 8-15knots where we felt somewhat more comfortable and less frantic throughout the motions.

So, with the regatta starting tomorrow in a decently forecasted breeze (12-18knots), we hope to put our boat handling work to the test! The fleet is quite deep here with a lot of talented teams and few new teams, but we hope if we can just do the fundamental things right we have the potential to put ourselves in some promising positions.