Hyeres Training

We have had some good training here in Hyeres over the past 6 days, with largely a soft thermal in the afternoon. Typical high pressure has dominated the Mediterranean and given us plenty of time to play with our boat set up in these conditions and to work on starting techniques - to help ensure we are maximizing our acceleration off the line and holding our lane at will. These practices have been extra productive because we have been able to tag along with the US Sailing Team (Erik/Trevor and Alex/Val under coach Dave Hughes) and be involved with animated (video and photos) debriefs from each session. This has been great and is helping us close the boat speed gap with the top of the class.

The third party feedback is great and we hope to work with these guys as much as they want us around! We have been experimenting with different settings, trying to attack all the nuances of world class speed. Part of it is trimming and driving technique, and part of it is rig set up - shroud tensions (caps, primaries, lowers, fore stay), mast bend, jib tack, jib clew, main batten tensions, vang tensions, bridle settings, etc. The list gets complicated fast and you have to try figure out which combinations work together in certain conditions...you can imagine a sailing log for a 49er! Whenever you have good speed against good boats, everything is measured and the conditions are noted. This has helped us start to paint the 'boat speed' picture, but this blatant experimenting seems to be accelerating this procedure. Hopefully we can continue this!

Racing starts on Sunday and the long-term forecast is for a moderate to strong easterly, possibly continuing into the week. An easterly at Hyeres is wavey (like conditions we had last thursday) and is tough for the 49er. This should make for exciting and intense racing!


-Zander