Today’s racing was in a much softer breeze of 3-6knts out of the North. But again, our speed was subpar (probably the worst comparison wise of the event), making for a very difficult series of races. The most notable implication of our slower speed came when trying to hold a lane, along with acceleration following tacks and gybes.
Through all the frustration with our speed there were a few positive glimpses (what we have to aim for in this event) in two of our three starts, where we were able to hold our hole, and start with a clear lane.
So, one more day of racing here. Forecast is calling for a little bit more, so hopefully we can end with some decent finishes with slightly better speed. But realistically, we plan on practicing specific maneuvers, the starts and anything else achievable in a 29 boat fleet.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Day 3
The day started postponed as we awaited for the cold front to pass through and the weather to stabilize. Breeze ranged from 7-22 kts (although 30 was reported on the R/C boat), with most of it in the 10-15kt range out of the WSW-WNW. This was an unstable direction on the race course today because it was blowing offshore and because the jet stream had dipped down here and ushered in a cooler airmass, removing the entrenched tropical clime which we have had recently.
The highlight from the day was being 8th and 6th at the 1st weather mark roundings of the first two races of the day. This despite lackluster speed...
In both these races, we were able to get a lane off the line and hit the first major shift of both of those beats. We were also doing pretty well on the downwinds, hitting shifts and holding our own. We had a slight hiccup with our spin halyard which uncleated at two key moments, thanks to a line stuck under the halyard near the cleat. This was kinda a freak thing, but an example of how many things can go wrong in a given 49er race. Tomorrow we will cut the tail of the main halyward tweaker to avoid this!
The lowpoint on the day came from the Greeks who decided (they didn't see us apparently) to try and cross us as we approached the leeward mark on starboard. We had to make evasive maneuvers (crash gybe) to stop our boat from a dangerous collision with their bodies and boat. Just think a joust against carbon pole traveling at 18kts aimed right at your torso...not a happy thought. The Greeks were very happy we avoided the collision and spared them. However, it sent us swimming and us flaming out of our best race of the day. We were in 10th/11th at the time and the flip put us a mile behind them. The Greeks spun a circle and still finished 11th...We protested them regardless and we ended up with average points (17th). A little frustrating, but it is how it goes sometimes. We were cool with the Greeks after the protest and it was not a personal thing to protest them after they spun, we did it to get some of the points back that we lost in the incident.
Again, we feel we are doing many things right and that we just need to be patient with our older boat (4th oldest in the fleet). We are in 16th at the moment and 9 points from our goal of mid fleet (14th). We look forward to two more days of racing on Biscayne Bay. A light to moderate North/North Westerly is forecast for the rest of the event, which should provide different conditions than the past few days.
-Zander
The highlight from the day was being 8th and 6th at the 1st weather mark roundings of the first two races of the day. This despite lackluster speed...
In both these races, we were able to get a lane off the line and hit the first major shift of both of those beats. We were also doing pretty well on the downwinds, hitting shifts and holding our own. We had a slight hiccup with our spin halyard which uncleated at two key moments, thanks to a line stuck under the halyard near the cleat. This was kinda a freak thing, but an example of how many things can go wrong in a given 49er race. Tomorrow we will cut the tail of the main halyward tweaker to avoid this!
The lowpoint on the day came from the Greeks who decided (they didn't see us apparently) to try and cross us as we approached the leeward mark on starboard. We had to make evasive maneuvers (crash gybe) to stop our boat from a dangerous collision with their bodies and boat. Just think a joust against carbon pole traveling at 18kts aimed right at your torso...not a happy thought. The Greeks were very happy we avoided the collision and spared them. However, it sent us swimming and us flaming out of our best race of the day. We were in 10th/11th at the time and the flip put us a mile behind them. The Greeks spun a circle and still finished 11th...We protested them regardless and we ended up with average points (17th). A little frustrating, but it is how it goes sometimes. We were cool with the Greeks after the protest and it was not a personal thing to protest them after they spun, we did it to get some of the points back that we lost in the incident.
Again, we feel we are doing many things right and that we just need to be patient with our older boat (4th oldest in the fleet). We are in 16th at the moment and 9 points from our goal of mid fleet (14th). We look forward to two more days of racing on Biscayne Bay. A light to moderate North/North Westerly is forecast for the rest of the event, which should provide different conditions than the past few days.
-Zander
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Day 2 of OCR
Day 2 of OCR brought a solid 15-20kts from the Southeast with some sizable chop (especially noticeable on Port). It was another day of poor boat speed, both up and downwind. Our boat's lack of stiffness is quite apparent in a choppy sea state as we seem to just go through the waves as opposed to skipping over then…
Though we did have some nice moments throughout the three races, with two good starts (one port hand approach at the Pin where we ducked the first 6 boats and were first to the right!), and hitting a couple wind shifts seeing us maintain a top 10 well into the 2nd windward leg. But eventually boats around us were slowly able to grind us down, seeing us finish 13th. Gotta just take the good from the races!...as hard as it is being slower than other boats.
So overall we were still able to put up good enough scores to see us move up a few places. Looking towards tomorrow we will try to sail tactically smart and hopefully be able to squeeze out some better races.
Keep posted!
Though we did have some nice moments throughout the three races, with two good starts (one port hand approach at the Pin where we ducked the first 6 boats and were first to the right!), and hitting a couple wind shifts seeing us maintain a top 10 well into the 2nd windward leg. But eventually boats around us were slowly able to grind us down, seeing us finish 13th. Gotta just take the good from the races!...as hard as it is being slower than other boats.
So overall we were still able to put up good enough scores to see us move up a few places. Looking towards tomorrow we will try to sail tactically smart and hopefully be able to squeeze out some better races.
Keep posted!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Day 1 at Miami OCR
Extremely frustrating day on Biscayne Bay.
Good to great starts had us in the top group in every 1st beat. However, we were plagued with sluggish speed, thanks to the old boat (feels like soggy cardboard compared to the boat we sailed last week), our new rig still breaking in which threw off our tune and generally too tight of vang on the beats. So for tomorrow, very vang cognizant, and aware that our rig may still be moving.
We were also plagued by some poor boathandling at key moments which cost us and we will work on remedying that for the future. Boathandling is something we can control out here and we will focus on it over the next few windy days.
-Zander
See the picture below of our good starting in the last race...USA 1105 was 4th in the race.
Good to great starts had us in the top group in every 1st beat. However, we were plagued with sluggish speed, thanks to the old boat (feels like soggy cardboard compared to the boat we sailed last week), our new rig still breaking in which threw off our tune and generally too tight of vang on the beats. So for tomorrow, very vang cognizant, and aware that our rig may still be moving.
We were also plagued by some poor boathandling at key moments which cost us and we will work on remedying that for the future. Boathandling is something we can control out here and we will focus on it over the next few windy days.
-Zander
See the picture below of our good starting in the last race...USA 1105 was 4th in the race.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Ready for OCR
Ready to go! Following our trek North for our Grandmother's service we got down to business preparing for the Day 1 on Monday. Having finished assembling our rig and refurbishing everything else on the boat we were able to get a couple sails in to make certain everything runs smoothly. Breaking in the new rig also has been a priority. Though two days is not an ideal span of time to get to break in a new rig, we feel we have decent understanding of it.
So looking to the week ahead, the forecast is looking promising with a couple days of BREEZE expected. We are anxious and excited to get back to racing after a long break (since Aug 12), and having clocked 70 days of practice. Feeling much more confident, we are hoping all those breezy practices in the SF Bay and Santa Cruz have prepared us well!
Anyways, keep posted for the results from tomorrows racing.
So looking to the week ahead, the forecast is looking promising with a couple days of BREEZE expected. We are anxious and excited to get back to racing after a long break (since Aug 12), and having clocked 70 days of practice. Feeling much more confident, we are hoping all those breezy practices in the SF Bay and Santa Cruz have prepared us well!
Anyways, keep posted for the results from tomorrows racing.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
New Rig is here
Today was a long day! We first drove up to Ft. Lauderdale this morning to pick up our rig from the shipper (we had no time to wait for them to deliver to Key Biscayne) and then drove back to Miami, picked up some parts and then spent 7 hours in boat park working on getting ready for OCR. We left with an amazing full moon rising over the mangroves and to the west a Miami skyline glittering in all its specter. It helped it was one of those warm Miami evenings, where you are thankful the sun has gone down because it offers a break from the tropical sun on this January day.
I spent 2 hours polishing the hull (after we each spent 1 hour of wet sanding yesterday) this afternoon and we got her pretty shiny. We reckon the hull has not looked this good in many years and we are happy to pamper 'our baby' before she takes care of us next week! Jesse put together the new rig, which looks great. It was like Christmas day unwrapping all the cardboard to find our precious carbon mast in great shape just waiting to be put together.
We head up to Philly tomorrow for our Grandma's service and to be at our Mum's side for a few days and then jet back here on Saturday morning to finish our final preparations for Miami OCR which starts on Monday at 11am. We still have some work to do on the rig and the hull, but hope to get a good practice in on Saturday. We especially want to take a look at our new jib, new kite, new rig and to iron out all the kinks with this new equipment. Sunday will be a short day of sailing and then we will hide from the sun. Next week will be long and it is important to be as fresh as possible.
hasta el proximo vece,
Zander
Thursday, January 13, 2011
It's on the boom: Video Clip
Today was an emotional day for us. Our beloved grandmother passed away early in the morning, leaving us rather solemn and not too motivated to go sailing and attack the day. We pushed through it and ended up out in Bay and realized it was windier than we had previously thought and that just going through the motions was not going to cut it...so we got down to business and focused on the task at hand. It ended up being one of our best ever training sessions in a cracking (15-22) NW'er out on Biscayne Bay.
For the first time in breeze we had good upwind speed with our training partners and managed to not flip in some tricky conditions. We believe a big key to the speed today was the coordination between Jesse on the rudder and myself on the mainsheet, we believe this relationship is steadily improving and as we get more consistent at perfecting it, our speed will get more and more consistent in this breeze. It requires complete focus to keep the boat flat and the wings just skipping above the waves; the margin of error with the trimming is small because you can easily either undertrim (often the main is flogging over 20kts) and heal to windward and send us water skiing or let the boat heal over and stall the rudder, draining precious boatspeed. Also we were very happy with our rig tune, using our friend's new mast. Our new mast is en transit and should be here next week!
We were also using our buddy's spare boat and it seems to be quite stiffer (understandably so because it is 7 years younger - 2000 vs 2007), which allows the boat to accelerate much more in puffs and is a more stable platform. It also holds the rig tension better because the boat doesn't bend. On a day like today, it was just nice to be in a newish boat and see some of the fruits of labor (70 days of sailing since august) come to light. We hadn't really seen much of it in the old boat and were starting to get a little frustrated with our sailing because we were not seeing much results. A sail like today, in those perfect conditions, with our speed, does wonders to alleviate those inner-ego musings that haunts any athlete when they are not performing to where they want to be. Thank you Jonny and Charlie for the boat usage! We will be fine in the old boat in OCR and will look forward to getting back in our newer boat (2009) in Mallorca in March!
Check out late in the video, as you see our buddy and training partner, Alex Bishop eject from his 49er after a spinnaker set goes bad quickly...common occurrence in this boat!
Sorry the camera moved a little bit from its original angle, so the wide angle is up and down, not sideways...next time hopefully.
This video is dedicated to our "Gammy" and we thank her for showing her support today. R.I.P.
better version of the video is on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/video/video.php?v=637579468488&oid=142545262465343&comments
For the first time in breeze we had good upwind speed with our training partners and managed to not flip in some tricky conditions. We believe a big key to the speed today was the coordination between Jesse on the rudder and myself on the mainsheet, we believe this relationship is steadily improving and as we get more consistent at perfecting it, our speed will get more and more consistent in this breeze. It requires complete focus to keep the boat flat and the wings just skipping above the waves; the margin of error with the trimming is small because you can easily either undertrim (often the main is flogging over 20kts) and heal to windward and send us water skiing or let the boat heal over and stall the rudder, draining precious boatspeed. Also we were very happy with our rig tune, using our friend's new mast. Our new mast is en transit and should be here next week!
We were also using our buddy's spare boat and it seems to be quite stiffer (understandably so because it is 7 years younger - 2000 vs 2007), which allows the boat to accelerate much more in puffs and is a more stable platform. It also holds the rig tension better because the boat doesn't bend. On a day like today, it was just nice to be in a newish boat and see some of the fruits of labor (70 days of sailing since august) come to light. We hadn't really seen much of it in the old boat and were starting to get a little frustrated with our sailing because we were not seeing much results. A sail like today, in those perfect conditions, with our speed, does wonders to alleviate those inner-ego musings that haunts any athlete when they are not performing to where they want to be. Thank you Jonny and Charlie for the boat usage! We will be fine in the old boat in OCR and will look forward to getting back in our newer boat (2009) in Mallorca in March!
Check out late in the video, as you see our buddy and training partner, Alex Bishop eject from his 49er after a spinnaker set goes bad quickly...common occurrence in this boat!
Sorry the camera moved a little bit from its original angle, so the wide angle is up and down, not sideways...next time hopefully.
This video is dedicated to our "Gammy" and we thank her for showing her support today. R.I.P.
better version of the video is on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/video/video.php?v=637579468488&oid=142545262465343&comments
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