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Words of Wisdom |
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Words of Wisdom – 10-30-05 - Scott Ferguson What a great day to start frostbiting. Nice to see a lot of new faces and so many boats. It felt kind of weird to be in such flat water after sailing in Brazil, where the breeze ranged from 20-30 knots everyday 6-8 ft swells and a wind driven chop on top. In turn, I also felt more comfortable after sailing in such difficult conditions even though it has been 3 weeks since I have been in a boat. I cannot stress enough that being comfortable in the boat (i.e. time in the boat and 'extreme' time in the boat) leads to good performance. If you have ever ridden a skateboard, balance and body position provides all of the steering and ability to turn smoothly and maintain control especially at high speeds ..... here is the breakthrough I had on Sunday: Usually I have good first beats and good speed upwind in general, but
downwind is a problem for me. I can hold even, sometimes pass, but normally
I lose. In Brazil I flipped 5 times out of the 11 races, all on the runs. In
general, I had mediocre speed downwind .... I have blamed this on weight
(190-195) which is partially true, but I think that technique is much more
of a factor. In talking to one of the better downwind guys in Brazil (also a
big surfer) one of the points that came up was rudder movement and letting
the boat go where it wants to go. Ed Adams took some video of me in during a
windy, wavy practice session before to Worlds and noted my jittery rudder
movement and my trying too hard to force the boat onto a path for a wave.
The humor in this is that really I was just trying not to capsize, I was
jittery out of sheer fear! Anyway, I was working on the reduced rudder
techniques at the end of the Brazil Worlds which really required more body
control, correct heel, sail trim with the correct apparent wind angle (all
while trying not to flip). There are sweet spots which we have all felt
before, it is important to settle down and find them quickly after rounding
the windward mark. On Sunday, I felt that my downwind performance was much
better than it has been in the past. Even though the conditions were
completely different from Brazil, I was very conscious of 'letting the boat
go' and never making big correction. I felt myself make some nice gains |
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