Words of Wisdom

Words of Wisdom – 03-05-06 - Mark Bear

After a mediocre beginning to the day, I suddenly entered "the zone", where everything seemed to go my way. I'm not sure how to get into "the zone", but it sure is nice when you're there.

One thing that influenced my sailing on Sunday was the winter Olympics. I was impressed by how such tiny mistakes in the giant slalom, like catching too much air, could cost the skier the few milliseconds that separated victory from defeat. Our finishes in frostbiting are also often separated by only a few hundred milliseconds, so I tried to be particularly conscious of how fast the boat was going and making continual adjustments to stay at maximum speed. In the first two races this paid off nicely downwind. In both races I started near the pin and got pushed too far to the left side of the course, particularly bad with the windward mark skewed so far to the right. I rounded in about 15th place in both races. In race 1 the downwind leg was a broad reach on starboard. I tried to emulate Scott Milnes, who is very fast on reaches, by making sure the boat didn't heel to weather. To do that without too much weather helm, you need to pull the board up quite a bit. I sailed high and fast and was able to catch quite a few boats. In the second race, my comeback was to sail lower than the parade of boats in front of me, that were lined up along an arc to the right (everyone trying to reach over the boat in front). There was nice pressure on the left, and again I passed a bunch of boats. Nevertheless, the day was not off to a great start, with two 7th place finishes.

Then I entered "the zone". The windward mark was moved dead upwind, just below Fort Adams, and the starting line was squared. I thought that because the beat was going to be short, and the wind very shifty off the shore, I wanted to start in a position where I had the freedom to tack when I wanted -- that meant the boat end. Fortunately the boat end was not too crowded, and I was able to get very good starts the rest of the day. Then the trick was to hold on until the first header, tack, and stay on the lifted tack to the mark. I continued to stay focused on boat speed upwind, and continuously adjusted the vang, cunningham, and outhaul. We all pull this stuff on wind the breeze comes on, but often forget how important it is to ease it all in the lulls.

Another factor was the current, which changed about 1:45 PM so it was going left to right when looking upwind. That meant you had a "current lift" on starboard tack. The important thing to avoid under these conditions is over-standing the windward mark to starboard. When that happens, you're not only sailing extra distance, but you're going against the current to get back down to the mark. I made out in a couple races by tacking just inside of the first boat on the starboard layline. I relied on the current lift to get around the mark successfully. Risky, perhaps, but it worked great in the second half of the day.