Gold/Silver Practice Debrief 9/28 - Team Racing! - Arthur Blodgett

This past Sunday's practice was devoted to team race immersion and skill building. Team racing is one of the fastest growing and most fun disciplines in our sport, and we wanted to begin preparing for the Team Race Invite we will be hosting (and have 2 teams competing in, coach will select gold and silver teams) October 25-26. We practiced on the Ocean, because when team race practice is done right, it should also benefit your fleet racing (highlights boathandling, sailing fast in bad air, rules, and tactical concepts like covering) so I wanted to work on it while still putting a premium on speed and technique through waves. Here's a video of the Upwind Passback drill we spent about half the day on - the objective is for the 1st boat to target and pin the 2nd place opponent, then finish with their teammate (initially the 3rd place boat) in a 1,2.

We see Denver (1) does a nice job maintaining controll of B (2), whose attempts to get out slow her sufficiently. She sails in his bad air for most of the leg, while Eddy (3) does everything he should - tack once the 2 is pinned, sail fast in clear air, come back when it's clear his teammate (Denver) has balanced enough for him to cross. For the 2, covering and playing back on the 3 is almost always a better option than trying to pass the 1 - do unto others whats being done to you in a team race.

Please print and read our new Opti Team Race Playbook. Opti 4on4 team racing can be pretty complicated; the playbook seeks to bring order to chaos by having sailors recognize the best way to group themselves together in a stable, winning combination, using Passbacks and Mark Traps (diagramed). Next weekend we'll be back on the ocean, preparing for ACC's, but mixing in a little more team racing, in addition to starts and speedwork. Knowing the playbook can give you a huge leg up!

Green Fleet Practice Debrief Week 4-5

Green Fleet Practice Debrief –Week 4-5-  Julia Melton

9/29/14

It’s okay to make mistakes in practice…in fact I encourage it!! Over the line early rather than under means you are fighting for it. Don’t be scared of competition, instead you should embrace it!

In the past two weeks we introduced the sailors to starts. We have an advantage as a big fleet for practicing starts because it simulates regattas and sailors have more opportunities to encounter difficult situations on the line.

In addition to our starts, we focused on accelerations with our stop and go drill. This is where we stop our boat on the line and then wait for the five second count down with the whistle. Three main focal points with acceleration is steering the boat. The three amigos for steering the boat are RUDDER, MAINSAIL and WEIGHT.

Stopping the boat- Luff your sail and head up, scull the tiller to leeward to get the bow head to wind then scull back to windward to not get the boat stuck in Irons. You can also push the boom out.

Acceleration- Scull down to a close reach, as you throw your weight out. You sail should be a foot out at this time. Then as you head up and trim your sail to accelerate, you should use your weight by sitting in to get the boat to head up.

Please watch this great video on acceleration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b709I2Bbm8U

Gybing. Anticipate the gybe! When the leach starts to flap towards you that is an indicator that you are by the lee and the boom is about to switch.

Windward mark roundings:

We worked on our top mark rounding’s in practice this week. It’s important that you are prepared for every mark you round, transitioning to the next point of sail on the next leg of the course.  At about 5 boat lengths from the top mark you should prep the board by removing the bungee from the top (putting it on the back of the daggerboard trunk).  Then raise your hand as you round (statue of Liberty!) and lower your hand around the mark. The sail easing aggressively around the mark is key to rounding the mark – it allows the boat to turn down. 

This is another great video on windward mark rounding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HSWzvkrmLg

Sailwork (much more fun than homework):

1.)Starts-Need to get a watch! If you are serious about racing or if you are one of the sailors that continuously ask what time it is, then get a watch.

2.) Google "Gybing".

3.)Our first fall series race is on Sunday, October 5th. This race day is calculated with other results from our other fall series races and the total of all three series races for the fall is awarded at our winter banquet. 

Have a great week!

:) Julia Melton

Thank you, but more help needed

Thank you to those who responded to the previous post about Optis -- you helped us identify some of the boats below.  However, we still have many questions, and many boats unidentified.  If you own one of these, please let her know.  If you know who does, please let her know.  She has already moved one or two into the Green Fleet program based on this feedback and made two kids very happy.  One or two others have been collected and moved out.  Please note the LYC House Rules prohibit "Dead Storage" and unlike in the past, Julia is moving toward actually enforcing this!  If you still have an Opti at LYC and aren't involved in the Opti program anymore, please contact her to make arrangements to remove the boat, donate it to Green Fleet, or begin paying monthly storage.  Thanks!

Southeast Champs Debrief - Arthur Blodgett

Recap
   Three sailors from our Gold/Silver team made the trek to Atlanta Yacht Club, sailing a practice on Friday afternoon, 5 races Saturday and 2 on Sunday at the Southeast Champs. The conditions were better than expected, with puffs to 12kts Saturday morning tapering to 5-8kts by the end of the day. The mean breeze direction stayed pretty consistent all day Saturday, oscillating back and forth in a predictable patten only ~10-15 degrees. The easterly breeze was coming from the longest part of the lake and the least mountainous windward shore, which explained the relative consistency (its always important to check out the features of the land to windward). The LYC sailors got better at sailing the shifts throughout the day Saturday - Garret had great speed throughout, and Eddy finally stopped tacking 50% more than he needed to and actually digging into the puffs, finishing the day with a 6th. Joey, with average speed and good strategy was placing well before two bad starts to end the day put him in 36th. Garret ended the day in 3rd overall.
    Sunday brought fog and calm to the beautiful Georga lake in the morning, but after a postponement, a steady 10kts from the West. In the picture below you can see Joey and Eddy tuning up before the first race. The sails off Eddy's bow are the Green Fleet in a cove.

Expecting the normal oscillations we had seen through 30 minutes of warming up, Joey and Garret started Boat and tacked to stay in phase, as they were in a slight left shift. Alas, the wind continued to go left for the entire beat and never came returned, backing until it was straight out of the Green fleet cove! Both sailors spent their throwout on this race. Eddy, who was second start and got to observe this new trend had a great race (8th)!  In the regattas final race, Joey, needing a top 5, went for a high risk start at the favored pin and didn't get off cleanly. While he did a good job playing the puffs on the left, not being able to make the initial cross on the fleet kept him out of the top 15. Garret sailed his best race of the regatta, staying in phase throughout the beat and pulling away on the run to a 10 boat-length lead! Hitting a lull and missing the last 2 shifts dropped him to 3rd right before the finish, but he had an outstanding event, placing 6th overall. 

Tuning/Speed

    Enough with the narratives, lets talk about speed! Garret and Joey were raked at 282cm, while Eddy (heavier) was at 284. You want to rake back a little more in flat water than in chop. We spent a lot of time adjusting luff ties to get the sails looking really good. All three boats had different makes of sails, so ill keep this general: for the slight chop and heavier wind Saturday we had looser middle ties and and tight corner ties - this keeps the luff of the sail straighter as your mast is bent with mainsheet and vang. For the lighter expected air and flat water Sunday we eased the upper mast tie and tapered an increasing distance between the sail and the mast towards the top. This has the added light air benefit of opening the leach of the sail (more twist). On the water, the LYC team did a much improved job from what I'v seen in practice with adjusting the Sprit and Cunningham tension. Both are critical controls!!! 2013 Opti champion Luke Engals writes: "one of my little tricks is to have my luff tension a bit looser than what most consider normal." This is done by adding twists to the Cunningham. I had the sailors do this until the onset of "speed wrinkles" on the luff - its especially important in flat water as a loose luff moves the "draft" (deepest point of the sail) back, helping sailors point higher! The sprit is also really important. Too much, and the draft gets pulled forward, too little and you have a big, slow wrinkle in your sail. In light air, you want just the hint of this wrinkle, as a looser sprit opens the leach. Here's a picture of Garret's sail set up perfectly on Sunday:

Note the speed wrinkles, tight outhaul (again, pointing in flat water) and barely a hint of a wrinkle coming down from the top of the mast. The entry is fine, the draft is back, the top telltale flowing at this particular moment (should be 50%) indicating the twist is correct. 

The next picture is a minute later: 

None of the controls are changed, he just sailed into a puff! You can see the wrinkles from the mast down are more pronounced, and the leech is more open. More mainsheet would kelp close the leach, but in general, we're happy being tuned to the lulls, and just sheeting and working harder in the puffs. Garret does an excellent job hiking the boat flat - in puffy conditions you are not %100 percent hiking the whole beat, so you need maximum effort when you do get a puff! 

      Downwind, the sailors did a good job adjusting their sprit halyards. You need to "burp" the sprit halyard (let a little bit off) soon after rounding the windward mark, to remove sprit-to-tack wrinkles, and add shape and twist to the sail. Don't forget to pull it back on ~10 boat-lengths BEFORE the leeward mark! We did a transitions drill on Friday which we'll continue in the next practice to get sailors looking at their masthead fly (wind indicator) and luff telltales and sail with flow downwind. With excellent (and obvious) tactics downwind Saturday, all our sailors were having plus runs. The biggest issue downwind was effort and focus. Garret frequently missed opportunities to gain when he was sitting in the back of the boat, not kiting (heeling to windward) hard enough, and performing un-hygenic actions with his mainsheet hand! Even if he gained 5 lengths through tactics, another 5 from boatspeed per run would have put him in a much better position going into the next beat and possibly a top 3 for the regatta. 

     When I sail Snipes - another surf-able boat that rewards downwind technique - I like to remind myself that the race really starts once you round the windward mark. Exerting maximum effort in going as fast as possible for every single leg of the race, regardless of your position or what happened on the previous leg, is crucial for doing well at big events. That boatlength you loose through inattention can turn into 10 when it allows a boat you could have been beating to cover you on the next leg. Downwind, get into a good open lane,  then just work on going faster! (linked interview is Brian Lake, who won 3 college nationals).

Shifts/Tactics/Strategy

     Here's where we saw sailing these type of events be much more valuable than a practice ever could be. The sailors learned a lot about fleet and shift management, and how to be patient. The basic rule I gave them was don't consolidate a loss. For those of you new to the terminology, consolidate means come together on a race course. Leverage means you have separation on a race course. In oscillating shifts, if your sailing towards a group of boats and its clear that you are loosing, TACK. Keep your leverage until you are headed, then tack and consolidate when you have a gain. This was the basic strategy that helped me win the Boston Dinghy Cup, and it applied perfectly to this event (except race 6). To do this, you need to be patient, and are usually (especially when in the top of the fleet) on the same tack as the boats around you. Early in the regatta Eddy had trouble stretching his mind to the size of the course, and  would tack for no reason (its been 2 minutes maybe I should tack!). This got him out of phase with the shifts. Tack only when you are headed, see pressure over your shoulder, or can consolidate a gain! Of course getting a good enough start that allows you to get on the first lifted tack (called getting in phase) is a prerequisite. 

Psychology

    Given that Garret and Joey were in positions with a lot of inherent pressure at the end of the day Saturday, I though they did an exceptional job preparing mentally for racing Sunday. We played touch football during the wind delay to get warmed up, they prepared well on the water, and were driven and focused in a positive way. They simply got on the wrong side of a wind-shift that differed from the pattern.  Its an old championship sailors quote (Michael Blackburn stole from Stewart Walker and now im stealing from them) that "the desire to sail well results in winning, the desire to win rarely results in sailing well," and I think its always important to stay focused on the processes of going fast, picking a good strategy, and executing it. Some more Blackburn/Walker quotes to bear in mind: "fill your mind with what matters"   "if your speed is good and your strategy is correct, your tactics will be logical and obvious" "the race is always from here on out"  

Thanks to all 3 sailors for putting in a good effort, for listening to me and being coachable, and to Bob for some all-star chaperoning. Looking forward to the next couple practices, we'll solidify speed through technique and tuning, and introduce some team racing. 

Green Fleet Week 3 Practice Debrief

Green Fleet Team,

Another great practice this past weekend! I am excited to see that many of the sailors are improving in their boathandling. We have been focusing on sailing upwind to minimize our distance to the windward mark. This is done through reading tell tales and course awareness. We also were introduced to “kiting”- how we sail the boat fast on a run.  

Some things we learned about kiting-

- After rounding the windward mark, let your sail out 90 degrees to the boat

-pull the dagger board up (use the bungie to keep the board up!)

-body position: knees angled forward and feet locked in the hiking straps. In light air, sit as far forward as you would upwind!

-heel to the windward side of the boat (side opposite side of the sail, that you are sitting on)

-The goal is to get a balanced, stable and consistent windward heel

-If you are lighter and more of a beginner, you can hang off the dagger board, but more experienced kids should try to balance the heel without holding the dagger board and have the tiller and mainsheet in each hands. This is because the kids should be focused on playing the mainsheet.

-In light air, you need to let your sail out more than 90 degrees to allow gravity to keep the boom out.

 Below are two videos from kiting practice:

A new drill that we worked on this week was the mobile mark drill. This is where sailors are sailing around a mark and the (moving) motor boat continuously. This is a great drill for understanding course awareness and wind direction. It’s important that sailors understand that every change of direction around the course should be connected with the sail trim. USE THE SAIL TO STEER! As we round the windward mark (most upwind mark) and head downwind, sailors should be easing there sail aggressively as they turn down around the mark. The sail really helps the boat turn down.

Remember the goal of sailboat racing is to get to the next mark the quickest and using the sail to your advantage can really help you achieve this. Wind awareness is key to sail trim and reading your tell tales.

This coming week, the intermediate and advance groups are going to work on accelerations and stopping the boat, and practice starts. Along with this we will discuss 3 right-of-way rules on the starting line. 

Green Fleet assignment: I would like every sailor to write at least one glow and one grow pertaining to sailing. A glow is something you feel proud of confident in what you learned or accomplished. A grow is something you want to improve and work on.

You can find the glow and grow document here.

Julia Melton

ORANGE BOWL REGISTRATION OPENS TODAY!

Orange Bowl! Time to sign up today!!!!! Please read details below.

It's that time already?

Registration will open on September 15, 2014 at 8:00 a.m. EST for the 2014 Orange Bowl International Youth Regatta being held from December 26-30, 2014.

We will again place a cap on the number of boats that can compete in each class, so please check the website for details. We want to make a special mention of a few things here:

1) The Club 420s will be in a new location this year at Shake-A-Leg Miami (one block south of Coral Reef Yacht Club.) The College Night will be held there as well on December 28th.

2) Please read the Notice of Race carefully for some new procedures as it relates to registration and the wait list for the regatta. One thing to note: Unless you have paid, you will not be considered registered for the Regatta. Additionally, up until November 30th upon notifying us by then, if you have registered but know you will be unable to attend, you will receive a refund minus a $50.00 processing fee. After that date, no refunds will be given.

We are looking forward to another banner year for this great event.

Don't delay! Sign up today!

www.coralreefyachtclub.org