Opti Team Race Midwinters

"Its like deja vu all over again." We had just lost the first race of the finals for the second straight year at midwinters. Our win streak of 50 team races dating back to the summer Nationals had come to an end, and this was the least of our worries. More pressing, our opponent LISOT Black had done a great job on us at the start line, compressing our spacing and winning both end pairs. There had been a lot of protesting (too much) in the race which you never want - it puts the outcome in the hands of the umpires. Exactly one year ago on Martin Luther King day we had lost the first race and gone on to loose a best of 5 series to Lakewood Yacht Club. Was the dark cloud at Midwinters coming again?
    It was not to be - the kids made a few adjustments, stayed composed, and won the next three races to take the series and the regatta. They did a better job of isolating their pairs, and fared slightly better off the line. The next race LYC appeared to round the second mark in a 1,2,3 - the winning combination we had been working all regatta - before Justin was assessed a penalty turn, and it was back to team racing! Justin's teammates in 1st and 2nd set a mark trap and worked their teammates back to the top half of the fleet. The third race of the series featured an unusual situation, LYC rounding the fourth and final mark in a 1,3,5,7 with the Long Islanders in 2,4,6,8. This typically would indicate bad team racing as you should always convert the 1-3 into a 1-2, but in this case it was the opposite: both teams were soo good at "doing unto others whats being done to you" and keeping the next opponent back at each mark that we headed onto the final beat unsolved. LYC's slight advantage and some good covering netted a key win. In the final race we converted a 1,2,3 by the 2nd mark, and held it all the way to the finish, even with LISOT right behind. With the bright Mississippi sun in their faces, Sara Schumann, Connor Bolland, Stephan Baker and Justin and Mitchell Callahan sailed into the beach; finally a midwinters win under their belts.

    The zone that served us soo well all regatta was ripped off from the notes of a former St. Mary's College sailor (who shall remain nameless to protect her from the wrath of Adam Werblow), so we call it the St. Mary's Zone. It sets up like this:

The basic tenets are that we keep sailing fast and don't have to tack as much at the opponents - if the boat you are covering tacks you have the option of letting them sail into your teammates zone. When two boats on are team sail at each other they usually "switch" - both tack so we don't have to duck/cross and we stay in the same zones. Finally, we always keep the most vulnerable boat (the 3 in a 1,2,3) to the right so they come into the finish with the starboard advantage. If the pair you are covering starts to get ahead of one of your teammates, you just cover them extra tight with your wind-shadow to "re-ballance" the zone.
   Of course getting the 1,2,3 relies on a good start, and on the middle day of the regatta, LYC 1 was dominant in this area, winning all 4 pairs against some really good teams like Southern and Lakewood Yacht Clubs. Even if you don't win all the pairs, you can gain an advantage by switching to the pairs you are winning, like this:

We did this incorrectly against Coral Reef the first day, and made it a point of emphasis for the leaders off the start to take the more advanced opponents, while teammates not as punched out would take whoever they could get! We like to have a zone at the start as well where each sailor has a designated spot on the line (boat middle or pin) and we can control both sides of the course.
    It should be mentioned that having the 3 fastest sailors (for those of you not avidly following Opti Fleet race results) was also key to getting the 1,2,3, but with a beat of less than 3 minutes, we usually had to do a little team raceing! It was really fun for me to have sailors who were interested in and good at absorbing concepts, and already had great spacial awareness, which I think is really important to team racing. To be a good team racer, you first and foremost need to be going fast. Then you start to notice where you are relative to the next mark, your teammates and the opposition, and make the right move. If you are ahead help your teammates by covering the opposition (covering means staying between them and the next mark, hurting them with your wind shadow upwind) if you are behind help yourself! Go fast away from opponents and don't look back! It was beautiful to see these concepts executed and all the credit goes to the sailors. On the 2nd day I knew they were locked in when the 2 boats to the left of our zone were tacking at exactly the same time - like synchronized divers.

The Teams had one weekend to practice at LYC, and I drove to Mississippi with the massive trailer that carries our coachboats and Optis arriving Wednesday night so we could get out Thursday and Friday for some more practice at the venue.  Not everyone could make it the first day (I am told you have this thing called S.C.H.O.O.L. which stands for Stupid Classes Hinder Our Occupational Learning - just kidding) but we were in full force with 2 teams on Friday and got a good sense of the venue - steady but light air, with a lot of current. We were sailing on a wide open bay, with cold brown water flowing in and out over a bottom less than 10 ft deep. Two bridges crossed the mouth of the bay, one for automobiles and one for trains. We were just inside the bridges on the west bank. There's a lot of space in Mississippi; rather than micromanage us (as at most Opti regattas) the hosts directed us to park our trailer "anywhere over there", gesturing towards a large grassy field next to a beach. I plopped the Opti trailer 15 feet from the water and left it there all week. It was nice to acclimate to a simpler, slower lifestyle, with ample parking. Pilo Rocha arrived Friday afternoon from his hiatus in the Argentine, and the regatta started in earnest.

Lucy working on her tacks - pretty good roll and mainsheet play. 

LYC 2, Lucy Megher, Kaitlyn and Lulu Hamilton, Ryan Kronrad and Jack Redmond also sailed a remarkable regatta, finishing 2nd in the Gold Consolation Final. The 2nd day, they missed making the  Gold Championship round by sailoff, and lost a few more thereafter! On MLK day they pulled it together and didn't loose to make the consolation playoffs. In the semifinals, they sailed their best, winning two races against SYC Silver - a team that had beaten them twice previously. Good starts and a play 1 (1,2,3) were witnessed, as a team that had barely sailed together showed great improvement. Ultimately they lost in the consolation Finals to LISOT Gold, and came away with the 2nd consolation trophy.

Umpiring is part of the game of team racing, and was an eventful part of this regatta. The chief umpire sent out a letter to competitors before the regatta that was very helpful, and had a slidshow on the Rules changes for 2017 on the first day, saving us coaches countless hours of study. The biggest concern on the first day was how the umpires would enforce roll tacks - it was light air and they were pretty aggressive with penalties for tacks deemed too good (illegal to exit with more speed) or too abrupt. The umpires worked hard (also thanks to the questioning of Joakim Karlson) as a team to both communicate with coaches what was expected for tacks, and to have uniformity in how they were enforcing it, and by the third day of the regatta we had trust with what we expected to be a Rule 42 penalty. While I disagree with the assertion that too hard a flatten makes a roll tack illegal, we at least knew what they were looking for: only one trim-ease-trim on the mainsheet, no pumping, and a smooth tack. Here's a pretty good one from Stephan on the practice day.

Note the telltales streaming perfectly as he flattens the tack - this proves that the mainsheet ease is necessary for the apparent wind change caused by flattening. 
  Give the umpires radar guns and we'd be all set. One thing they were great at was enforcement on sculling. The Opti rudder is large and effective, so sculling is a problem at regattas! The umps were on it on the start line, in windward-leeward situations, and on beats where a sailor would try to gain a speed advantage with some rudder wiggle. Thank you to the umpire crew for contributing to a fun and fair competition.

The final thing i'd like to say about our team is that we really strived to be a team of equals. Its true that some can contribute more in some settings proportional to their abilities. For instance we had the Callahans, with their deeper voices and extensive team race knowledge as the primary communicators. But all 5 team members were trusted and expected to execute their role from any position in the race. In fact, I think we finished in every possible combination of different sailors on the team in the 1,2,3. Team Captain Mitchell had a lot of say in setting our start strategy and who we wanted to target, but all team members had input at some point. Everyone sat out a race for messing up, contributed the most to winning in another race, and LYC 1 and 2 genuinely seemed to like hanging out with each other.

Bad parenting on my part: LYC 1 returns in overloaded dinghy from wishing LYC 2 good luck before their sail-off. Justin already returned wet and cold in my coach boat. But its the thought that counts...

Sailing is a strange sport in that your competitors are you witnesses and fans. Opti sailing can feel like a bigger stage because you have all the parent watching, and all of the best sailors of that age group competing (as opposed to C420/29er/Laser where the talent gets fractured) Still, the greatest memory of regattas lives on in the sailors who competed. While I fear this writing seems braggadocios about my sailors and the team I was fortunate enough to coach, I hope it can at least contribute to the memory of a great regatta.

The win qualifies LYC to represent the USA at the 31st Marco Rizzotti Team Race.