Hey all,
Well done to all this weekend, I was there on the jury/rescue boat on the Saturday.
With Saturday being between 15-25+ knots
with waves it was borderline survival sailing for a lot of the sailors.
Few quick points from the Saturday:
-Utilise the controls so a lot of boats needed more kicker and downhaul (boats were too overpowered majority of the time)
-The importance of getting the kicker off before the WW mark otherwise the boat won’t bear away onto the reach.
-There was confusion on the Saturday after the second race had been abandoned but as I have attached, it states under rule 32.1 that race committee have to consider all consequences for all boats in the race (which is unfortunate for those 4 boats that finished but it is in the rulebook this part)
-Lots of people did one tack beat for survival more than anything but don’t forget tactics are still important as most went left and everyone followed for both races.
-Remember if you need to depower more, bringing the centreboard up to the bulkhead helps!
-When starting to death-role, start with pulling your mainsail in and focus on getting boat flat again rather than sitting waiting for the death-role to happen (and pull some kicker on to bring the boom down for stability)
-This was the perfect weekend to use your Eskimo roles you learnt about (saves a lot of time and energy)!
-The boats top half of the fleet were making good use of the waves in the lough which happens with the southerly wind- good job to those surfing them!
Well done to Adam winning the 4.2 fleet and Emily who came 4th in the main fleet!
Hope that has given you all a bit more confidence in your heavy wind boat handling and tactics! You all did well surviving the day as the conditions were tricky!
Lucy