Small Things Matter

The mid-morning weather forecast wasn’t too encouraging, partly cloudy changing over to showers with thunderstorms predicted for the starting time of the Wednesday evening racing. New England weather is changeable and sure enough the forecast looked slightly better each time I checked in during the day. I finally decided to go out early, when the forecast said the conditions would be good, and spend an hour and a half practicing; then I’d see what things looked like at starting time.

After my usual warm up drills I decided to take advantage of the 11 to 13 knot breeze to work on my bear-away, windward and jibe-and-round, leeward mark roundings. I’m really trying to pay attention to getting my bow more out of the water during the bear-away situations and timing the jibe so it pulls the Laser around the leeward mark. The wind was nicely positioned to give me a short course around two permanent marks.

Going into the bear-away maneuver I can feel the Laser balanced on its rear quarter and I hesitate to commit to bringing the boat past flat. By the third rounding I was impressed at how quickly the Laser bore off when I committed and the boat didn’t have to drag its bow through the water. I began to like the feeling of leaning back and out against the turn and being pulled around the mark; and boy did it speed up my turn.

At the other end of my practice course I kept tweaking to bring the jibe-induced turn closer to the mark. My chronic worries about luffing began to dissipate as I found I could bring the sail in hand-over-hand fast enough to keep the boat moving and then finish with a good hike to pull the Laser flat.

Racing happened and in the last race I found myself third and caught outside at the windward mark. The boat on my bow sailed a nice path around the mark, but did it all with rudder; my bear-away moves shot me out ahead like a watermelon seed.  I got to the jibe mark right on the stern of the Laser in first. He ended a bit low. My jibe pulled me a boat length farther to windward and allowed me to claim the inside, windward path to the leeward mark.

Not bad feedback for a practice session!