| Thursday Night #8 at TISC | May 24 |
| Story |
| We had another great night with eight boats on the line and great
breeze. The breeze moderated as the night went on but there were plenty of shifts and puffs to keep things interesting. Racing was very close, closer than the results themselves show. In fact, the RC had to go to the tape to sort out the results since we had 5 boats finishing within 10 seconds of each other! We have 19 different entries for the season - if we could just get everyone here at the same time we could have some serious fun! In the interest of keeping the competition tight, here are a few tips that helped me out: I found that the left side usually paid off going upwind and the right downwind but it was very close no matter what and playing the shifts mattered a lot. Anticipating the traffic with the Vanguards was also a key factor and places could be won or lost pretty quickly -- it was a lot like sailing in a much larger fleet at times. Sailing in clear air counted a lot - on one race I got shut out barging the line and started in the third row (in an 8 boat fleet on a 20 boat long line!!). Because I split with the fleet and went up the left I gained big time while everyone else got mixed in with the Vanguards on their second leg going up the right. Keeping the boat flat is also key - even if you have to ease your main a lot. I keep reminding myself the mantra - "ease, hike, trim". Of course, it helps being heavy but whatever your threshold is once you max out the vang, outhaul and Cunningham ease the main as much as needed to get the boat down and moving forward fast and try to anticipate the puffs. Don't forget to LABEL your dolly. Be anal about it and put your sail number all over the place on it. We had a little problem with KT's dolly disappearing (KT I found it this afternoon!) when he needed it most - the last thing you want is to have to be searching for you dolly while everyone is derigging and drinking beer at the end of the evening. ONLY 75 more days until the PCCs at Treasure Island (August 10-12)! http://pcc2007.laserforum.org/ We hope to get a great turnout from the fleet. Help spread the word. Let Ralph or I know if you are willing to help out, there's lots to do. Results for the whole season & series standings posted at the TI Lasers site: http://groups.google.com/group/ti_lasers |
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