Or practice starting.
In keeping with my goal of blogging about physical adventures (but this time failing to provide photographic evidence), here is what happened this evening: The schedule said that I needed to teach sailboat racing tonight. This I did. When I arrived by scooter it was drizzling and it soon started pouring. I lost a bet for a pizza on when it would clear up. We did start racing anyway. No spinnaker, practicing starts only. DS, MS and JG on Gray Jay and me and DT on Moya. An unusual east wind – but every time we set the start the would crank to the north, then it went back east. Usually in the 5-10 range though it died at the end.
After seeing off the Argosy with the KJH 9th graders we set the marks and started practing starts (3-minute cycle). [Interruption -lc]. We got in about 8 starts, though wind clocked from E to N over and over. We re-set the start line 5 times.
Learned (again) that boat speed (momentum) is critical, especially in light and/or shifty winds and that most get to the line early. Get your angles and learn a method for timing to the line.
