7-17

David Sincox photo

Another super sketchy forecast for 1d racing, but we got in 2 races without much delay. Even got to go swimming! Predictions were all over the map: Sailflow said 4-6 W, NOAA said 10-15 E. Onboard was Jacob, Katie, Niki, and the last minute addition of Steve Schwartz, plus his little boombox and the most stuffed cooler of all time. Sailed out in about 8kts NE, then parked it up after an abandoned Etchells start. All of our latecomers were welcome: we had a great brunch of blueberrys, zucchini bread, Steve's still hilarious, and his Phish filled Ipod played what I believe was 1 long song for about 45 minutes....

Finalled filled in aroun 105 at 6ish, and we got a decent enough boat end start and led the rest of the race (iirc) We played around with our new light air modes. Tried 1/2" shim behind mast, around 200 on lowers but with a slightly tighter headstay to see if we could trade some point for more speed. Still pointed high, seemed faster than other boats. I think we were slightly better off last week with the headstay at our "3" setting, which translates to around 49.5" after a remeasure. This week we were at "2.5" on our turnbuckle, which is probably around 49.25". Second race we won the pin, but had a tack too late in the sequence so started slow, but were able to accelerate nicely with eased sheets and saggy headstay, trimmed on and pinched of 249, which is a tough boat to outpoint. Extended and won at an upwind finish.

Things that worked well: tune was good, I felt pretty good on the helm. In light air we've been really rolling the boat hard in gybes and tacks, which feels great and is hopefully fast. In light air gybes I've been coming out hotter, which we learned on our Etchells field trip this spring. We had a ton of info feedback from the crew yesterday, and got good at calling pressure and competition.

If we get more of this light air with flat water, I'd like to try even more shims behind the mast, as our main still looks a big deep. We talked about trying it in race 2 yesterday, but the chop had come up and Jacob liked the depth for accelerating. Worked well to get another bullet at an upwind finish. Croquet in park followed by Raiders of the Lost Ark in another park. Good day! Nice way to destress for the continued Mac race workweek.

Continued experimentation with shims aft+soft headstay seems like a good idea for working on light air speed, but I don't feel like we're deficient in what used to be a weakspot for us. Hopefully we don't forget how to work in big breeze and waves, which has been hard to get this year.