Best sailing weather so far, with about 6-15kts out of the WSW. Had Andy H on main, Jacob on jib, Katie on pit and Niki up front.
We had decent starts, and focused on different modes of speed. One thing we played around with today was building speed or height before working on boats next to us. At one point we a bit behind and to windward of a boat, and worked high for a bit, with soft backstay and tight sheets, before bearing off to first prevent their tack at us, then roll over the top with a good fast forward mode. We did the opposite at a start, where we were the sandwiched between 2 boats at a start. First we did some speed building in a fast/normal mode, and once we had a bit of speed to burn sagged the headstay and climbed through the boat to windward. I think modes like that are going to be really important at crowded start lines at Nats, and it's nice to be able to deal with nearby traffic.
First race we got off the line near the pin, and were able to pick up enough speed on the first beat to control and round first. We had great communication today on pressure and other boats, so I could focus on speed and strategy. The team did a great job finding breeze, and we were able to execute the plan of always being in breeze, with competition outside it. I found angles were less important than pressure today, and good chat made it possible to be in the good stuff.
Second start we had 130 (normally a footing boat) to leeward and 249 (normally a pointy boat) to windward. This gave us time to try modes. I pulled the trigger a bit late so we had to go quickly to do well in the first third of the beat, so first we put the bow down with 130, and were able to climb over the top of them. This was great until we looked to windward and realized that 249 had gone from even and 1 length to windard to 1 length back and 5 lengths to windward! With plenty of speed though, we could burn that into height, again with softer backstay, and climb up and through that line until we were free to tack.
This was the most breeze we've had in a while (depressing!) and there were lots of boathandling errors in the fleet. We tried to keep roundings and manouvers simple, which always makes it easy on the crew. Everyone did a really nice job, and I feel we're sailing at the highest level of speed and communication ever. Working on carrying this into Nationals, and really looking forward to it.
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