Our start position was very good -- in a race this long I mostly just want to have open space, clear air, and a full head of steam when crossing the line. I deliberately set us up a bit early to let us pick our spot and to take some pressure off the trimmers.
When we ducked for position on the line I think we should have aggressively taken that boat up, to open our hole, and either force the other boat over or behind us. Zamazaan has a lot of momentum, and should be able to do that pretty effectively. Regardless, we still had a good start, although we were slow over the line and throughout the first upwind leg due to sail trim, which prevented us from tacking when I wanted to. As a result, we lost considerable time and position.
We did much better when running with kites, except for running way too deep in light wind. Sail handling was pretty good. Bodacious did a great job on tactics and boat handling to finish well ahead of us on corrected time, but other boats ( e.g., City Lights) didn't do well with similar tactics, so I'm still pretty comfortable with the course we sailed, even in hindsight. Races are mostly won by boat speed, not tactics.
We finished 8th out 14 in our division (45 out of 91 overall), but I still think we did well, beating Velocita, Aleta, City Lights, Defiance, Shaddy Daddy, and Equity Kicker. PHRF isn't intended for downwind racing (as noted by US Sailing), especially for a boat like Zamazaan . (IRC should be much more kind to us in Big Boat.)
My analysis of my GPS log is that we lost at least 15 minutes (clock time) to our own mistakes, which would have placed us much higher on corrected time, on par with Bodacious or even 2nd.
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1 comment:
The band at the Benicia Yacht Club was brilliant.
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