2005 505 Worlds Day One
175 boats is a lot. As the sun began to rise over the dinghy park in Warnemünde on the first day of the world championship the tension in the air was pretty palpable. Team Ötzi decided that we wanted to get out early and test some of the changes we had made to the way our jib leads run, and make any last minute adjustments with plenty of time before the start of racing. We also wanted to be sure that we had a good picture of what the wind would be doing. Since the forecast called for a southerly which is contrary to the thermal, we thought that the wind could be doing some monkey business. So we got off the dock before 9 AM and were the 2nd boat out of the harbor. When we made it out to the racing area, we did in fact notice that the southeasterly breeze was very shifty. It was back and forth in 30 degree increments, which is a lot. By the time the 10:55 start arrived, the breeze had completely shut off and the RC had to postpone. After about another half hour the northerly thermal breeze showed up, but we spent a lot of additional time waiting around to see which breeze would stick around. It wound up being the thermal and the RC finally started race one around noon.
Ex post facto, race one was pretty hotly contested. The leader board was pretty shaken up by race one, and there was a lot of talk of throwing it out because someone hit the rabbit. Ethan Bixby was the rabbit. I don’t know who hit them. There was also a shortening of the course after the 2nd reach leg which resulted in a lot of confusion at the bottom end as some people were finishing at the same time as others were rounding the leeward mark. Apparently a number of folks sailed across the finish line without sailing the last 2 legs of the course. There was some grumbling about the RC work which allowed this to happen.
From Team Ötzi’s perspective, it was a pretty bad race. The pressure was light, less than 10 knots of breeze and we had a lot of trouble getting the boat going upwind. We gated about in the middle of an 8 minute gate opening, and worked the middle of the course going up, trying to stay on the lifted tack in the oscillating breeze and keeping a sharp eye out for pressure. In hindsight, and after talking to some other folks, we might have done better to try and work to the left corner and focus more on staying in clear breeze than worrying about angles. We rounded the windward mark somewhere between 60 and 100. We unfortunately got outside of an Australian boat who had a lot of trouble getting his kite up and drawing and he kind of took us to the right when we wanted to get left (facing down). We are also not that fast downwind in light pressure. So when we got to the leeward gate, we had lost about 20 boats. Our position was not looking too good. On the next beat, Andreas noticed that we seemed really slow, so we started adjusting things. We moved the jib leads forward a little bit. That seemed to help. The main seemed to be too full up high so we raked just a teeny bit and pulled on some more shroud tension. This also seemed to help. In hindsight, we probably should have flattened the sail and pulled the draft forward with some more cunningham (our cunningham was pretty loose). But we didn’t think of this until the sail in. At any rate, by the time we had tried these things, we were at the windward mark and ready for the reach legs. The reaches were pretty much a parade, but we did pass a couple of boats at the gybe mark because we had a good gybe and were able to sail over them while they were trying to get their kites full. The RC had shortened the course by this time, so as we were coming to the leeward mark, the upper half of the fleet was sailing to the finish. This made for a very confusing mark rounding, and I am pretty sure that a lot of the folks who were sailing that last reach leg just sailed right on to the finish and nobody was the wiser. It was kind of a mistake on the part of the RC, I think, but I can’t complain too loud. We are a really big fleet! Anyway, the last beat for Team Ötzi was a real disaster. The air was so chopped up from all the boats that it was very light and extremely difficult. Team Ötzi is not at their best in light air, so we were pretty frustrated. The last beat and run were very short, and we wound up finishing in position 150. Not a good result, but also not last!
There was no second race because the breeze was too flukey after race 1 and at 1530 the race committee sent us home.
Ex post facto, race one was pretty hotly contested. The leader board was pretty shaken up by race one, and there was a lot of talk of throwing it out because someone hit the rabbit. Ethan Bixby was the rabbit. I don’t know who hit them. There was also a shortening of the course after the 2nd reach leg which resulted in a lot of confusion at the bottom end as some people were finishing at the same time as others were rounding the leeward mark. Apparently a number of folks sailed across the finish line without sailing the last 2 legs of the course. There was some grumbling about the RC work which allowed this to happen.
From Team Ötzi’s perspective, it was a pretty bad race. The pressure was light, less than 10 knots of breeze and we had a lot of trouble getting the boat going upwind. We gated about in the middle of an 8 minute gate opening, and worked the middle of the course going up, trying to stay on the lifted tack in the oscillating breeze and keeping a sharp eye out for pressure. In hindsight, and after talking to some other folks, we might have done better to try and work to the left corner and focus more on staying in clear breeze than worrying about angles. We rounded the windward mark somewhere between 60 and 100. We unfortunately got outside of an Australian boat who had a lot of trouble getting his kite up and drawing and he kind of took us to the right when we wanted to get left (facing down). We are also not that fast downwind in light pressure. So when we got to the leeward gate, we had lost about 20 boats. Our position was not looking too good. On the next beat, Andreas noticed that we seemed really slow, so we started adjusting things. We moved the jib leads forward a little bit. That seemed to help. The main seemed to be too full up high so we raked just a teeny bit and pulled on some more shroud tension. This also seemed to help. In hindsight, we probably should have flattened the sail and pulled the draft forward with some more cunningham (our cunningham was pretty loose). But we didn’t think of this until the sail in. At any rate, by the time we had tried these things, we were at the windward mark and ready for the reach legs. The reaches were pretty much a parade, but we did pass a couple of boats at the gybe mark because we had a good gybe and were able to sail over them while they were trying to get their kites full. The RC had shortened the course by this time, so as we were coming to the leeward mark, the upper half of the fleet was sailing to the finish. This made for a very confusing mark rounding, and I am pretty sure that a lot of the folks who were sailing that last reach leg just sailed right on to the finish and nobody was the wiser. It was kind of a mistake on the part of the RC, I think, but I can’t complain too loud. We are a really big fleet! Anyway, the last beat for Team Ötzi was a real disaster. The air was so chopped up from all the boats that it was very light and extremely difficult. Team Ötzi is not at their best in light air, so we were pretty frustrated. The last beat and run were very short, and we wound up finishing in position 150. Not a good result, but also not last!
There was no second race because the breeze was too flukey after race 1 and at 1530 the race committee sent us home.
posted by J Bergquist at 1:14 PM
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