Berkeley Midwinters January 2013

Perfect start:

Clean air
Favored end
Fully powered when crossing the line
Ahead of all the boats

Scott and I had discussed how to best get the boat going. As it was going to be light air, a lot would be about feel. and focus. So I just tried to feel the boat and be with it. I didn't even look around once to look at other boats, other than immediate proximity. I trusted our tactician to do that. I only used the info (pointed well, etc...) as input into the boat speed management.

I also used Scott's input on main trim and that worked like a charm.

We had great timing with Mark (trim) on the tacks (a bit slow around so the boat wouldn't stall) and we talked well on the upwind.  I just had to resist the temptation to come up before boat speed and apparent wind speed allowed me to after a tack for instance. it took just an extra 4 seconds maybe but it kept the boat going.

We had  the so so tactical call on the first and unique upwind as we tacked a little too late and ended up in a no wind hole.

We had good spinnaker handling throughout, which is actually really tricky in light air.

We were 3rd to windward mark but we couldn't really round it as the wind was too light to allow us to beat the current. And dying. We threw an anchor right past the windward mark. A lot of boats didn't. This was a bet of how much/how fast the wind would fill in frm the West. If it didn't travel fast enough, the boats that drifted further and that would get the wind first would overtake us, otherwise, we had less distance to cover.

Technically we were back in first place when they abandoned the race for lack of wind.