What To Do When You're Not Sure Where To Go
Saturday morning we talked about the “place to race to” strategy, and geographic effects that are often common in Cabrillo, but by 1300h when the first race got underway, the clouds had not cleared, and the wind strength had not picked up above 9 knots. The race course was more of an “open” race course.
Through the rest of the day we saw an open race course play out, with both sides having their moments. In races one and two, the right side showed slightly more strength, but in races three and four, the left held an edge.
I heard from a lot of sailors that it was unclear which side would pay, so in today’s debrief we’ll focus on some rules of thumb for what to do when you’re not sure what is going to pay. Hopefully this will help you to build confidence in your decision making in these uncertain conditions.
July 2023 Training Intro
Hey Team,
Welcome to Long Beach! I'm looking forward to a great week of training and I can't wait to hit the water with all of you. My goal this week is to make sure that all three teams walk away with some valuable video, data, and feedback from the week, so at any point this week, please let me know if there is anything specifically that you'd like to focus on, or anything that I can help with and I'll do my best to work it into our training schedule. I thought I'd take this opportunity to lay out my thoughts on the week, so that we're all on the same page and can hit the ground running.
I've chatted briefly with representatives from each team about your goals for the week and right now the feedback that I've gotten has been largely that starting and boat handling are big priorities. I'd like to start each day with 10 minutes of straight line tune ups just to get the rigs right, but we will quickly transition into boat handling and starting drills, leveraging the 3 boats to keep the intensity high.
I've posted a preliminary schedule at www.mcbrideracing.com/lb49er, and will try to keep this updated each day as we make tweaks. We have one double session on the schedule, but for the most part, I'd like to prioritize good video debriefs this week, so I'm thinking that we'll use the mornings for that most days. As such, the daily schedule will be breakfast for those who are interested, followed by a video debrief on the Janov boat, and then sailing in the afternoon. Lately the max wind has been around 4pm, and I'd love to try to sail through the building breeze most days, so we'll try to adjust our launch times to catch the build and then sail in the breeze if possible. After sailing, I like to debrief for 15-30 min after sailing each day just to chat about what was important that day, but we'll save the majority of the discussion for a time when everyone is dry and rested. I'll try to send out all of the day's video each evening for you to review if you'd like before the next day's debrief.
I have GoPros for each boat, but if you guys have your own, let's chat about how to upload the video each night so that we can include it in our debriefs if it's relevant. All of the video that I collect this week will end up on an "unlisted" Youtube playlist that is embedded at the bottom of the training block webpage, here. I also have GPS watches for each team if you'd like to use them, so that we can compare tracks each day. Ultimately, my goal with 3 teams on the water is to document the week as well as possible to facilitate better discussions in debriefs, and help put interesting data in front of you at the end of each day.
Finally, Quinn Wilson will be coming out to shoot photos and video on Monday the 17th I believe. If there are any shots that you want to get for sponsors or anything, I'm sure he'd be happy to help, but think about what that might be ahead of time so that we can put him to work!
Looking forward to a great week of sailing with you all!
Best,
Willie
Apparent Wind Quiz
CISA 2023 Slide Deck
Youtube Playlists
March 31 Hand Cam Videos
March 30 Hand Cam Videos
March 29 Hand Cam Videos
February 25 Downwind Audio Analysis First Draft
March 29-April 6 Slide Deck
2022 Tracks
CISA 2022 Slide Deck
March 13 49er Debrief
Boat Handling
The playlist of videos from the weekend can be found above. Gybes were interesting because you’re losing so much apparent wind through the turn that you come out without enough pressure to both hit at the same time. Need to either be patient, or else let the boat load and then hit hard to provide a kinetic move to get the boat back up to speed right away. In some of the gybes, you would surf down a wave in the entry and in these it was important to realize that pressure was about to go away, and would stop supporting Jordan’s weight. Gybes got much cleaner once you guys started accounting for this organic wave piece.
Tacks looked very good. When you fall over in this stuff, the key is to stay collected (tight core) and keep moving through the boat. This part improved quite a bit. The faster you are through the boat, the more you can come out with main tighter on your final angle.
In the downspeed boat handling, we discussed several types of double tacks - in particular, the aggressive snap versus the slow roll. The scenario drill that we did was working on a “triple tack” to get the leeward boat stalled with the initial double tack, and then tack away to open up a 2 boat length hole. We will continue working on this.
Speed
As far as the speed work, one thing you guys played with on this day was board up. I’d be curious to see notes on Racing Alpha about how the board up felt different than winding on the rig. Is it better when you have to drive more?
I would also love to see notes on the asymmetries in technique from tack to tack and/or gybe to gybe.
Bacardi #3 Videos
Bacardi #3 Slide Deck
March 8 Debrief and Video
Brio March 4 Debrief
February 27 49er Debrief
Click the image above to review 360 Videos from the day.
The focus on this day was on straight line boat speed. We experimented with various camera angles and reference marks on the main to be able to accurately quantify sail shapes. The first question that we want to answer is: What cap shroud tension maximizes depth in the main at various wind speeds.
Matching Conditions With Technique
This was a main focus on the water, and will continue to be one of our main discussions throughout the “year of speed”. The idea here is that we need to be able to adjust for and articulate changes in technique due to sea state and varying conditions. Often this means modifying the ratio of steering to sail trim and weight movement.
The question that helps to start this discussion is: How is port different than starboard today?
On this day specifically, you felt is was easier to pinch on port, which potentially meant that more steering on port and less mainsheet ease in the puffs was a good idea. The challenge in this case though was that you often crashed at the top, so being quick to ease main again in the bear away was important.
One thing that we focused on was ensuring that in the “press” moments (where we want the bow to come back down"), the main eased in conjunction with the steering. Often steering was leading main ease here, causing the boat to load up, and then Grant would over compensate with main ease. It’s kind of a trust exercise where “press” needs to lead to both people trusting that the other person is going to do their job right away, and not waiting to feel it.
Listen to the comms in the 360 video and see if we can optimize communications to improve this.
