I had a brutal Miami OCR that demoralized me after having trained five days a week since October. People that I had beaten at the Orange Bowl Regatta the month before were 20 to 30 places in front of me. I took a few days off after that, and then got a good pep talk from John Bertand, a former World Champion in Lasers and one of the best all around sailors in America.
I went into Mids knowing there were some really good guys that would fill up the top 30 spots in gold fleet. I decided I'd finish 34th out of what was supposed to be about 80 boats and began working on my visualization. Turns out there were 90 boats on the day the regatta started.
During qualifiers, I was rounding the first windward in the top 15-20 and then losing boats on the downwinds and finishing in mid fleet range. I finished qualifiers with a 19-9 on the last day in light wind and made gold fleet in 40th. The key that day was patience. You had to go through a few knocks to get the better pressure on the right side.
My starts in gold fleet were awful, forcing me to tack a few times to find a clean lane. By the time I was clear, I'd lost half the fleet. I would lose a boat or five on the next reach and downwind. At one point I rounded the gate with Rob Crane in back of the fleet, he rounded left (favoured) I rounded right (unfavoured) and by the end of the race, he finished in 15th and I was still in the back. I finished the event in 42/45 in Gold fleet, so I didn't get the objective of 34th.
My downwind speed is unacceptable if I'm trying to compete in a gold fleet of this caliber. So that's my big thing for this season. In the light wind and choppy conditions we had, you needed to explode away from the windward mark and get good momentum as soon as you start turning.
After that, you needed to pick a side as the light wind is diverted to the sides by the wall of dacron in such a tight fleet. I either didn't hit the pressured side or stayed too close to the rhumb line half way down the leg. Towards the end of the event, I had a much better timing for catching waves and was able to connect them better by changing to a knees-up position and really pressing the boat down for the upturns.
For the reaches, I need to focus on pointing as low as possible while staying on a plane in marginal planing conditions. As for the downwinds, I'll keep developing my press down for the upturns and holding my course longer once a good momentum has been established. I need to confirm the wind phase and use that to commit to a side for the first half of the downwind with greater certitude.
But for now? I am at the gym five days a week (not much sailing in March). I'll keep that up until June where I'll have to work/coach a bit to finance next winters training. The big event for this season is the NQRs in September. Everything leads up to that.
