When the wind blows from the southwest and you get the best possible conditions in the Outer Harbour, you sail whether you want to or not. So, though it was not a race day, I rigged up and practiced. Yes, I was (am) still fuming from my Wrightsville experience, and again, gave myself a good thrashing up and down the harbour. I tacked and gybed and rounded marks till, by the end of it, it was all I could do to tie up my boat and flop down on the dock to catch my breath.
Lest you misunderstand, I quite enjoyed the practice. It was a challenge and the opportunity to push myself to past race-pace. It was liberating to allow my self to yell out loud that the tack was not good enough and to do it again, and again until it was acceptable (it never was acceptable). There is a certain freedom in letting go the measured, contained approach and letting 'er rip. There is freedom in exhaustion. It is, after all, a very physical pursuit that we engage in, and it is expected that we suffer physically in our pursuit of success.
A small note: I have settled on a tacking method that I think works well. My habit was to drop my tiller on tacks and scoop it up with the new tiller hand as I jumped into the straps. But often a quick, important tack would result in my losing the stick and auto-tacking back to the original tack, usually in front of a number of starboard tackers aiming to bone me. Not a good look, I must say. So I had two options; to tack and cleat the mainsheet, then switch hands, or tack and then bring my mainsheet hand across my body to grab the stick and then bring the old stick hand over to grab the mainsheet. The second style seemed old school to me, and the first was derided by many experienced laser sailors except Andy Roy, for whom I have much respect. In the end, the "mainsheet hand across the body" has won over, but not for the reasons you might think. I found that when I used that method, my mainsheet ends up not so tangled. In the movement, you tend to need to clean up about six feet of mainsheet every time you tack. That results in a mainsheet that is easier to clean up at the top mark. That, when you are in a blow and in a crowd, is very very helpful.
Rob Koci races in both the Laser Full-Rig and Laser Radial fleets around District 3. Currently, Rob is the District 3 secretary and maintains a frequently updated race diary on D3Laser.com. Rob's home port is St. James Town Sailing Club in Toronto, Ontario.
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