The surprise of the day was a couple of visitors from TS&CC and Bronte, Kyle Dakin and Oliver Darroch. It just makes life better when a fresh face shows up for day of racing, so we headed out on the course with new enthusiasm. It didn't hurt that the breeze was promising—10 or so knots out of the east, which for us means relatively steady breeze and flat water.
Both Kyle and Oliver are really good, solid sailors. In fact Oliver was very close to winning the Gold Cup Series last year. His light weather racing is up there with Brad Biskaborn's and he beat Brad out for 2nd place overall behind Andy Roy. But in the first race, he showed a little rust. The first mark was busy, I was back in fourth or fifth high on the starboard tack layline with a front row seat watching port tackers come across looking for keyholes to fit through. Oliver was one of them and, being a good boat handler, he trusted himself to knife under his starboard tack counterpart to take the inside spot around the mark. Well… it was close. He hiked, and sawed at his tiller, and squeezed himself as skinny as his boat would go, but in the end, he not only did not avoid the mark, he dumped to windward.
It always fun to watch someone dump to windward. You have to be careful not to enjoy the suffering too much, lest you be next, but you can't help but be amused by the frantic, and ultimately useless efforts to do something that you can see from your armchair will only end in tears. It makes it even more amusing when you can see that the panic is multiplied many times by knowledge that the water is just a little warmer than ice. Poor Oliver was teabagged, and, with eyes wide and back arched against the inevitable, could not stop his decent in the freezing depth.
But Oliver did not let the frigid waters deter him. Though that race was over for him, he was on the line, at the gun for the next, and grabbed two 2nds and a 1st in the next five races. He stayed for all but the last.
Ken Walton was again the guy to beat, and he and I had a frank discussion over a leeward start in race three. He had won the first two, and I had scored a 3 and a 4. They were not great performances for me, so I decided to get mad and even, and added a little feist to my sailing style—what you might call a "F**k it" attitude.
In honour of my new-found bitchiness, the leeward end of the line was favoured for the first time in the day and only Ken and I realized it. I got to the leeward end first, with Ken on my transom. I had to pull up and, before I could counter, Walton charged to leeward, got bow to bow and started luffing me. I started up, but I wasn't giving him any gifts. I remember a rule of thumb I think I got from Olympic sailor Ann White who once said to me that a good balance between the windward boat's obligation to stay clear and the leeward boat's obligation to allow room and opportunity to keep clear was for the windward boat to go up, count to three, then move up again. There was no obligation for the windward boat to steer up any quicker.
I was quicker than that, but not quick enough for Ken to get past the leeward mark without hitting it, and too quick to keep me from crossing early. I tacked to port, saw that the fleet was well to windward, which gave me room, ducked the line on port, then tacked to starboard again and recrossed. Ken was to leeward and I didn't see him, but he apparently was called over and OCS'd. Afterwards, Ken sailed up to me to ask if I thought I had luffed quickly enough. I said that I thought I danced the line a little, but that I stayed on the side of the angels. He asked for a more objective view, "Really, Rob, don't you think you luffed a little slowly?" I said it would be up to a protest committee to decide, and left it at that. Bitchy indeed.
The rest of the day passed with less excitement, but I did get the feeling that my cockiness did me no harm. The official record shows that I bested Ken three times, but the reality is that, out of seven tries, I could only legitimately beat him once, and that was in a race after the above incident. I certainly did better overall after my conversion, with a record of 1-2-2-2-1.
Some windward mark lessons: In general the controlling position is to starboard of any boats you might have to deal with, but if you are coming across on starboard short of the lay line you still have some choices to make. It's nice to see a port tacker have to duck you, but if he does and then tacks right on your hip, he has just put you in the weaker position and you could be driven past the port tack layline.
If you tack to port and leebow the port tacker, you keep your "to starboard position" but then you can't tack at the layline until he does. So, if you are going to tack, you better do it soon enough that you can tack back onto starboard without interfering with him. And when you tack back to starboard, you better decide if you can cut the layline close enough that he won't be tempted to leebow you on the layline to the mark. Here is where you need to know your competition. A weaker player will not take a chance and duck you, then tack behind you. A strong one will know if you are on the layline or not, and if you are just a fraction high, will tack close enough to really hurt you. If I know I have a strong player, I accept that he will tack under me so I go little high of the layline. That gives me a chance to roll him at the mark if he has to rag his way around the mark like Oliver did in the first race.
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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