This Sunday was a surprisingly good day on the water. Wind started around 10 and built to 15 over the course of racing. Temperature started at 35F and rose to 40 when the sun came out. I was warm in a polypro midlayer and a light fleece under my drysuit. The wind direction was from the south and fairly steady only veering left slightly as the day went on.

The south direction allowed the race committee to set a longer course and I liked the location they chose just east of the airport runway. It is a little deeper there and I did not hit bottom the whole day. I also didn’t see any weeds which were still around last time we sailed two weeks ago. I think the races took around 20 to 30 minutes on average but I wasn’t tracking them. I usually use raceQs on my phone and put it in a drybag around my mast but on Sunday instead of setting the start recording time I accidentally forced quit the app before I went out. Whoops.

I don’t have any of my tracks to examine but when I was out there I didn’t pick up on anything strategic the wind or the current was doing. The right side or the left side didn’t seem like a clear favorite most of the time. I talked to Adam after the race and he said that he thought the current was affecting things a little bit. I checked the current on the pin end of the start line and it was flooding upriver a little bit at maybe a foot every 5 seconds. It could have been different at other times or other locations on the race course.

Upwind I tried to hike hard with my vang snug and my mainsheet two-blocked. downhaul was mostly off and outhaul was medium. I tried to go for pressure first and worry about shifts only if they were large or I was approaching a layline anyway. It seemed like people were overstanding the windward mark a lot. I know I did on a couple of occasions. I think it may have been due to the puffy nature of the wind since you can point slightly higher when the breeze comes up and sometimes it comes up at unexpected times.

Downwind I tried to protect my inside overlap but in most races it didn’t help me. There was more wind to the center of the river on and a couple of times people caught me or completely passed me on the outside on the downwind legs. Nich, I’m looking at you.

I think biggest factor in the racing on Sunday was where people started on the line. For much of the racing the pin end was favored but the pin end was not crowded at all. I think I started near the boat once on Sunday. On races where the pin end was neutral or a little favored people were starting a boat length away from the line when they were starting in the middle. We had a couple over earlies but I believed that they all occurred near the ends of the line. If your in the middle of the line its ok to punch out a little more than you think in your head. Google “sailing midline sag” for more. The start is very important in our laser frostbite fleet.