Greetings from 3rd place. Sunday was a bit of an odd wind day – it was from the northwest and the difference between the puffs and lulls was more than usual. Many folks flipped at one point or another (myself included), but we all thankfully ended the day back on shore mosty in one piece. Many thanks to Farley and Celeste for running the races!

It was nice to switch things up and have a jibe mark for a few races. I found generally staying high-ish on the reaches to be pretty fast – and a few times, I was able to pass a boat or two to windward at the leeward mark by being a little patient and making sure that my rounding was tight.

In terms of upwind strategy – there were fewer opportunities for tacking with shifts than expected in part because the mark was pretty far right and in part because often a seeming shift was just a lull, not an actual shift. As the afternoon wore on, I found myself waiting a few seconds to see whether it was worth tacking instead of continuing on my current course.

In terms of controls, I had my cunningham and outhaul pretty much max strapped for the first few races and then eased them just a tad in the later ones and during the less windy periods, especially downwind. Vang was 2-blocked or 2-blocked plus pretty much the entire day going upwind – and then loosened just before the windward mark in preparation for going downwind (and then adjusted tighter or even a bit looser depending on the puff situation). If you weigh more than I do, you probably didn’t need to tighten everything quite so much.

Overall, it was fun day and really great to have so many folks out there!

— Laura Windecker 167248

(Actually Laura was 2nd because she won the tiebreaker with Ethan  — she had a 1st in race 2)

Results:
LaserFrostbite2122_4
(Races 16-21)