West Coast Sailing Grand Prix

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This is from the perspective of the standard fleet. I encourage others, especially radial sailors, to post some debrief as well.

A lot of people hadn't been in their boats for a while and had forgotten basic parts of their prep routine.

It was good to have the first day back being an ebb tide day, so the beats weren't as long.

The chop wasn't at all extreme. One piece of advice I gave to a Cityfront newcomer was to steer up in flat spots, and to sheet out and turn down to punch through bigger chop. Peter Shope said the radial loves it when you sheet out and bear off and that doesn't work as well in a standard. It wants to stay sheeted in.

In the club afterwards, there was some discussion. Some things said there included, downwind, to steer up in the lulls and down in the puffs. Don't sail dead down. Don't use your sail like a spinnaker on a dead run. Reach up or go by-the-lee and get flow over your sail.

The H beam west of the StFYC is *always* listed in the restricted areas section of the SIs. A standard rig Laser sailor hadn't read that, or had forgotten that, and sailed inside the H beam on a run. A number of radials followed. A couple of radials turned up hard and mostly avoided going between the H beam and shore. Some others had to retire after finishing. Richard Leland made the point it doesn't make sense to be able to clear yourself by sailing back around, and SI 12.4 says that. RRS 28.1 is changed by the SIs. If you sail into a restricted area, you must retire. It pays to read the SIs.

On Saturday, it was ebbing all day. Pretty much go right on the beats all the time. On the first beat of the first race, Tracy got to the weather mark first. Sean Kelly was probably around 5th after his boat "fell in love" with two other boats (to use Jon Andron's way of describing some hull bumping). Sean went all the way to the beach, and hugged it all the way along the run. Then near the breakwater by the Golden Gate YC he reached up hard to a beam reach to make the gate. That was a big win for him, getting into first place. And the default strategy on runs for the rest of the day was to hug the shore. After racing, the discussion in the club suggested one reason this worked so well was the weather mark and gate were close to the shore. In other races, where the weather mark or gate had been moved north away from the shore, the extra distance to get to the beach cost more relative to the current relief.

With the strong ebb all day, everyone forgot Chris Boome's advice from last year's Elvstrom-Zellerbach and a lot of people overstood a lot of the time. Not everyone, I saw Jon Andron tack onto starboard really early relative to everyone else on one beat and not overstand.

The racing in the standard fleet was often very tight. On some runs, there were 8 or 9 Lasers within a few boatlengths of each other.

Advice I offered to two Cityfront newcomers was to put their vang on a lot harder when they are overpowered. If you've got a lot of helm, your cunningham should already be maxed out. Your vang should be on really hard. And your outhaul should probably be on more than you think. If there is a lot of breeze, your sail has more than enough power (to paraphrase Steve Bourdow).

On Sunday, with the start of PDT, the tide situation was completely different. It was a tide in transition day, going flood to ebb with slack around noon.

Once the ebb had started, people were going to the shore on runs as on Saturday. The last race, the RC had moved the weather mark north. Tracy decided to take the direct route to the gate and not go to the shore. The breeze had come up a bit and the waves were good enough he was making big turns. That was a huge win for him, and ended up being a horizon job.

If I remember any more Sunday stories, I'll add them. If you've got any stories, don't be shy !