Oct 11 2008
W.W.W.D? (what would Wooglin do?)
I never had training wheels on my bike as a kid. I went strait from a tricycle to a two wheeler with a little courage, quite a few scraped knees, and my dad spending hours running up and down Creso lane holding the back of my seat. At some point he let go and I was just riding on my own. I don’t know how I was doing it… I just was. Something happened, and the same things which had always seemed to end with me in a crying heap on the asphalt, were now allowing me to cruise along with the wind in my hair and a smile on my face. I felt a very similar feeling on Fleet #1s last race this Saturday, when Chris handed me the helm of Wooglin, and we were able to win the race by our largest victory of the day. I’m not sure how it happened, it just did.
Saturday was the second installment of operation “mind-suck” where I am attempting to drain Chris Popich of his racing secrets faster than an industrial bilge pump. Unfortunately, I am not exactly sure how we ended up pulling off our performance of 1 2nd and 3 first place finishes. We got bad starts, we had one disastrous spinnaker set, and we broke into the beer way before the racing was done. Yet despite all of this we always seemed to be in or near the lead by the end of the race.
Here are some things I did note:
Setup: The setup of the boat was exactly the same as on our previous race see my prior post for details.
Clear air at the start: At least twice Chris made a early choice to flop to port and duck several boats in order to get to clear air. This also gave us rights when we crossed back towards the fleet on starboard. Both times we did this, it ended up making us essentially the last boat across the line, but clear air was apparently worth it.
Tacking: Chris was careful to tack a few degrees more than required and sail a couple boat lengths with sheets eased before pulling everything tight and getting the boat back into pointing mode.
Favored Side: Later in the afternoon there was a definite channel of air flowing down the starboard side of the course. In the race where I helmed we used this extra breeze to pass Charmed Juan to weather on a down wind run. There were also 2 races where we used the start line as a gate rounding… the inside wind shift favored the starboard pin both races.
All in all it was an amazing day with beautiful sunshine, 10 boats on the water, and amazing company sailing arround with Chris. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun on the water. Thanks Chris!
