Strong Wind Sunday

What an awesome day of strong wind sailing on Sunday with RO Les Swinton registering winds around the 24knot mark when I checked in with the start team.

 

29er Training Camp

The 29er’s held their Association Pre-Nationals training camp at SoPYC over the weekend.

I’ll repeat some of the key items here for other classes to think about.

The focus was on typical pre-regatta areas including:

  • Pressure Moves (eg holding tight lanes, pressure double gybe drops)
  • Starting (Skills and Execution)
  • Modes (Sailing high, low and VMG)
  • Boat Handling
  • Laylines

We also had the chance to do some heavy weather tuning and I thought I’d share my view on heavier air sailing, which applies to most boats.

The aim is to get the most efficient sail shape (foils) going through the air generating the most lift and minimising drag. As the breeze increases the centre of effort needs to move down to counteract the righting moment generated by the extra wind (Assuming sailors are leaning as hard as possible)

So essentially you need to start flattening the sail from the top down.  This means more Cunningham and more vang.  Some boats have other control systems over mast bend (Spreaders, lower mast control etc.)

There is a point where this gets tricky.  If you start bending the lower mast too early to flatten the overall sail, you risk creating mast compression and forestay sag (deeper jib)

Plus the mast will only bend so much, so by bending the lower mast you can end up not letting the mast tip bend, which could create a stiffer top section and deeper sail, which will tip you over.

Getting the balance of good mast bend control in sync with on-water racing controls (Vang, Cunningham etc is the key to great speed. There is a lot going on to get right and it is not easy.

Below is a typical example showing some differences which are discussed with sailors.

Left boat has jib in a fast sheeting position.  Mainsail is in a nice VMG twist, so the sailors need to decide on what mode they want to sail to be in sync to either go fast or VMG.

The middle boat was tightly trimmed sails probably trying for a high mode.  They need to be very accurate as it is easy to stall the airflow in this mode of sailing.  The right boat is doing what I call a “sin” where they have a lot of sail eased and too much twist and one sailor sitting inboard not hiking.  This is just giving away energy and speed.

Sharpies at SoPYC

I don’t know where the Sharpies have been this summer, but many said they hadn’t sailed in a breeze all summer, so they certainly had testing conditions for equipment and sailors.

 

Moth Worlds

The Moth Worlds start this week with the Nationals on today. Full details on the below link

https://mothworlds.org/perth/

There are some hi-tech looking machines with the focus being on aerodynamics as the craft does close to 20 knots of speed into 20 knots of wind, which gives ~ 40knots of apparent wind to deal with.  The modern concepts are deck sweeping mains that have an endplate effect and narrow and more efficient wings. Getting similar to the old Skate planks.

Good luck to all the SoPYC and WA sailors.

Red Bull Lighthouse to Leighton

The Kiting Lighthouse to Leighton race was on Sunday, with SoPYC Coaches (Ben and Ryan) and Australia’s up and coming World Junior Champions (Breiana and Scott), who were training at SOPYC last week, competing.

Here’s some stats and images from the race:

The 149 competitors
19km open ocean from Rottnest Island to Leighton Beach
Ben time: 30min 55sec (10th Twin Tip, 26th Overall)
Ryan time 26min 15sec (7th Overall, 4th Foil)
Race winner: Ollie Bridge (UK) with a time of 21min 08sec
Breiana Whitehead – First Female (15th Overall)
Scott Whitehead – 12th Overall

Below is Coach Ben finishing in style with a jump for the spectators.  He forgot his legs wouldn’t be able to land the jump after 19km ?