Sail Freo 2022

31 SoPYC boats entered the 2022 Sail Freo event but unfortunately, the strong wind forecast influenced a few to pull out on Saturday and Sunday.

Those that stayed enjoyed some excellent conditions.

Saturday was fairly cold and wet with winds averaging 18 knots and a relatively choppy sea state.

Sunday had an early gale warning which actually decreased and during the racing window was a very nice 16-22 knot breeze and relatively flat water on the close-to-shore course.

I was following the Flying 15’s on Saturday and Open Skiffs on Sunday and my observations were very similar. What was obvious was to spend time getting the boat setup correctly for the conditions with mast bend up high to lower the center of effort and righting moment and have enough low down mast bend/sail depth control to accurately and aggressively retrim controls and then aggressively try to steer the boat with sail trim instead of too much rudder movement.

For Open Skiffs controls are vang, cunningham, centerboard height, top batten tension, and outhaul)

For Flying 15’s there are obviously a lot more controls to play with but the concepts are the same.

It is not easy to get right but requires intense concentration and feeling to know when to coordinate trim on or off with steering adjustment. When you get it right, speed can increase, the apparent wind goes forward, and sails get flattened with less drag, so overall it’s a quantum jump in speed.

As a drill its good to lock off your steering or only hold the tiller with 2 fingers and try to control the boat with sail trim and body weight only.

Characteristics of not getting this right are the boat heeling over a lot, and lots of steering (drag) to correct the steering groove.

It was a great experience in moderately extreme conditions to expose areas to work on.

Congratulations to those SoPYC sailors that competed. Results here

Flying 15’s – 1st Mike and Paul Dunbar
Optimist Gold – 1st Murray Duthie, 2nd Bindy Vitalies-Jones
Optimist Intermediate – 1st Eloise Chernoff, 3rd Victoria Chernoff
Open Skiffs Open – 1st Flynn Walford, 2nd Oceana Oakley, 3rd Hudson Armstong. (All top 5 from SoPYC)

Below are a few images from the event.