Lessons learned from Weymouth

We capped off our summer Star season with the Sail for Gold Regatta on the 2012 Olympic Venue in Weymouth England. While we had high hopes going into the event with an entire season of top 6 finishes and a chance to win the World Cup overall title, yet the result was less than stellar.

So what are the major lessons from our first trip to Weymouth:

1. Settings from one tack to another often needed to be very different, due to confused sea state and proximity to the shoreline. Sometimes port would be straight into 1 meter swell, while starboard was extremely smooth with waves loading and unloading the boat to the point that the crews were in the water very often if the boat wasn’t properly powered at all times.

2. Geography has a major impact on the game. The valleys and cliffs surrounding the sailing area make enormous impact on the shifts and Portland Bill makes a huge impact on the current (it causes a 6 knot run of current at the end of the point during max ebb and max flood, thankfully we don’t have to race out there).

3. Racing inside the breakwater can be scary for the Star boats in heavy air! Not having waves makes it incredible difficult to unload the main for gybes.

4. Everybody has bad races. Recovery wins regattas and the easiest points to pick up in an event are from 50th to 20th. Chipping away when you’re up front as well as when you’re behind is the only way to win long series. When things aren’t going your way, just keep putting in your best effort up until they do.

5. You cannot compete against the best in the world without committing 110%. Andrew and I had a great season with borrowed equipment, little practice, and a shoestring budget. Going forward it is going to take a lot more to win a medal and this regatta was a good wake up call.

So, we finished 16th this week, 7th in the World Cup standings, but are steadily climbing up the World Rankings (27th before the new rankings come out) so this season has turned out to be an incredible learning experience as a new team.

It won’t stop here though. We will ship a boat out of Miami in two weeks to be ready for the South American Championships in November and lead-up to the 2010 Star Worlds in Rio in January.

A Windy Test

Survival was the name of the game for many sailors today as the wind broke the 30 knot barrier in Weymouth. With conditions at the edge of sailable for many boats, the race committee kept the fleets to two courses, each manned with plenty of safety boats.

The Stars were the last to start on the Harbor Course as the dark clouds began to push in from the east and the wind topped out at 38 knots on the lighthouse at the harbor entrance. Andrew and I decided to start safe to leeward of the pack bunched up at the heavily favored boat end of the line. We made it to the weather mark in the top ten, but the boats were so tightly bunched that we had our air stolen and had to bail out, finally rounding in… LAST!

Down wind it was full on and we jibed away from the fleet into clear water as Stars make a huge stern wake in these conditions. By the leeward mark we had clawed back to mid fleet and a good leeward mark rounding put us back in the top ten.

On the second run it was survival conditions, no pole running. Half way down the run a massive puff came down the course causing chaos and taking one rig out. We adjusted our course and caught the puff perfectly, planning down the run, rig pointed skyward.

On the last beat we were able to hold position and then fend off a tight pack of 6 boats close on our stern to finish 7th. An improvement on yesterday but it showed how much work we still have to do in these conditions.

Tomorrow the weather looks to be more like traditional Weymouth; cold, windy, with rain. At least two races scheduled tomorrow with 7 more by the medal race on Saturday.

Welcome to Weymouth

Andrew and I have made our way to Weymouth England for the seventh and final event of the ISAF World Cup season. Weymouth is the site of the 2012 Olympic sailing events and the venue is well on its way to completion. The British National Sailing Center is complete and the athlete village has topped out construction, three years in advance of the games.

The Star Class is stacked this week with the top six finishers from the Beijing, and 13 of the top 20 in the ISAF World Rankings; all here to vie for the overall title and study up on the Olympic venue. This amount of talent would be spectacular in any large fleet, but there are only 20 Star boats registered. This will be a very hotly contested regatta.

We race two races a day Monday through Friday with the medal race on Saturday. Follow along at http://www.sailracer.co.uk/events/18401/ and see our daily updates at http://www.campbellnichol2012.blogspot.com/