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.