CP Spring Frostbite Week 1- Warm weather + BIG courses = Great racing

For those of you who missed it, Sunday brought temps in the 50’s with the breeze averaging 10 kts or so. Using the word “average” is painting a very broad brush stroke over the velocity range since in the first race the breeze dropped to zero for a few seconds yet we also saw flat out hiking and easing conditions later races. The best part of the day was sailing on March 7th in my “warm weather” gear. Wasn’t it just last year that we had to chip the ice off the crash boat engines to get them started for the first race day? What a welcomed difference!

Mike Matan was PRO for the day. He and his crew did a good job of changing things up by setting a long windward beat for us. This was still short course racing however since who ever got the best start was immediately advantaged for the first half if not the entire first beat. A few things helped me on Sunday:

1. Gear. I am not a fan of laser sailing in sub 40 degree weather and always wear the minimum to get a better feel for the boat. This year I wanted to try to buy a wetsuit top that was windproof and water resistant, so I did not have to use my old wetsuit top and dry top together. I bought just the item I was looking for from Scott the morning of the event and loved it. Mine is made by Zeik but Matan has a Rooster one, and I know Ronstan also makes one that is wind proof/water resistant. Anyway, I was perfectly warm and had a ton of flexibility. For me I know I sail better when I am unrestricted by my gear. I hope to never have to wear my dry top in anything over 40 degrees any more.

2. Starts. The starts I won or was top 2 out of ensured me a top 2 placing at the weather mark. At times it was difficult to tell just how favored the pin was until after the start and we all tacked over. I think most of us underestimated this, myself included, since there was not much of a fight at the pin. I will be sure to triple check my angles out of the boat and pin the next time we race. Starting at the favored end is such a gift, it is a shame to give up such an advantage and start anywhere else. Places like Cedar Point and fleets like ours instantly reward great starts at the favored end.

3. Puffs down wind. For races 2-5 we had very small waves and large puffs at the top half of the runs. A few of the races I rounded 5th or so but made large and fast gains by taking the relative low road and milking the puffs for all they were worth. When I would feel a puff I would lean back a bit, adjust my course to dead down wind and pick the board almost all the way up. I was trying to jump on a plane by moving back (this never actually happened at my wind angle though), make gains low so I could later come back up in the lulls, and reduce friction with the water by pulling the board up. Pulling the board up works especially well when the waves are small since you are not constantly steering up and down. I was just really trying to blast off with the puff on the “slowest” angle down wind.

I am PRO in 2 weeks and will be sure to give you all some long races!

Andrew Scrivan
 

 

Sunday is the first day of Frostbiting for the Spring series!

Any spring member who has paid for the series shall be allowed to
bring their children who sail a 4.7 rig for FREE!

A fleet boat is available for charter ( full and radial)

 

CP Fall 2009 Week 4: Adaptation

It has been a few weeks here but I have found time to catch up on my unwritten responsibility as daily winner to write about the event. Although some of the details have gone fuzzy there were still some very profound lessons learned from the racing on Sunday week 4.

If you recall the wind was from a northeasterly direction with large puffs on flat water. It was easy to make predictions about the first beat at about 2 min if you stood up and looked around. The current was ebbing all day making one think that you needed to play the right more looking downwind on the run. I learned quickly that you could not sail the middle or the right of the run and play the shifts. Brendan Shattuck gave away this secret when he passed many people playing the left looking down wind. I made large gains and by choosing the left hand gate looking upwind. After the first time I did this I stuck with it, even if the gate was technically unfavored. It always worked. On the upwind I played left and rarely ever let anyone get left of me until the finish. It worked and I stuck with it.

In a nutshell I had many preconceived notions about how the races would pan out and based my game plan on this info. During parts of each race my predictions proved false and I had to adapt and quickly implement what I believe was the new “right” thing to do.

Sunday was very much a heads up day and humbling at times.

Until next week,

Andrew Scrivan
 

CP Fall 2009 Week 6: BS

The hardest race days at Cedar Point are the 6 kt, flat water, minimal shift days, and that is very much what we got on Sunday. The day had some lighter wind speed races at times but every race winner relied on a good deal of boatspeed. I love talking about boat optimization to increase boat speed, ease boat handling and reduce friction for sail control. Because the laser is so sensitive and light most every boat speed enhancement idea helps increase feel.

Hull: I have weighted many hulls over the years and have found new boats and boats less than 3 years old weigh as light as 129 lbs and up to 135. The target from the factory is 130lbs. You may not think 6 lbs is much but the boat that is 129lbs is 4.5% lighter. If you then think about any and all the weight saving you could do by readjusting your control lines and cutting them to the min, especially your mainsheet, you will loose even more weight. Do you tie your mainsheet to the back of the cockpit? There is another 3ft extra length. When all this line is wet you could easily come up with 3+ lbs of extra displ. So just by weighing your next hull and really paying attention to the extra line in your running rigging you could loose over 7 lbs displacement over many other people. This is a hull and line package that is 5.5% lighter than the other guy!

Possible average weight savings- 7 lbs.
(Remember older boats are generally much heavier bc of all the years of the fiberglass absorbing moisture. When I first started CP I used a really beat up 1977 boat, it weighed 138 lbs!)

Gear: On Sunday it was about 65 degrees with very little wind chill. I wore spendex shorts, a light wetsuit top, my PFD and a hat. Many other guys were wearing wetsuit boots, a drysuit, full hiking pants, a thermal top, gloves, pfd, and a hat. When this stuff is wet it weighs over 15 lbs. My stuff weighs probably 3-4 lbs wet.

Possible average weight savings- 11 lbs.
Side note- I am not a “warm blooded” person. I have a drybag with all my extra gear to put on and take off on the RC boat when I need it. For the last race or 2 of Sunday I put all my gear on.

Based on displacement alone you could conservatively save 18 lbs just by making some careful choices. This is a gear and hull savings of 14%! Suddenly the laser, the ultimate one design, is not so even when you start.

Friction: When was the last time you worked on your hull? If you clean it well with normal soap and water and then use startbright boat polish with Teflon, applied say 2-3 times, you will see a visible difference in the way water adheres to your hull. I have experimented and have Tefloned ½ my hull 3 times and then sprayed the entire boat with water. The side with Teflon revealed that the water streaked together as much as possible and would slide off the boat with great ease. On the nonfinished side the water just beaded up and rolled off when enough water collected in an area.
Blades are a very important aspect to boatspeed, lift and drag. We all know the hum of the laser is caused by turbulent flow off the trailing edge of our centerboard. Both the centerboard and rudder come with squared off trailing edges. By sanding your board 100 mill in from the trailing edge, so that the trailing edge is a fine tip, you will eliminate the hum and create smooth flow over the board. The same is true for the rudder. We do not hear the rudder hum much at all bc there is not a centerboard trunk to reverberate the sound. The rudder also has a shorter trailing edge and less surface area to create as large of a disturbed flow. You can sand the rudder 60 mil in from the trailing edge.

Steering: All serious racers have the acme carbon tiller. Its main benefit is the low clearance over the deck and traveler cam cleat allowing less friction in the traveler line. If your tiller touches the deck at all at the deck/tiller joint you need to eliminate this friction point. By placing 1-3 stainless steel washers on top of your upper gudgeon you will raise the tiller slightly and eliminate tiller deck friction. What’s more you will no longer have 2 metal rudder pintles grinding into 2 plastic gudgeons. Now you will have one metal rudder pintle rotating on a metal washer. This point can be mc lubed and will really enhance your feel and steering.

Auto bailer: Our new friend at Cedar Point, Lindsay Hewitt was the first guy I know to experiment with using packaging tape to tape over the seems of the auto bailer. Now class legal. The auto bailer is a friction point and Lindsay says it works well.

These are just some of the things that can be done on land. Probably more important is to 2 boat test with sails and spars. That is a discussion for a different write up.

See you next week.


Andrew Scrivan
 

CP Fall 2009 Week 1: Vang on = throttle down

Some of us have been eagerly awaiting the start of the fall series since the last event in Dec 08. Mild water temps, great breeze and lots of hungry competitors always make for an exciting Fall Sunday on the water. Many times we simply recap which way we went and why in these write ups but at times I find it more beneficial to talk about boat speed and set up, since these factors can be directly applied over and over again rather than specific strategy and tactics which change from Sunday to Sunday.

In the debrief, after the awards, we vetted many questions and talked about several key speed components. I was fortunate to round every windward and leeward mark in first, with the exception of my OCS race. I found myself in many different positions on the line but usually down towards the pin, as I liked the left, middle/left on the first upwind. What helped me get to the top mark in a strong position was the heavy use of my vang. Marc in the debrief, very appropriately referred to it as the throttle. I could not have pulled out off the start or hit shifts before others to give the ability to tack and cross without the added control and speed boost of the vang. Off the start I would apply a good amount of vang as we were generally full out hiking. When I saw a puff coming down the course I would grab the loop on my vang, rock back with my upper body, and pull another 3-4 inches on. Now the vang would simply move in and out as I eased and not up and down. When the puff would hit I would ease, the boat would load up and take off forward but at a slightly lower angle. I did this a few times off the start to some packs below me and I can say I was going at least ¼ kt faster vmg up the course.

What many people do when a puff hits is possibly ease a little, hike hard and feather the boat up. I feel that this approach stalls your blades and sail plan, sets you more directly into the waves and slows the boat. When you carry more vang than just the 2 blocked setting, your leach becomes very tight and you ram the boom into the lower section, thus heavily depowering the boat. When the boat is set up properly for the big puffs, easing, bearing off and feeling the boatspeed jump is a pure pleasure. Of course no matter what, you have got to be all out hiking, chest below knees.

On the downwinds I did just about the opposite of what I normally preach, I sailed a rather straight and conservative course. Sunday revealed big puffs but relatively small waves. Guys like Matan were producing some smooth and powerful S turns but I felt that the fastest course to the bottom mark was obtained by riding the puffs, not the waves. On Sunday the puffs were the fastest moving vehicles down the course, not the waves. This was not one of those days where you could catch a huge wave and have the boom ride centerline, indicating that you could surpass windspeed with boatspeed. If you could set yourself up for the puffs by reaching them before your competitors, you would make far more boat lengths than just riding the small waves that we were often passing.

Downwind I was using my masthead fly to help align the next puff. I usually have a bow windex, which easily points to where my apparent wind is coming from. If I can get my windex to point at the big blast rolling down the course I know that I will be getting to the puff as soon as possible. We had 39 standards out on Sunday. Let’s break 40 next week! Bring a friend. Best, Andrew Scrivan