A beautiful day at Frensham pond in near perfect winds (5-8 knots of breeze from the NE in the morning with a patchier breeze in the afternoon. 5 wins, 2 seconds and a fourth in the last race made for a good days racing.
Lessons learnt.
You have to nail that start. In most of the races I was able to get a nose in front of the fleet by being bang on the line at speed. My goal was to accelerate with 4 seconds to go.
Stay out of trouble. Its one of my golden rules. When I did get too close to other boats, I was the loser.
Know your boat setup. Once I had set the kicker and backstay adjusted correctly, there was nothing to change through the whole day despite the vagaries of the wind. The mast centre at deck level and the rake were exactly as per the design plan with 15mm depth on the main and 20 on the jib..
When the boat is sailing upwind or down wind, I do not need to touch the controls unless there is a sharp wind shift.
Following my checklist of things to take and what to do before racing on the water gave me the confidence I was ready for racing. It allowed my day to run like clockwork.
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