We are a little late on getting these blog posts out, so bear with us as you read about the regattas from quite a while ago. Also, there are a few questions written about lightning sailing throughout this post, so if you're an experienced lightning sailor (or just experienced sailor in general) and think you can answer our questions, drop us a comment or send us an email!
“You may want to reconsider Charleston. Rain all day and gust to 40 on Saturday.”
A text I received from my dad on Friday morning in Atlanta.
I quickly looked up the forecast to confirm my dad’s predictions, and little did I know that I would check it probably ten more times that weekend. Despite the ominous forecast, my crew and I still packed up our boat and headed over to Charleston for what felt like the hundredth time this year.
The forecast proved to be true about the weather, but didn’t properly predict the good times and the good people that we met. The PRO quickly assured everyone that we wouldn’t try to race on Saturday. Instead, the regatta organizers offered a seminar where the top competitors of the Lightning fleet (David Starck, Ched Proctor, Greg Fisher, and Brian Hayes) would share some of their wisdom. I - Darby - learned a lot, and Wheeler and I were in the back of the room making comments about how we should start doing xyz to make our boat go faster.
We had a different lineup for the weekend: Hannah Gersch, our usual forward, was caught up in the heat of medical school and couldn’t afford a weekend to come sailing. Marten Kendrick, a GT Sailing alum who is a couple of years older than us and had never stepped foot on a Lightning until this weekend, replaced Hannah for the regatta. He also learned a few things from the seminar, so be sure to check out our individual sections to see our different perspectives.
Sunday’s winds caused the competitors to flirt with the idea that there might be another postponement to let them die down, but we were sent out anyway to brave the breeze. The westerly was supposed to turn into a northwesterly by the end of the day and die. My crew and I played it cautious this first race with the forecast in mind - no need to break the boat and tangle the spinnaker if we just had to get through the first race before we would be able to handle the conditions. We ended up near the middle back of the fleet at the windward mark, but turned downwind and lost the little traction we had on the fleet because we didn’t fly the spinnaker. However, I still think it was a good call because not only did two boats capsize on the sail out to the race course, three more tipped over on the first downwind. So we were already ahead of five boats!
The forecast proved wrong as we finished the first race - the breeze didn’t die, it seemingly got stronger. This time, we tried to put the spinnaker up downwind, but Marten was the middle and his lack of experience flying a spinnaker in heavy wind coupled with my lack of experience driving in heavy conditions caused us to get it flying just in time to take it down and turn upwind. We inched back up to the top of the course and tried it again - this time, the spin got flying for a brief second before it made the boat get squirrely and everyone got a little nervous. We tried for a jybe, but, as I’ll touch on in my section of the writing, again the lack of skill prevented us from completing it properly.
By the time the start of the third race came around, we had to get in to pack up the boat. I had a meeting that I needed to go to at 8:30pm in Atlanta. We decided to start the race, but then continue sailing past the windward mark because Carolina Yacht Club was just past it. The wind seemed to have picked up even more, but that didn’t stop the fleet from being aggressive. A general recall and then a 10 minute wait before the next sequence made me get antsy, so we headed in without starting. I will say though that our start during the general recall was the best one on the course - but maybe we were the reason why it was a general.
We packed up the boat and got the cover on right as the rest of the fleet was coming in. Although poor conditions, I still think we learned a lot and got a little experience sailing in heavy winds. The friendly crowd also made the experience a lot better - it was nice to finally put a face to a lot of the names that I had been hearing all summer. This weekend proved once again how friendly the Lightning class can be.
Darby (skipper):
As intimidating as the forecast and experience was, I call this weekend a success because of the seminar on Saturday. Touching on small habits that they have developed to establish consistent, high performance racing, the leaders opened up my eyes as to how each person can go about sailing in a different way but still get the desired results. One would give an engineering-based answer, while the other would give a more simplified version to make it easier to understand. Here are a few of my many notes that I starred:
Anticipate adjustments to your sails, don’t make them after the fact. You should never cleat the main or jib during the race
If you’re making weight adjustments, you should also be making sail trim adjustments
Have the crew move to help you steer - communicate it to them!
In terms of tuning the boat before the races, get to a spot where you can be comfortable 80% of the time, and then focus on making the remaining 20% fast
I could go on and on about what I learned. It was nice to hear suggestions of things that we have already been doing, and it was beneficial to hear the things we need to start doing. Even though we didn’t have races on Saturday, I still call it a win.
Sunday was interesting. I’m not the most proud of our performance because I feel like at this point, I should know how to drive the boat downwind in heavy air. I think I was partly psyched out and nervous about what could go wrong. Additionally, when we did put the spinnaker up, it didn’t go great, so I was mentally set back even more. The first time, we pulled it up after we had turned completely downwind, so the main was out far enough to pin the spinnaker between the mainsail and the spreader. Like I said above, it took too long to untangle it to where we had to take it down and turn upwind again. The second time, we had it up and flying, but Marten was flying it conservatively behind the mainsail. I’m not blaming him - I would have done the same thing. However, when we tried to jybe, the shoot collapsed and wrapped around the forestay, forcing us to sail away from the rumline for a good bit before we could jybe to go to the leeward gate. I was nervous about having Marten fly it all the way out to windward of the mainsail, because the boat would pick up and get squirrely. I know heading up will stabilize the boat. I was conflicted, however, because we had been in situations where the boat got out from under us when we were on too hot of an angle with the spinnaker up.
In hindsight, I think my biggest struggle is learning how to drive the boat downwind in the most stable way possible, especially in windy conditions like that. I was too nervous about being too high up, so I dug us down to dead downwind, but it prevented Marten from stably flying the spinnaker.
Upwind, I was way more confident in our abilities. For such a fast paced environment, our tacks felt slow. I’m not sure if it was because I hadn’t been in a Lightning for some time or if we truly weren’t being efficient. It helped to have Wheeler backwind the jib more than Hannah usually does, but if he did it for too long, the boat would whip around and get going before we were all ready for it. The rest of the time, we generally pulled on as many controls as we could. Marten and Wheeler would compare our rigs to others’, seeing how much backstay and wire people had on. They will be able to talk more about it.
Finally, before we even put our boat in the water on Sunday, Wheeler and I needed to decide what sails to use. We have two sets of Norths - one that was new last year, and one that has been with the boat for a while. To the readers: how long does it take for sails to lose their crispiness? We weren’t sure if we should use our old sails because we knew it would be a blowout and in an attempt to preserve our new ones, or if our new ones were already shot and it didn’t make a difference. I’ve always been of the attitude that if it’s blowing like stink, then you should use your old sails.
Side note: I also got to meet Christine Moloney, the other boat grant team's skipper for this year!
Marten (middle):
The weekend of the Wild Oyster regatta was a great learning experience. Big shoutout to Darby for inviting me this weekend! I don't get a lot of opportunities to jump in a new boat and break out of the comfort zone of sailing something I'm familiar with. During the clinic on Saturday I also got a chance to review everything from beginner boatspeed tips to more advanced rigging and tactics advice. I was grateful for the chance to sit down and listen to an entire group of excellent sailors. I got some great notes about current and jib trim that I'll have to remember to review before my next sail in Charleston. I was also very grateful for the oyster roast, which was definitely one of the highlights of the weekend.
When we got the chance to hit the water on Sunday, I sailed as middle on the boat with Darby and Wheeler. Having sailed lasers, I was comfortable with all of the sail controls at my side. I felt like our boat was overpowered and I know that sail shape can have a big influence on that feeling. I think that with some more time in the boat I could improve my handle on the sail controls, but during the regatta I missed a few opportunities to shape the sail in a way that would have given our boat more speed. Another aspect that I struggled with was getting across the boat during tacks. I'm used to going rail to rail, but I was taking too many steps to cross the boat. On the positive side,I felt like we had some moments of really good boatspeed upwind and I'm happy that I got to learn the boat with wind pressure on the course. One of the key takeaways for me is to remember to stay low on the downwind legs - hopefully the next time I'm in a lightning I can help make the downwinds a little more stable!
Wheeler (forward):
Like Darby said in her section, the seminar was one of the most valuable experiences from the weekend and made it worth driving to Charleston. It is always helpful to hear different perspectives. Someone made a comment at the very beginning that really stuck with me: “The goal is to have boat speed 100% of the time, we’re fast for 80% of the race. Focus on that 20% of the time in the race where you’re slow or sloppy.” I’ve heard many times in school and in life that 80% of the results come from 20% of one’s efforts. It was interesting to hear this principle applied to sailing. I kind of kept this idea in the back of my mind and applied it to everything else that was said. Below are some of the quotes and my thoughts on how they apply to our boat.
“Slowing down, paying attention to the little details, and focusing on going around the course clean will dramatically improve your results.” Sure we could just go around the course and maybe place in the middle of the fleet but if we get above that 20% effort threshold we could do a lot better.
“Put someone on your boat in charge of speed”. This is a big problem for us. We focus on our speed for the first 10 minutes of the race when all the boats are close together then we stop talking about it. We should ALWAYS be thinking about speed, from start to finish.
“Make the adjustment before it happens”. We normally do a decent job at this, but in the high winds we experienced on Sunday and with a new crew in the boat, it required us to be even quicker on our feet.
“When making adjustments, do little things". Again, we do well at this but I think we could be doing it more often. We should always be checking the forestay and backstay relationship and make sure they are trimmed properly for the whole race.
Those were just a few of many notes I had from the seminar. I’m looking forward to applying everything we learned in future regattas. Big thanks to David, Ched, Greg, and Brian for putting on the seminar. Being new to the boat, we learned a ton!
On Sunday, I did forward instead of middle. I now understand some of the frustrations that Hannah usually has with our boat including the jib sheets getting stuck in the cleats and causing the sail to backwind too much during tacks and the jib halyard getting caught where it goes up into the mast. Overall I would say I felt slow moving around the boat relative to Marten and Darby. I felt like I was always the last one up on the rail to hike because I was trying to get the jib uncleated. As a boat, I felt like we were generally slower than the rest of the fleet upwind. It might have been due to the jib backwinding too much a few times, but in general I don’t think we ever got up to a good speed when we finally accelerated. It could be due to our tuning (as our boat is tuned for a light wind setup). This is something I want to investigate further, especially before we go down to Jacksonville in November.
The downwinds were a different story. I am used to Hannah facing me during the downwinds, but with our spinnaker issues, I was standing on the foredeck trying to get the spin unwrapped from the forestay or wrestling with the boom while trying to get it uncaught from behind the spreader. I think with a few more races in the boat together, we would have figured out how to sail downwind in heavy conditions.
Overall, we were happy we went to Charleston for this event. It was cool to meet some Lightning sailors from outside the southeast and hear from some of the top lightning sailors in the country during the clinic on Sunday. Big thanks to everyone at the Carolina Yacht Club that made this event happen and another big thanks to our host for the weekend, Jeff Woodard. See ya’ll at the King’s Day Regatta in Jacksonville in November.
Georgia Tech sailors at Wild Oyster!
