Exactly. In just two legs. There was plenty of time to be found on the course. Unless everything you do is perfect, the ratings are mathematically perfect, and your competition is perfect, there's always a couple of minutes to be found. Most of the M32 races had 4+ minutes from first to last, and most of them had multiple pros, olympians, and world champs aboard their one-design boats.
You are cherry picking examples. Over an average, a few minutes of time is impossible to find amongst top teams. The average deltas are in the seconds comparing team who sail at a top level and have top level decision makers. Anybody can pickup a minute or two in a particular race just by catching a shift. Doing it over the course of a series is completely different. You said Soozal averaged beating you by a couple of minutes.
Welcome to handicap racing, Clean. The minute you find a $10k, 40ft Melges, with a interior that everyone's wife is happy with, you be sure to let us know. Until then the rest of us will continue racing the slow ass tubs that best fit our needs.Nice! He makes a good point, though. We had to have some MAJOR screwups to get 3rd or 4th. Plenty of small screwups meant we'd get second. An absolutely perfect race when the breeze picked up enough to overcome the King 40s power advantage was the only way we could win one. It would have been interesting to see how 5-10 knots would have played out.Go back to PHRF you hack.The King 40 crew must be the best sailors, they won almost every race in their IRC class.....The SC37 got the shaft, what a bunch of BS. There is no way to beat a boat that was specifically built to a rating system.
I agree that finding a couple of minutes may be impossible among top teams with perfectly sorted out boats that have no major brainfarts. But handicap boats are almost never sailed at that level - they tend to not have anywhere near enough boat-on-boat sail, rig, and boathandling development to make it possible, and certainly we didn't sail our boat anywhere near that level. Hence the conclusion that we could easily have cut 3% off our time during most races. It is awfully easy to give away a minute on a lousy start, 5 seconds on a hoist, 20 seconds on a douse, 30 seconds on a shift...
Ummm.....wait.... How messed up was I last week? I don't remember myself the rest of the 'Wave crew racing a A40 in Miami last week.
I agree except the "in handicap racing part". IRC 2 in KW this year had about an average delta of 30 to 45 seconds or so. But I think that the fact you guys all came together just for the event probably had a bit to do with it as well. Had you had a week or so to sail together and you would have found most of that time I imagine. Still a good week for ya'll too. Having Brian trim couldn't have hurt either!
Of course you will, and I've had a hell of a good time racing handicap on the 'wave as well as on dozens of other handicap boats. While the growth of relatively inexpensive OD classes will continue to bite into handicap fleets, and while there's no question that for course racing, at least, OD is just a hell of a lot more interesting, people will always want to race the boat they have and love. Hopefully handicap racers, event organizers, boatbuilders, yacht clubs, the yachting press, and every other stakeholder will work together on creative solutions to make sure that classes are big enough and closely grouped enough to make it truly fun. A 7-boat fleet of widely divergent designs racing W/L under IRC just wasn't it.Welcome to handicap racing, Clean. The minute you find a $10k, 40ft Melges, with a interior that everyone's wife is happy with, you be sure to let us know. Until then the rest of us will continue racing the slow ass tubs that best fit our needs.Nice! He makes a good point, though. We had to have some MAJOR screwups to get 3rd or 4th. Plenty of small screwups meant we'd get second. An absolutely perfect race when the breeze picked up enough to overcome the King 40s power advantage was the only way we could win one. It would have been interesting to see how 5-10 knots would have played out.Go back to PHRF you hack.The King 40 crew must be the best sailors, they won almost every race in their IRC class.....
Don't assume too much shifle. We were a communicative bunch, and the crew was well aware of where we fucked up and where we didn't. It was the second ever event for a brand-new boat that had zero tuning or practice time just before the first one, when some horrendous trucker damage on her way down to Key West meant that the three days prior to KW were spent making some shife-esque repairs to a giant chunk of deck and partners. For Miami, the main trimmer and kite trimmer had never sailed the boat, the tactician was rusty, the mast man was obnoxious, bald, and frequently hung over, the driver was chain smoking, the bow guy had a bum knee, the padding over the lifelines was fucked and we were hiking on steel, etc. etc. etc.
Less but bigger events with better local and regional interclub coordination to increase turnout (which may require revamping traditional series schedules). Rum primarily P-P races to interesting destinations with a couple W/L weekends thrown in for boathandling practice & a change of pace. These things have a functional galley, head, & 6'6" bunks for a reason - camp out on the boat, wake up and make coffee, use them as designed & not just as oversized daysailing dinghys where the tools & spare parts inventory consists of one multipurpose screwdriver and 1/8th of a roll of duct tape to save weight. Design occasional oddball races that exercise broader aspects of sailing beyond the usual wind shifts & sail trim - like including a trysail/storm jib only leg on a windy day, or a "broken boom" race.
Shife,
He was either dyslexic, or someone switched the labels on the masthead and jib halyards.
Well he did call me a few special names during the week, I guess that passes as a welcome. And Clean, skip says that he didn't get to smoke as much as some during the races but thanks for picking up the slack for him.
CLEAN, so your saying 'if only we had a sorted boat, together crew, sailed it well, the mast man had hair, and generally didn't f**ck up, we'd have won' Isn't that the idea?
They were probably thinking that you would you had been one of those "poor boys" (or with one of them) and be sailing that boat.
