Hitting The Wave

Well land lubbers hit the wall, so we must hit the wave:

Dunk! I hit it this year.

Splash! Got it all over my shirt.

I started sailing classics and this has hit me fine and good: I do worse than a new beginner! Well, they are behind us, but relatively speaking I am an idiot.

I just seem to lack the concentration and nerve to make it happen. Also I lack the energy. I was banging on the door of the wave a few years ago and knew it but just changed boats to a j109 and the team thing took us all to the heights.

I also lack going back to basics: they are small 5m affairs with a tiny sail plan really, and I should think dinghy crossed with barge characteristics: an age to accelerate or come on the wind.

At least five times we have been miles back from the start: this is our fault for not seeing that the wind has died and the usual wind disturbance of the collective fleet reduces our approach times by maybe a third to a half. It took us nearly three minutes to sail up to the line from one minute out: major phucket.

I have always been a liittle poor on starts: shy, nervous often, barging-bloody minded other times: rarely cool, calm and collected as I am trimming or tactically in all the rest of any given race.

Start is something I get nervous for because I know it is my weaknesses out of many stregnths and this just exacerbates it.


In essence the wave is just a kick back from me being conceated and over confident before: you gotta remember the basics, train to make better, and go out and do the text book stuff prestart, 5 min , 1.30 min, 1m in, 45 sec-30sec and 10 sec-gun.