300 Log : More racing and practicing at TISC

Another great race in the harbour, the evening sailing at TISC is fantastic this year.

Date: 2nd May April
Venue :TISC
Race : Handicap race, 1 hour
Tide : Ebbing moderately  for the duration of the race
Conditions : Southerly f2/3
Result :3rd of 18, 2nd of 4 300's

Another lovely evening race out of TISC, really enjoying the sailing there this year.  The ability to sail at all states of tide is great (already sailing this coming Thursday on a spring low will be interesting).

Four of my 300 brethren made it onto the water, so we had a fleet within a fleet.  Dave Acres was sailing, and remains the benchmark for progress.  Once again he beat me, but only by 15 seconds over an hour, and I did have opportunities to win (that I squandered!).  So close racing and a reasonable result.  LOS = 8/10.

Positives:
- Learnt more about the start line at TISC.  Starting at the club end can be hazardous because of the steeply shelving mud banks.  I went hard aground about 30 secs before the start, and started 30 seconds late.  This gave a great opportunity to get practice sailing back through the fleet, see how I changed a negative to positive there.
- First time for a while since I have sailed against Dave A and was pleased with relative downwind speed, certainly took a reasonable chunk out of his lead on the downwind leg.
- Reasonable upwind legs, although I felt I wasn't getting the best out of the compass on the first beat.  Second beat much better, easier to pick the shifts. 
- Claire has mandated that I stop blogging about states of psychological arousal, she finds it distasteful.  But it was nice and low.

Points for reflection:
- Spent ages working upwind to get past Dave, and then threw it all away by overstanding the final mark.  In retrospect I should have covered for the final third of the beat.   No opportunity to pass on the final leg - the tide kept us pinned to the bank.  So another race where a single mistake defined the outcome, this is becoming a habit!
- When the wind is light enough for us both to be sitting in the boat (ie, not hiking), there is very little difference in boat speed irrespective of body weight difference.  When I'm able to get hiking first, that's when being lighter in the boat helps, and that advantage stays until we are both hiking.  That window is about 2 or 3 knots.

So once again it is down to consistency.  That said, at the same point 2 years ago Dave was taking 2-4 minutes in every hour out of me, so in terms of overall progress in the boat I should be pleased.