300 Race Log - 17/18th November

Date: 17th October

Venue : ESSC
Race : Handicap race, 45 minutes
Conditions: W F4
Tide : 45 minutes after start
Result :  1st of 50 boats.  1st 300 of 4.

Positives:
- Good start.  Started mid line with speed, didn't get mixed up with other boats, managed to pull out a reasonable lead on the fleet by Wickor with the exception of the 29er and ISOs (which is fine).
- Good boat speed, on all points of sail.  Felt in tune with the boat.
- Tactically OK, but not really too much to be considered given the course and tide.
- Never hiked so hard, Mr Acres being just behind was a massive motivation to keep going flat out. 

Points for reflection:
- Used a GPS for the first time, downloaded the track after the race and overlayed onto video (might upload here if I can work it out).  Points of interest:

• I thought I was doing the whole 'low in the gusts, high in the lulls' thing on the way to Wickor.  Looking at the GPS track it turns out that I wasn't - a variation of no more than 10 degrees.  Could have been variation in wind direction, but don't think so.
• There was a huge amount of tide running up toward NEH, my tacking angle was 65 degrees!
• Mark roundings need work, specifically a tack followed by an immediate bear away/gybe.
• Significant variance in speed upwind, from 4.8 to 6 knots.  Dave Acres looked to be sailing lower and going faster, maybe worth trying to foot more

Can't wait to use the GPS for tuning, it looks to be a viable way to systematically improve boat speed.

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Date: 18th October

Venue : ESSC
Race : Handicap race, 60 minutes
Conditions: S F1
Tide : 45 minutes after start
Result :  12th of 37.  1st 300 of 3.

Positives:
- Not much!  But found the race enjoyable despite the position.  Maybe it was the sun.

Points for reflection:
- Every book that you read about light wind racing states that "pressure is king".  At the start, I was far more preoccupied with the bias on the line, and didn't even consider the pressure on the course - big mistake!
- Very poor start. Started on the hip of a Laser (Neil Mant I think), no place to go and suffered as a result.  Took an age to break out.
- Pretty poor boat speed, only saved by the close reach from Little Deep to Echo.  Particularly poor on a beat.

On reflection, I've spent no time at all trying to sort out speed in anything less than a F2, so definitely worth investing some time.  I've read that the 300s performance just drops off a cliff in very light winds but I'm not so sure, it felt like it was my performance that was a problem rather than the boat.  I plan to sail a lot more at TISC next year, be interesting to compare performance with the 300 fleet there.