Roadrunner Regatta Observations

I was very impressed with the skill level exhibited at the recent Roadrunner Regatta junior hosted by Austin Yacht Club.  I had a chance to watch some of the racing from a race committee boat on the first day and was on the Laser, 4.7 and Radial course along with a 18 boat fleet of Flying Juniors.  

Here are a few observations:

The starts were very competitive and as a rule, most of the sailors did a great job of being aggressive and hitting the line with speed at the gun.  After the start though, it seemed like too many would be content to sail in bad air and the less experienced sailors would tend to hold starboard tack for too long and automatically sail to the left side of the course upwind.


I would have liked to have seen the sailors be more aggressive with clearing out and cutting the grain after a bad start.  In small, maneuverable boats, it doesn't take much room to bear off a few feet to create separation from the windward boat and do a quick tack to port and duck to get clear air.  I wrote a piece called the "Great Escape" last year that elaborates more on clearing tactics after a questionable start.  


I really like to get on to port tack quickly and going against the grain if I have had a bad start.  I am not advocating banging a corner but just using this as a tool to quickly get clear air.  Once you are on port tack, you will likely be moving much faster than the fleet that is still stacked up in bad air and chop on starboard.  I think there may even be a slight lift effect that you get when ducking behind starboard tack boats while on port tack.  Often, after such a clearing maneuver, I am able to cross many of the boats that I had previously ducked once I tack back. 


I also noticed a tendency for boats to go out to the lay lines instead of staying inside the imaginary cone of the weather mark.  Too many boats were sailing in bad air on the lay lines instead of aggressively playing the shifts between the lay lines as the fleet approached the weather mark.


Boat handling was on the whole very good!  I think the crews and skippers on the double-handed boats could be more in sync with one another at the leeward mark rounding.  It seemed that the jib was often trimmed much too quickly as the boats would round the leeward mark. It was rare to see the skipper and crew using their weight together to steer the boat around the mark.  Often, the boat was too flat or even heeled to windward as the boats would try and round which forced the helmsman to use too much rudder to get the boat to head up to close hauled.  Both skipper and crew need to create leeward heel as they approach the rounding to encourage the boat to round up tightly on the downwind side of the mark.

I was very impressed with the skill shown on the Laser Radial course.  Several of the top Radial sailors competing in the event are ranked in the top 10 in North America.  They definitely know how to handle their boats and it is easy to see the benefits of the coaching that several of the more established programs in Texas have adopted.