Olson 25 speed Clinic follow up.

[David Gruver]

Ripping home after yesterday's clinic, I was all smiles. It is great to see everyone working to improve their game, curious, energetic, and investing the time.  To all the skippers and crews that showed up yesterday thank you for devoting the day., We hope it will pay dividends.

 

Wanted to again thank JP Camile for pulling the logistics together with BYC to host the event. It was the perfect venue for the day.  The Nationals out of BYC at the end of the summer are going to be fantastic. And a thank you to John collins for the contiued support fomr Otto's Garage Brewery, the official beer of the Olson 25 Bay Area Fleet. 

If you can take away three top items from yesterday I focus on these: 

- Work to make your boat easy to sail. Make sure lines run smooth, you have enough purchase on systems, and you have marks on sheets, halyards etc to get to repeatable settings. The easier your boat is to sail, the more time you can spent with your head out of the boat looking up the race course and making the right moves. 

- Pay close attention to trim and body position. Adapt to the ever changing conditions. Think about heal. Think about the power you need in the sails. 

- Have a plan. Have a pre race plan. Have a crew plan. Make sure everyone know the roles and expectations. Don't be dogmatic though - if conditions aren't what you were expecting- adapt. Know that on certain days the plan is just something to deviate from.  

I will send tow more email with attached documents. They are too large for our mail server, and wont allow me to attach them in one email. One contains the slides we went over yesterday. The second contains pictures of how we set up Sketch and some narratives around the what and why.  I don't think Sketch's setup is in any way perfect. it works for how we like to sail the boat. It is always evolving. I share this to stimulate the thought process on how to get your own boat working efficiently.  Please don't hesitate to come back to me with any questions or improvements. 

I am bummed I wont be able to sail on Sketch in the Round The Rocks event next weekend. It is one of my favorite races. I hope we get a good fleet. I hope when I look at the overall results the top of leaderboard is overwhelmed with O-25s!

Take care,

Dave.