Tuesday — Southerly 4-12 knots, lots of ups and downs, and shifts. Breeze trended right today with one very big right favored beat, if not two. We did direct-swap rotation so most teams had a new skipper/crew each race. Crew and Skipper results are below. That wasn’t easy to add up.
Decent sailing today. Observations:

• Upwind, once again too many boats get locked in to the boat next to them, and wait….. and wait… and wait till it’s too late to tack. Missing first shift on the first beat is a function of either
  • not getting a good enough start, and being pinned in a tight group
  • being unwilling (stubborn)even after a good start to take any sterns. How many times have champion sailors ducked you on the first beat, making you feel good…… only to have them ahead at the next cross? Be the boat who clears out; don’t be the boat to wait until every boat has tacked to make your tack. If you do that, you have lost.
• Today was not a day to overthink things. Too many unpredictable weather changes. However, and by the same token, today was a day to be hyper-vigilant about the next place to go. No lead was safe, and no tack was without risk. Minimizing risk was the order of the day, along with being on the lifted tack toward the mark, away from the very edges. In the last race it looked like hitting a corner was great. Boat 4 smoked everyone by hitting the right corner. However, if you look at the overall results, you’ll notice the the winning teams today were almost never in the corners early.
• Head out of the boat! Too many boats were missing clear advantages at the gates and downwind (and even upwind.), if the course is skewed, you NEED to use that to your advantage. If the wind shifts downwind, you need to gybe early and aggressively, and wing-on/off more. Get on the long tack early!!
• weight trim gear shifting was weak.
• Fagan was the best boat out there today. Why? conservative, good/very good speed, willing to tack (today was NOT a day to sail through shifts), seemed to handle randomizing shifts well. Other boats were close, and just made one or two bigger errors that cost them a lot. Remember, you don’t have to be brilliant; you have to minimize/eliminate mistakes.
• Our Senior crews were both in the top 3 in crew results.