I didn't get to see much of the A meet, but it sounds like it was a pretty thorough win, so congrats. We had a few more challenges in the B meet, and wound up on the wrong end of a 3-1 scorecard. Here's what I saw...
1. Starts. Even if the pin end is favored, on a short course like that, winning the pin does you no good unless you can either force the boats on your hip to tack away, or you can tack and cross them. A boat that is able to hang on your hip gradually gains the advantage over you, simply because eventually you have to tack and they will be the ones making the decision on when.
2. Starts part 2. Even if the pin end is favored, I prefer when we have a boat win the pin and then an opponent, and then one of us. Usually, not necessarily always but usually, a favored pin will also mean a port-tack-skewed beat, or at least a pretty big leftie. Having two boats at the pin will generally mean we have the two boats who are the last ones able to tack. Everyone else gets to tack earlier, sail on the lift, and either gets to sail at the mark or sail to the next shift more quickly.
3. Sail the longer tack first. Hopefully you have all heard this expression. If not, now you have. Oddly enough, people who grow up in cities or spend a lot of time in them have a very intuitive understanding of this concept. Think about that for a minute.
4. Unless you are in the act of trying to sail slowly, your job always includes sailing your boat absolutely as fast as it can go. Fast means VMG, not necessarily going through the water fastest.
5. Elevate, don't accelerate. This is likely to be different when sailing Z420s, but the 420s we have and most schools have simply don't accelerate very much in puffs. The best 420 sailors know how to turn puffs into pointing. The math to prove this is ridiculously simple, even for me, but at this point please just take it as a given (or as a postulate, if you will): learn to turn puffs into pointing.
6. Mark traps at mark 3 (leeward mark). This gets complicated. The standard mark trap setup is to be on starboard, to the left of the mark as you are looking downwind. That allows you to defend against the "suicide bomber" rounding and leaves you space to accelerate while pushing their first boat out, and defending against their second boat squeezing between you and the mark before you can turn around the mark. This setup works very well if you are in a 1,4, x combo. UNFORTUNATELY, we found ourselves in a 1, 5, 6 combo at one leeward mark today, and the starboard tack mark trap is super hard to execute against three opponents. Generally, their first boat will do try to draw you out away from the mark on a starboard reach, and try to make a gap for their second boat to squeeze through. If their second boat isn't able to squeeze through, their third boat will. Or, if you spend enough time messing around with their second and third boats, their first boat is probably around the outside and onto the offset leg. Either way, now they've turned a 2, 3, 4 into a likely 1, 3, 4. I won't mention what happened to us.
I think that there are two more effective approaches to the 1, 5, 6 mark trap than the standard trap. First is to start off as you would normally, but as soon as their first boat tries to draw you away from the mark, you gybe around the mark preventing other their boats from shooting through the gap. Basically, you get their first boat pointed away from the offset leg, and you gybe. Now you have their three boats making wide roundings, and ending up in the low lane on the offset leg. As soon as they gybe, you begin to walk them down the offset by over trimming your main and under trimming your jib. You are windward boat so try hard to keep their overlap broken. It should be relatively easy. If you are able to keep them from getting outside overlaps, you can set a good trap there and force all of their boats into wide roundings.
1, 5, 6 is a pretty desperate situation. The most effective thing you can do is play for time and bring your teammates back into the mix by exerting control in the few moments when you are able to negatively affect all three of their boats. The go-for-broke hero move generally doesn't work at all there.
The better course is, of course, let's try and avoid the 1, 5, 6 combo as much as we possibly can.
