PBO Week

Today's title will mean nothing to most of you since you weren't there, but it will be how I remember this week most easily so that's what this post is called. This is more of a notes post for myself. Things will get more fleshed out in later posts but these notes will help me remember the week and keep thoughts alive.

We've made a lot of mechanics progress this last week and I feel like some strategic/tactics progress too.

Having seen us in a regatta, starts are a limiter (read about limiters here and in the post before it). Line sighting, downspeed boat handling, boat control, these are all issues.

I wonder about the psychology of the team in practice vs at regattas. From the results I've seen (and results aren't the whole story), the team's results this weekend weren't what I'd have expected. Quite simply, though I don't place judgmental expectations on the team, if I'd been asked to guess what our results would havei been this weekend I'd say most of our events would have wound up around 5th or maybe a bit better or worse. We did that well in only one event. That was surprising. Either my impressions of how well the team is sailing in practice is skewed in some way, or the level of competition is quite a bit higher than expectations, or our team underperformed relative to our sailing level in practices. I'd guess a lot of it is the latter but I don't know. Some of it will just take time to learn. We'll look into that.

Aidan and Lauren did a luff duck in one race today and it made my week. They passed at least 2 boats because of it, I was ecstatic to see them whip the move out, in an appropriate situation, and then execute it well, and then have it pay off big. That was really really cool.

I think we might need to introduce a bit more competition into practices. I think our practices are productive and instructive and well run and they have a ton to recommend them, but I wonder whether we're missing out on competitive situations. Tough saying.

PBO was a really pretty event.