Turkey Day Tune Up at ABYC
Alamitos Bay Yacht Club is host to one of
the largest annual small boat regattas on the West Coast, the annual Turkey Day
Regatta. I remember doing this regatta
as a youth in Lasers in freezing cold weather in 30kts of breeze and knew the
conditions would dictate the event.
Local Viper rep Tim Carter has been asking for a clinic for sometime and
Turkey Day seemed like the perfect time to get something going. It has been a fun and successful year racing
the Viper for myself and it was now time to give something back to the
fleet.
Phillip Toth , whom recently started working at the Ullman Newport Loft, and I
set forth a plan to host a Turkey Day Tune Up on the Friday leading up to the
regatta. I focused on tuning and
technique and Phil brought his expertise from his Olympic campaign to line out
some boat handling and starting technique drills.
We had a great 8 boat turnout and Nor Cal guys Drew Harper
and Garett Greenhalgh came down to sail with some brand new viper owners. This was a huge step in the right direction
for the West Coast Viper fleet as having a seasoned veteran in your boat is
priceless for jumpstarting the learning process. Gladstone’s
Restaurant in Long Beach graciously let me borrow their 24ft RIB so we had
a styling coach boat.
Wind was the
only issue as we started out the day in the parking lot rigging the boats as a
group. We rolled out Jim Sears’ Viper
‘FNG’ and used it as a template. We have
spent a ton of time in 2011-2012 optimizing the set up and making the boat as
easy and comfortable to sail (and hike out) as possible. This was invaluable as I was constantly
taking questions and using the boat to demonstrate techniques and give feedback
to our tuning theories.
The clinic was then moved to the classroom as we shifted
gears and got prepared for the afternoon of sailing. I went over a crew distribution and regatta
preparation outline that I put together to give teams an idea of how we run the
‘FNG.’ From here we spoke about the
physical aspects of racing a Viper and how important each position is. Phil then took over and detailed the practice
drills we would attempt. We decided to
focus on boat handling and starting.
Unfortunately
the wind never really exceeded 5-6 kts so we were somewhat limited. A few hours of being in the boats, some
practice starts and on the water instruction gave the teams some immediate
insight into where the strengths and weaknesses lied. The day concluded with a debrief that
consisted of pizza and beer! Questions
were asked and answered and we did our best to motivate the teams to do one
thing.. Practice!!! The problem with
sailing is that not enough people practice and do not get the extra time in the
boat that it requires to move your program to the next level. There is no substitution for experience and
both Phil and myself saw huge improvements in all the boats over the course of
the day. This extra day of practice fed
directly into the weekend and made the competition a little fiercer between the
boats.
The weekend regatta was sailed and the 10 boats that showed
up gave a great spectacle of racing. It
also gave me a chance to drive around on the coach boat and look at techniques,
rig tune and sail shape. The best thing
about sailing any boat is that there is always room to learn more. I think you will see me motoring around the
course observing a little more this year as I try to expand on everything
learned from 2012 and incorporate that into 2013 as we strive to go faster and
sail better.
Keith Magnussen
Ullman Sails Newport Beach
