NOOD Learnings

There's been a lot of learning going on lately which encourages me to think about some of the things we learned from the Seattle NOOD.
  1. Old sails are slow sails. Gordon and Don decided to bring the "Thursday night" sails. It forced us to pay more attention to the starts, our decisions and execution of maneuvers.
  2. 6 Meters are gorgeous old boats (wood beats that fiberglass stuff)
  3. Watching the 6 Meters crew work reminds me of whack-a-mole (e.g. From the Lipton Cup 2002 with "Olin Stephens at the helm of Sprig", now you see em... now you don't).
  4. Seattle traffic is horrible: narrow streets, hills, water, bridges, signals without intelligence and lots and lots of drivers like us who are just visiting
  5. The Santana 20 class racing was very competitive (six different boats won races). Congratulations to Inferno (S20 class and overall regatta champ.), Hostile Takeover and Loose Nuts.
  6. The bigger to boat the bigger the wind shadow... the more you should avoid them. In our division, we had the 6 Meter, J24, Moore 24, Rocket 22, Thunderbird and Ultimate 20 fleets in front of us. Beating to weather with spinnaker boats like these above you... slow! Sometimes there was just no avoiding it.
  7. Current matters. It's better to overstand the lay line and do a little reaching into a mark than underestimate the current, fail to fetch the mark and incur two additional tacks... slow!
  8. Don't take for granted that the finish line is even close to square. The RC did a great job but the finish line on Saturday and Sunday was more like a finishing point. The boat end was significantly favored. Make sure you check the finish line on your final run.
  9. Snow capped Olympics make a great backdrop to Puget Sound racing
  10. Junk floats... I tried to grab a floating plastic water bottle (while racing) but failed. I only managed to touch it. It never occurred to me you might be able to sail Junk to Hawaii.

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