Calema
Midwinters Regattabericht von Steve Bodner
A slow start to the 2006 midwinters but saturday the wind came in strong
with the breeze in the upper teens/ low 20's. We managed 1 race on Friday and 4
on Saturday. There is quite division between the top pros and the rest of the
w-end warriors but I found myself up in front a few times wondering how I got
there and how to stay there!
Midwinters is the first showcase of the new equipment for the year. Lots
of things to check out and tune.
The new Mike's Lab board is performing well both up and downwind. Steve, Ron and myself
are all riding the
06 with the rest of the fleet on the new F2 and *board. The new 06 sails
look really good and have more range than the previous years. I was on a north 11.9/ 68 cm fin yesterday and the first
race today and switched down to a north 11.0 and 65 cm fin for a bit more
control.
Day 3- The Formula fleet stayed ashore today as there wasn’t enough
wind to get planning. The results changed some as the organizer recalculated 5
races to include a throw-out. As for the SF sailors, Seth moved up to the pro
fleet in 9th place overall and I moved up to 2nd place in the men’s fleet to
13th overall.
Sylvester ended up first in (+35) master’s class, finishing 16th over
all with Ron Kern in 2nd in the class and 17th overall. 51 sailors total in the
A-Formula fleet. Overall results at
Calema website.
It was interesting to see all the new gear on the beach. Most innovative
was the adjustable plates in the cut outs of the F2 and Exocet boards. Sailors
were coming in changing according to the conditions. It brings up a greater
number of possibilities for changing your setup. Now you can adjust the plates in
3 positions as well as the stiffness, rake, size and shape of your
fin. Quite an opportunity to find the
fastest set up. The F2 still has pipes but were elongated on the deck. Also
noteworthy is the fact that the F2 boards have a very shallow Tuttle box with a
recessed fin screws. A lot of people were sanding their fins to fit the box as
well as finding out the top of the fin box was too thin to over-tighten their
fins!
The starboard has smaller and shallower cutouts and seemed to be
performing well with most of the top pro riders on it or the F2 boards.
The Fanatic board was really wide at the tail and with other set of
extreme cutouts and sharp rails at the back end. Arnon and Peter were having a tough
time sailing in the breeze on Saturday on the 06 Fanatic board getting stood up
and noticing it took a lot of back foot pressure to control the board.
The new ML seemed almost simple compared to the all the things going on
with the other boards. Less things to break or go wrong I say! I didn’t find
any real disadvantage to it in speed or pointing when I was sailing at the top
of the fleet. The 06 ML was easy to
control in the breeze with a 65 cm fin. I would guess an even smaller fin could
be more efficient in medium to strong winds.
As for the new sails- the NP and North sails both took a step forward
with wider luff sleeves improving the wind range of the sail. It’s still a personal choice as to what
strategy to follow: keep holding a big sail for as long as possible or switch
down to something smaller and more efficient if the wind stays steady. Both
theories seem to work as Gonzolo and Wotejk
and Sylvester used a 9.8 – 10.0 on Saturday while Antoine, Jimmy, Seth
and myself stayed on 10.7 – 11.0.
The Aerotech sails took a big change as well with a much straighter mast
shape and luff curve. It’s a wide sleeve luff with 11 battens!
05 Windwing sails from the worlds last December.
As suspected a few NP mast from last year breaking in the hot weather! The
new NP mast seem to be improved but most sailors are now de- rigging their
sails between races on shore. It didn’t help that the races were getting off
slowly with 20-30 minutes between heats.
Also new on the beach this year was the hybrids. The RS-X Olympic class
had the most sailors, with a fleet of 25, as there are a lot of young sailors
(under 20) campaigning for the Olympics.
In the men’s fleet, top ranked US sailor Ben Barger won over the No 2
ranked Canadian, Alain Bolduc. In the women’s fleet Canadian Dominique Vallee
won easily over another young fleet of sailors.
The RS-X fleet raced along side the Prodigy class and the Open hybrids. The
Prodigy class was mainly the older guys who switched a few years ago from
long-boarding when the prodigy arrived in the scene. They are just as
competitive but not using kinetics as efficiently as the younger Olympic class
sailors.
In the open hybrid class the new F2 lighting looked pretty cool with a
raised deck over the centerboard giving you a nice platform to rail the boards
in lighter winds. It also had cut outs similar to the F2 formula board but with
no adjustable plates.
On Sunday in the light winds, the hybrid and long boards raced in sub
planning conditions giving everybody a workout with lots of pumping. I don’t think the formula boards would have
been able to get up wind like the hybrids and long-boards with the
centerboards. Thus proving, maybe the hybrid class is the best thing to race
when the conditions are light and you still want to race. I don’t find it so exciting to race in
these conditions as it is so different from the planning experience of formula
racing. Perhaps that’s why I ended up
in
I wasn’t able to re-open my case to get redress for Fridays race. SF
rules guru, Brian McDonald coached me through some pointers on the phone on
Sunday to try to get the case re-opened but to no avail. Thanks for your time,
Brian! The Protest Committee said it wasn’t enough to only check the box for
redress. 2 SF judges disagreed! The big lesson here is never leave anything to
chance in the protest room.
Everything is subjective. I could appeal the decision and see what
another protest committee would decide but with the added throw-out on Sunday,
I wouldn’t have moved up any in the fleet.
Overall, a good event early in the year with some chances to line up
with top sailors and tune my gear.
I feel my sailing has stepped up a notch at this event from the recent
regattas Ive done in Melbourne and
Steve