2008 Lightning North Americans - Lessons Learned

We just finished competing in the 2008 Lightning North Americans held in Newport, RI, arguably one of the prettiest sailing venues around. Alan Terhune bested the nearly 100 boats to claim the top prize. Alan was joined on his boat by his wife Katie and Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, Jeff Linton. That was one accomplished boat, and if before the regatta I was to bet on someone winning, it would have been that team hands down. They certainly didn't make it easy on themselves as they posted their throw-out in the first race of the championship series and had to sail flawlessly from there on out. Needless to say, they did just that, and won by a healthy margin over Matt Fisher with his own All-Star crew of Dan and Tobi Moriarty. I'm sure you'll be able to read all about the regatta and the sailing from other sources, so I'll give just a quick recap, followed by some of the things that I learned during the week of sailing.

Racing began with the qualifying series, held over two days. The qualifiers are held to divide the 100 boats into three fleets, with the top fleet competing for the North American Championship, the second fleet fightning for the Presidents Cup, and the third fleet competing for the Governors Cup. The first day of qualifiers was held out in the ocean in a gradually building breeze which topped off around 12-15 just in time for the spinnaker ride in. It was quite special to be sailing on the Ocean course, as this was as close as we got to where the Americas Cup courses were set back when Newport was graced with this event. The second day of qualifiers was held North of the bridge on Narragansett Bay, where tricky tides and eddies make for some very difficult sailing. The breeze was a bit lighter for the second day of qualifying, but the direction was generally a southerly, the typical sea-breeze direction.

The qualifiers are always a lot of fun for about 1/3 of the fleet and very frustrating for 2/3 of the fleet. On our boat we certainly showed our rust as over the course of the four races we lost a total of about 10 boats within a few minutes of the finishes. I searched long and hard to come up with a good excuse for why we lost this many boats, but in the end can just blame some stupid tactical decisions. One mistake that cost us four boats was jibing for the finish about a minute too early. We jibed and headed towards the boat end of the line, but should have held out and jibed for the pin end of the line. Turns out the pin was favored by about 15 degrees and we lost the boats that went left of us. The big mistake that sticks in my mind was on an upwind finish. We were on the final beat satisfied with holding onto a low teens finish when we got too conservative. We tried covering boats behind us on both sides by splitting the difference and sailing the middle. Turns out, we lost boats from both sides (lots of boats). We should be been more focussed on sailing our own race and not worried so much about being convervative. Oh well... lessons learned.

We found ourselves barely in the second fleet (we were actually the cut-off boat between the second and third fleets) after the qualifiers ended and vowed to put our lessons learned into action. The Championship series lasted for three days and was comprised of a series of 6 races for the NA's fleet and 5 for the others (six were scheduled for all, but the wind didn't really cooperate). After the President's cup Championship was over, and Rob Ruhlman had cleaned up on the rest of the fleet, we had many more lessons in our bag to take home with us. We didn't sail particularly well during the championship, but there were a few things that really cost us again. One mistake that I made on two occasions was tacking just short of the layline with the hope of sailing high and working up to the mark. While this works well to make up a bit of distance in small fleets, when thirty boats are sitting on the layline the air gets pretty disturbed and the tacking angles are quite a bit larger. We ended up getting trapped just below the layline, with no way out except for to jibe around at the mark and reach back down the line looking for a hole to tack in. It'd be nice if we only did this once, but we made the same mistake twice. As the articulate George Bush once attempted to say (and failed miserably..see YouTube), "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." In this case, shame on me. Won't make that mistake again!

Another lesson that became very apparent to us, was that you really need to be confident in your boat speed to compete. We simply didn't have the speed to hang onto any lanes in our races and that began to frustrate us. Because of this, we made a lot more mistakes and bad decisions on the course. We certainly sailed to many wrong places just because our heads weren't in the right places. If I could do it over again, I would have spent a few days out speed testing to get ready for the regatta. Even if my speed wasn't any better than it was, at least I would have been confident that it was as good as my training partner. In our case, we were left guessing as to how our speed was and constantly trying to change things to make it better. It'd be best to spend all of that time thinking about tactics, and to just let the boat speed happen. Hopefully this time I won't be fooled twice.

The final lesson that we learned, was to make sure you have friends that live where you are sailing. This was a lesson that we were happy learning and very happy with the way things work out. I lucked into having a good friend that I grew up with who lived in Newport and gave me and my crew a free place to stay for the entire week. Actually, it was more than a free place, it was literally a three minute drive to the sailing center and a five minute walk to Thames Street. We couldn't have paid for any better lodging, and we got to enjoy the comforts of home and the Olympics on a big screen TV everynight. We were certainly the envy of all for our lodging.

I'm sure there were many more things that I'm missing, but the most important thing that I learned, was no matter how frustrating a week spent sailing is, it is still better than any other way to spend a week. Can't wait for next years NA's in Sodus Bay, NY!

Results and some photos can be found at www.lightningclass.org