Actually, that is indeed a handicap. In the 1st race I lay 2nd and as such had only one boat in front of me. However when singlehanding you really have to work to get through the gate alright and plan ahead. So about 1 or 2 minutes before entering the gate I'm watching the boat around me or just behind me and try to position myself properly for the gate. In all the gate fuss I lost sight of the race leader and since I was sure that we were going to finish I just concentrated on making the gate to finish under spinnaker, meaning staying high. And we all knot that staying high solo with the spi up can be a handful. The fact that the finish was between a very small bouy and the beach doesn't help either. One major gust and I would have gone onto the beach with boards down and the spi up. Only after I "finished" and pulled my spi down I noticed that was the only one there and understood my mistake. Basically for the last 2 to 3 minutes I had my hands full in managing the boat and gettting through the gate alright.

That is just the way it is when singlehanding.

I'm indeed now thinking up some "counter" to put on my boom to help me out because I really don't want this to happen again.

I'm thinking about a string with large beads tensioned underneath my boom and a bungee with a pull line looped around the boom. Each time a lap is completed I can jank on the pull line and progress the bungee loop one bead. Number of bead in front of the bungee is the number of laps sailed.

Something like that. The duck tap strips will work as well but yesterday we did 3 races in a row and I would like to have a system that I can reset for each new race (heat) and not pollute the environment to much.

Wouter