explain "tack safe leeward"
i hope you guys don't mind me chiming in here.
i keep see these monohull sailors that have the helm of these big cats trying to tack safe leeward. In the first match race on Saturday 9/17, Artemis had the room to cross, shut the door on Korea and lay the mark. Instead they tacked safe leeward, which is really hard to make work on a cat, then they failed to lay the mark, had an extra tack to do, and they got sent out to opposite/wrong side of the course. Korea didn't get covered, and picked up a nice shift, gust or whatever, and totally destroyed Artemis.
Seems to me Artemis guys, as awesome as they are, need to employ some primitive Hobie racing tactics from time to time.
"if you're not first you're last" -Reese Bobby in "Taledega Nights"
It's called "lee bow" here in the states. In my opinion, it can be done on cats but the apparent wind is so far forward due to the increased speed and the dirty air (bent and/or piled up air to windward) of the cat is much less than in a slower monohull. As Matt indicated, to pull this off on a cat in a match race is to give up a lot of lead you would otherwise have had if you just held your course. It is sometimes beneficial in a fleet race if you have someone on your hip but this position is usually a consequence of some prior positioning issue you had with another boat further ahead of the one on your hip.
I'm seeing a lot of issues on these boats that we experience with A) having a lot to do with only a few hands and B) being amatures. Coutt's screw up with the genny sheet was a result of poor house keeping in between and prior to maneuvers. I don't know how Ogletree missed that gate to begin with and how they didn't realize their mistake when they were between the two gate boats. I'm not saying I would do better! Just pointing out that this is a lot of new stuff to everyone involved.
