Jeff,
Yes time on the water is the best thing you can do for speed and handling but unless you are in large fleets or at least competitive fleets you're not going to learn much on tactics.
You may want to spend some time talk to Robbie about strategy and tactics. I learned mostly from competitive dinghy one design fleets such as Vanguard 15s, Lasers, and college sailing. In the absence of that, I would HIGHLY recommend picking up some reading material. I do a lot of Opti coaching and reccommend all my kids at read winning in one designs and later advanced racing tactics.
Dave Perry: Winning in One Designs (this was really my breakthrough when I was younger)
Stuart Walker: Advanced Racing Tactics
Stuart Walker: Tactics of Small Boat Racing
Dave Dellenbaugh: http://www.speedandsmarts.com/
The concepts from dinghies to F18s are very similar. Maybe not as much so in a less maneuverable boat like the Hobie 16 but still very similar.
My reccomendation would be focus on understanding:
-How to read the wind across the course and how to react to it.
-How to place yourself in the right place on the course to best be able to react to the wind.
-Fleet management. There is a lot you can learn on this and this generally takes sailing in big fleets to become instinctive. But constantly be thinking about how to get leverage over the other boats and if you can't gain leverage, make sure you are covering. Maximize gains and minimize losses, easy right?!
-How to place yourself on the course to better react to the wind better than all the other boats but not doing something so extreme you lose coverage on the majority of the fleet.
I'm not saying I'm an expert... but obviously Dalton and I did a pretty spot on job the first day of America's and it was using all the above basic principles. Yea it helped to have speed off the line and making sure we had option to go where we wanted, but we were constantly making small gains almost all the time. I just wish our tracker had been working!