Steve Clark did a "nearly flawless" job as PRO and kept the line nice and square and just long enough so that you had to work to be in the front row, or get flushed out the back.
here's one of your shots with the night-time in the daytime filter removed! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Would love too but I'm whooped out of time this week...I used Google's Picasa (free download) and have found that it generally does a really good and fast job at correcting colors and brightness. I let it do an auto adjust and then brought up the fill light...voila!
Nice shots by the way! The images are dark but there is plenty of color data there to clean them up.
Jake, I've got a light brown Sunpack 1a fitler on the lens, is that what made them dark? Or is it a camera setting? I dont know if Bernard was using my lens or his when he shot those pictures.
By the way, the amazing thing about the the Bristol fleet is that they all, 16 of them, have some sort of world or national title. Add in Struble, and a couple more in this race and you have to get 2/3 down the guys racing to find the guys without national or world titles in sailing.
Lars was asked "How do I get as good as you?" He said "Sail every day for 12 years and then practice some more."
Tough to think about breaking into the top ranks of the fleet when Stuble comes in 3rd. And he would have come in 4th or 5th if Cogan hadnt capsized on the last upwind leg. Its a hyper competitive fleet when Matt has to catch a lucky break to come in 3rd.
Also noteworthy was that Lars didnt win EVERY single race. His last north american, he won every race. Not sure if the fleet is getting better (hard to comprehend) or if he had an off weekend.
Someone said that they were watching the fleet and everytime someone turned their head back and forward they lost a boat legnth on the leaders.
Anyway, it was fun, I didnt hurt myself or anyone else, didnt break anything, didnt get arrested, and had a fun weekend, so it was a success.
I really don't know much about cameras .. but I do know that, once corrected, the blue hues in your images look great (to me)...that could be due to the filter. I haven't any idea where to start looking for the darkness issue. I would start experimenting with a notepad recording an array of settings with experimenting shots and see what happens - but that's probably because I don't know much about what fixes what.
Props to the gang in Bristol for an awesome event. I'd never been to a Clambake -- can we do that part again? Although I think it may have been a conspiracacy to further enlarge / slow down my already rather large butt.
My only suggestion would be that the Bristol guys quit sailing so much and being so damn fast...
Looks like the kids sacrificed all their wind for you last week, then.
I was one of the PROs for the three-day Jr. Olympic regatta, also hosted by Bristol YC. We got "puffs" of 5.5 knots on Wednesday. Tuesday was lighter. On Thursday, we had 4.5 knots until we tried to set up a course, then we floated in under 2 knots and the kids swam all day on Ohio Ledge waiting for the sea breeze that never happened. The Opti green fleet got a "race" in with 3.5 knots.
