Looking at your sailing resume very impresive(Olympic silver medal)
How have you found the adjustment from a 470 to the hobie 16.Would you be receptive to answering some technique questions,eiter on this site or through e mail
Mike

Hey Thunder Bay
How’d you figure that out?
I’ll always answer technical questions. I even promise to make something up if I don’t know the real answer.

sailing seasons over here ,too soon to flood the outdoor rink,so I guess I just have too much time on my hand.While i have your attention what is your take on what N.A. sailors have to work on to get us up to pace with the Europeans and Austrailians.Do you think they have a boat speed advantage on us.Do you see many N.A sailors sailing with one rudder up upwind,seems all the top international sailors do.I race out of division 7 some real good 16 sailors but none of them use this technique.Having just competing at the contentials,what were some of the observations of the top guys including yourself.appreciate any input
thanks
Mike

We sailed our first international Hobie regatta this summer in Mexico at the Cummins Cup. The level of competition was about the same as Continentals. We haven’t sailed against any Euros or Australians in the 16 yet. We are planning on going to the Worlds in May so that will be our trial by fire.
I haven’t noticed the upwind rudder up thing making a difference yet. At continentals some guys were doing it, and some were not, to no clear advantage either way as far as I could tell. My theory is as follows: At continentals everyone has their own boat and the top guys make sure the toe in is just right, so the rudder up is not critical. At a regatta like Worlds or the Pan Am games where you don’t have time to get the toe in perfect, as you switch boats between races, you need to get the windward rudder up and out of the way. That’s my working theory but I still consider myself a freshman on the H-16. At any rate I’m practicing my technique for getting the rudder and down on the tacks so at least I can choose.

Was there anyone at the cont. with superior boatspeed. I understand that at the Pan Ams Figiuera was light speed ahead of everyone.Has there been any talk of getting some of the top N.A. together for some boat speed testing.I don,t know if you remember the Metcalfs from Australia but they use to do hours of one on one boat speed testng and dominated the hobie class for a number of years.I believe this is what it is going to take to be a contender at the worlds against guys like Colby,Keag.... unfortunatly for sailors like myself who are geographically isolated I have to practice by myself and rely on top sailors like yourself for tips.By the way Colby is on the Aust web site regularly answering questions about his tech.&tactics.

At the Continentals the Brazilians were light years ahead when it was super windy. We are working on getting some training dates together before the worlds. We’ll see how it works out.

any ideas why they were so much faster.Were they making up all there time up wind or down wind.was there set up radically different from the others or was it just technique

I tried to chat with them after the race but their English is about as good as my Spanish so it didn’t work out so well. Anyway, it looked like they were set up about the same as everyone else. The big difference I think is that they sail in big breeze all the time. The little things like comfort level go a long way.

Looking at the pictures from the cont. awards (if I have it figured out) the Brazillian team look like they are quite tall, which is a great advantage in leverage in heavy air.Most of the top Austailian sailors were tall and slim and also sailed in heavy air lots.seeing as most world sites are locations were there is usually good wind I think it is very important to be good in big wind conditions.Also the Aust. sail with a large amount of mast rake .if you look at some of the pictures, the end of the boom is almost on the back traveller.They also seem to trap further back on the boat and use some shoulder movment to almost torque the boat over the large waves