Timbo and myself are trying to get together a small F16 clinic on Oct 7 and 8. The location is his backyard! yes you heard that right. His pool is Lake Jackson.

From what I have heard its an excellent location for sailing.

Boats that are confirmed are:
Wilder Robles - Blade 701
Pete Pollard - Blade 702
Terry Back - Blade 703
Seth Stern - TF16

Tim, will be mark setter, RC.

Our intentions are to have some mockup races and discuss what works and what does not. Its pretty much just to go out sailing for fun, and help eachother out.

Hotel information. I talked to them and they informed me we can launch from their location. They do charge an extra five dollars to park trailers on their property.

Sunset Beach Motel
2221 SE Lakeview Dr, Sebring, FL
(863) 385-6129

Venue with hotels

You can park the trailers on my property for free, and you can also leave your boats and launch from here but you will have to drive 3 miles around the lake from the motel to my house. If you would rather have all your stuff in one place then you would want to keep it at the motel. The free beer will be at my house however, and on the comittee boat!

You guys should do so fleet sailing.

Line up next to eachother with enough enough space between the boats to all have clean air and then all sail in one direction for 10 minutes or so. find out who is fastest on that leg and true to copy his speed (settings) and stay level with him.

That way you'll learn heaps

Wouter

Bringing this back up to conversation.

Wouter, thanks for the post. What else can we do in order to help eachother improve?
First thing I want to compare vs other boats is:
Rudder allignments
Mast rake
Rudder rake
Outhaul/downhaul/mainsheet settings
Mast rotation.
What else can we look at boats and compare to see what is faster than what?
Also what type of fleet drills can we perform, in order to have maximum gains.

I really want to concentrate on what we will be there for, which is making our boats go faster.

Seing how I am unable to edit my initial post.
Updated list of attendees.
Wilder Robles - Blade 701
Pete Pollard - Blade 702
Terry Back - Blade 703
Seth Stern - TF16
Matt McDonald - Blade 7??

This is going to be awesome, over a month away and I cannot wait.

We might as well invite the entire world! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Wouter, you got a couple days free?

I grew up in Sebring and can't recommend the area highly enough for a laid-back, family type get away. Lake Jackson is a big sandy bottomed lake with gentle slope and clear water. Back in the day, ANYBODY could catch bass there, any day of the year.

So, hose the boat off, pack up the kids and come on over! We'll get acquainted, maybe roast some dogs and do some sailing.

Robi,

you also want to look at crew positioning, helming technique, pre-bend, sail cuts, shroud tension and jib-traveller. Finally, the age/condition of sails can be important if you lack windward ability (or downwind speed under spi).

I am writting all this down, keep em comming.

The most important factor in finishing position is how well you start. Fleet drills should include starts. Rick's Sailing Seminars spend alot of time on controlling the boat in the start box. Doing those types of drills are very helpful in improving your performance. The best starter gets clean air, i.e., more horsepower. I read a book 25 years ago ("Welcome to A-Fleet"?) that said "Your finishing position will be your starting position, give or take 10%". I believe that catamarans allow for more than 10% variation, but it is a good rule of thumb.

I agree. After doing a fair bit of intense teams racing and match racing training (in dinghies), I recommend lots of starts and short(ish) courses, say 10 mins for two windward leeward laps (for cats), then do it all again.

Reasons for this is that it keeps all the boats close enough together to enable boat speed and boat handling comparisons to be made. If the courses are any longer, boats get too far apart to make valid judgements (problems with viewing distance and different winds).

Personally I would concentrate on boat handling (accelerating fast after manoeuvring/starts) more than boat speed as you can make 5-10m gains with good tacks, mark roundings, sets and drops. Do those 10-15 times a race and you can see that it adds up significantly.

I find that with boat handling practice comes a feel for your boat and with it will come good boat speed.

Please note that short course training is not meant to be comfortable, it will make you work hard and concentrate hard which will be good for your sailing. It will also force you to keep your eyes out of the boat, crew looking at wind and boats, skipper looking at wind and waves, which will again make you feel your boat rather than analyse it.

Nick, I agree that short courses with lots of starts will work you out and improve your boat handling. One problem with spin. cat though, if you make it a short windward leg, then downwind with the spin. is really going to be short, Put it up, gybe, take it down. So we might have to go a little more upwind if you want any time at all to practice trimming the spin going downwind. OR, we could do a bunch of short start only type courses, then after 10 starts, do a longer course for the downwind work.

Seperate exercises...

Do lots of starts and short beats and the "race" stops at the top mark; everyone then gets back for the next ineration of the start seq.

Then another exercise is the "speed" sailing;

Then some G+T exercises (gybe and tack every 20-30 seconds) on a sound signal.

If you are going to do all this, definately do as Simon say and split it into sections. If you have two days available, speed tuning and boathandling could be one day, and starting + some short regattas for day two. Some G+T sounds like an excellent idea, but dont overdo it and dont start on them til you are back on the beach <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Well I think it would be a great opportunity to learn to sail with a spinnaker sheet in one hand and a G+T in the other! "Shaken, not stirred" <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

And water out a perfectly good G+T?? Have you tought this trough? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Seriously, for me being on the water and alcohol dont mix.

IMO you don't need 2 days.

These sessions have 2 major goals:

1, Speed

Show people that gains can be made with boat tuning - People go out for a short sail (30mins say) and go around a short course many times so everyone can see who is fast and who is slow(er), you get the "instructors" to tune peoples boats (and the people them selves - position for the given conditions etc) - easy in established classes where the "fast" numbers are already known, more difficult in development classes where "numbers" differ by builder / sails etc. But still it is possible to impove most peoples setup. You now introduce the concept of 2 boat tuning and explain how it works. The people go out again to (Hopefully) show that people are now closer in speed. Now people start 2 (or more) boat tuning and agree what setting to change for each leg etc. The main goal is to teach people how to 2 boat tune, not to make everyone 100% fast.


2, Boat handling

G+T's
Mark roundings
High and low wind kite hoists and drops
land practice; Plan out how you (and crew if applicable) do things etc.

One can be done before lunch, one after !

I think these sessions should be about giving people the tools to learn, not just learn at the session.

I fully agree with scooby and sparky here.

Indeed include alot of start sequences with a short upwind beat to a very near A-mark. The latter will show you how starting further down the line may be easier and less crowded but that the pay back is to be found later when you have to cross in front of the other boats who have right of way. If you can get the latter part right then starting further down the line can be a rather good start method.


Then indeed after doing many starts do an hour or two of straight lien sailing, perfecting sail trim and optimizing "course to speed" finding the best vmg for both upwind and downwind legs.

Then later again, do a bout of synchronized fleet sailing where each 30 seconds you do tacks (or gybes) Notice how some boats will start to walk away from you very quickly when you don't got these manouvres down.

Maybe in between (lunch, dinner) discuss each segment in detail with eachother and find out why others are faster.

A weekend of this (with sufficient boats) will make you noticeably faster.

Wouter

Seriously, I will consider such a trip to Florida in the future. It will be either the Gulfport regatta or something like this. But I won't be doing it this year or in 2007. Both for reasons of finances and carreer. Both show good promise but I need a good 14 months to consilidate both. After that I'm free to go on adventures like this again.

So good luck to all and till later in the future.

Wouter

I always try to focus on just one or two things when going out to practice. Going trough a large number of subjects usually end in information overload in my experience.
Perhaps Mary has some wise words about this, with her experience in running seminars?

One thing that has not been mentioned yet: work together and share, do not turn a practice session into a competition. If you are practicing boathandling, do it right instead of bodging it while trying to do it faster than the others.