Dave and Steve

It's shaping up to be an interesting weekend. I had to miss Laser frostbite sailing last Sunday because of my long-standing commitment to do some racing rules education at my other sailing club. When I first agreed to do this last fall I hadn't appreciated that the meeting would be on a Sunday in the frostbite season. Damn!

So first of all I should be Lasering on Sunday. Forecast is for 52 degrees and 12 knots of wind. Frostbiting doesn't get much better than that.

But before that, on Saturday, Cedar Point Yacht Club is hosting a tactics presentation by Dave Dellenbaugh. As the website says ...

Nationally recognized sailing expert David Dellenbaugh, author of "Speed and Smarts", will kick off our 2006 sailing season with a presentation entitled "Top Ten Tactical Tips". Dave's remarks will cover both tactics and strategy on the race course. He will also be available to answer all of your questions. We expect a few other surprises for the session, so stay tuned to the CPYC web site for updates.

I've never heard Dave speak before so I'm looking forward to it and hope to learn something. Actually I hope too learn a lot. Wonder what those "few other surprises" will be?

At the meeting of my other club last Sunday I picked up some old video tapes from the club library. They are of the 1995 America's Cup Defender Trials when Dave was tactician on the women's boat Mighty Mary. I have this fantasy that I will see him make some tactical error on the tape and then on Saturday I can ask him a question along the lines of, "You just said X but back in 1995 you did Y."

It's only a fantasy -- it's not really going to happen.

Then on Sunday, after racing, the Laser fleet at CPYC is hosting a seminar by Steve Cockerill. Steve is well known in the Laser sailing world as the winner of multiple UK national championships, owner of Rooster Sailing, and more recently for his Boat Whisperer DVDs. These contain some superb video footage of Lasers and other small singlehanders along with in-depth instruction from Steve on techniques for both upwind and downwind sailing.

In our post-race skippers' meeting and discussion a couple of weeks ago it emerged that our local fleet guru was recommending totally opposite techniques from Steve for boat-handling in certain situations so I'm looking forward to some lively discussion on those issues.

Who knows, these talks (and the sailing of course) might even generate some items to write about here next week.