Stamina

Laser sailors have stamina.

You need to be fit to race Lasers well. As I mentioned in Work, in moderate to strong winds the harder you work the faster you go. And to work hard for six, eight or ten mile-long beats in a day, you need stamina.

Stamina, or the lack of it, is my Achilles heel. My ability to race hard all day is not what it was 25 years ago. I'm an old dude now. I don't exercise as much as I should. I'm not as fit as I should be to race Lasers well.

I haven't raced in many regattas over the last couple of years. And I am signed up next month to race in the Laser Masters Worlds in England. Six days of racing in seven days. Up to twelve races in all. They say the winds will be strong.

I looked on the Buzzards Bay Regatta this year as practice -- and a bit of a test -- for England. Could I race hard for three consecutive days? Would I get tired and start to make stupid mistakes? Would I be totally shattered after each day? Would I have the stamina?

I had my doubts. My fitness program, such as it is, is mainly running. I had run a couple of half-marathons earlier in the year. But in the last few weeks I hadn't run much at all. First I was laid low by a vicious attack of the dreaded Man Cold. Then it was too damn hot to run much. I felt fat and lazy. I wasn't sure I had the stamina for BBR, let alone the Masters Worlds.

The first day of BBR was mainly a test of how many hours you could tolerate sitting around in 80+ degrees on a little fiberglass boat waiting for decent winds for racing. Quite tiring in its own way but hardly the challenge I was looking for.

Days two and three were the real thing. The classic Buzzards Bay breeze, 15-20 knots out of SSW. The RC gave us three leg windward-leeward courses. Two beats of about a mile or slightly less in each race. Four races on Saturday and three on Sunday. This was the test I was looking for. Would I have the stamina?

Yes and no.

The most common word I heard used by other sailors to describe the beats on Saturday and Sunday was "grind." They were hard work for sure.

My results on both days were very strange. Each day my finishes became progressively better as the day progressed. In the fifty boat fleet I finished in the 30's in the first race, mid 20's in the second, and around 20th in the third. How weird is that possum? What's going on?

I'm not sure. Maybe it took me a while to find my hiking groove? Maybe the winds were getting progressively stronger and that suited me better?

I think the best explanation is that I was subconsciously holding something in reserve in the first race, not going all out. Then I would work harder in the second race. And really put it all on the line in the third race. I've written before about how this trait is probably an unintended outcome of my running marathons a few years ago. Marathon running teaches you in the worst way imaginable that you had better start slow if you want to finish strong. It was certainly true that I was letting it all hang out on the final beat of the third race. And it worked. In the third race both days I was dueling with people I don't usually beat... and beating them.

Which brings me to the explanation of why I didn't sail the fourth race on Saturday. I could have done. I wasn't totally exhausted. But I felt like I had gone out to run a ten mile road race, pushed as hard as I could in the final mile, and finished in a time as well as I could have hoped for. Then someone invited me to run a three mile race just for fun. Right now. Ummm... no thanks.

I was sailing well in race three. I was in the groove. I was winning close battles. I was having fun. I felt that in a fourth race I would just be hacking round the course, not working as hard as I did in race three, not sailing particularly well. I have this theory that perfect practice makes for perfect execution. Practicing sailing badly is worse than not sailing at all. And BBR was really a practice regatta for the Worlds. So I called it a day after race three. Feel free to abuse me in the comments for wimping out.

Captain Judy said that I came in on Saturday with a big smile on my face. I probably did. I felt that I had raced as well as I possibly could. I had passed the test. I had raced the Buzzard.

So I discovered something about my stamina. I am fit enough to race six mile-long beats in a day. I am fit enough to race three days in a row. But I need to be fitter to be able to race four or five races in a day and not just three. I need to be fitter to race as hard in every race as I raced on the final beat of the third race on Saturday and Sunday. I need more stamina.

Stamina. How to get it. That could be the subject of several more posts.

Laser sailors, "Have stamina!"

Sea Level

Sea level.

Everyone is familiar with the term "sea level." We all know what it means. Or do we?

Of course sailors know that the sea isn't really level. There are waves and tides and wind surges and storm runoffs and all sorts of other factors that affect the level of the sea. So we use "mean sea level", the average height of the ocean, often measured as the halfway point between the mean high tide and the mean low tide. Then we can measure tides and surges in relation to mean sea level, usually only a few feet up and down.

So mean sea level is.... ummm level. The same height all over the earth. Right?

Well, not exactly. It all depends on what you mean by "height". The variation in the distance of the mean sea level of the ocean as measured from the center of the earth varies by many miles from place to place. Yes... miles.

It's all because of the earth's rotation. The earth isn't a perfect sphere. It's an oblate spheroid. It bulges at the equator. You knew that, right?

The land bulges. The sea bulges. So what if we could magically make the seas and oceans really level? For example, what would happen if the earth stopped spinning one day? No more centrifugal force. No more bulging. Over time, the earth’s shape would approximate a perfect sphere, but the most immediate readjusting would be done by the oceans which currently bulge as much as 5 miles at the equator.

The picture at the top of this post (shamelessly stolen from Strange Maps) shows what the map of the earth's continents and oceans would look like if the earth stood still and the seas leveled themselves out. Goodbye Canada, Russia and Europe. Hello to an equatorial megacontinent ringing the globe and two polar oceans.

You could drive around the world on land. I guess some record breaking circumnavigators would eventually bike it, walk it or run it. Leaving aside the issue of what wind patterns there might be on a non-rotating earth, you couldn't do a sailing circumnavigation any more, at least not in the sense of a route that crosses the equator and crosses every meridian. The best you could do would be to sail a circuit of the Southern Ocean or a similar route crossing every meridian in the new Northern Ocean at the latitude of the USA/Canadian border.

How strange is that possum?

Of Cars, Coffee, Catholics and Cardio

We Tivertonians are a diverse lot. We worship at many different altars on a Sunday morning, but it seems like we all go to our sundry shrines in our cars.

As I drove south along Main Road this Sunday morning there were cars parked solidly along both sides. The first crowd clearly belonged to the Catholics who were all safely inside St. Christopher's Church for their 9:30 Mass as I drove by their empty cars. There sure were a lot of them. It's a little known fact that there are only two US states where more than 50% of the population claim adherence to the same religious denomination. One is Utah (Mormons); the other is Rhode Island (Catholics).

A little further along, the main cause of congestion was the cars of the coffee addicts getting their fix at our local coffee shop, Coastal Roasters. They have an outside seating area where you can sip your morning joe and watch the boats on the Sakonnet River. I drove carefully past here. You never know when one of the worshipers of the bean, all juiced up with java, will jump out between the parked cars into the traffic.

The congestion eased just south of the old Stone Bridge. The Episcopalians were at worship too but they do not seem to be as numerous as the Catholics. Or perhaps they just have a larger off-the-road car park.

I turned right into Nannaquaket Road and parked by the bridge. Time for my own personal addiction, my worship at the shrine of the cardio. A gentle four mile run around the back of Nannaquaket Pond and further down Main Road to Seapowet Avenue. Getting my running fix.

I drove north again after my run. As I carefully negotiated my way through the two lines of parked cars outside Coastal Roasters an elderly couple started wandering across the road in front of me. They weren't looking my way. They didn't seem to hear me. I stopped to let them cross. The woman must have sensed my presence and turned her head and saw me just before she completed her crossing. But the old dude kept ambling along at a snail's pace completely oblivious to the fact that he was stopping all the traffic. I gave him a cheery wave as I (eventually) drove past him. Honest. All five fingers.

We Tivertonians are a diverse lot. We respect each other's different forms of Sunday morning worship. The bread and the wine. The roasted bean. Bashing the pavement. Though if that old dude had actually been imbibing in Coastal Roasters I don't think much of the stimulative effects of their coffee.

Long Tack

Laser sailors sail the long tack first.

Well, the smart ones do anyway. It's conventional racing advice, something to do with maximizing your chance of gains and minimizing your chance of losses based on probability theory, non-Euclidean geometry, and the collected wisdom of Stuart Walker, Paul Elvstrom and some guy who I met in a bar in Sydney. I never quite understood the logic but I guess it makes sense to keep the pointy end aiming more or less where you want to go (the windward mark) instead of further away from it.

The first day of BBR last weekend was very frustrating. I blew the first race due to sheer incompetence. See Plan. You stupid boy!

Then we hung around for a few hours as the wind died and shifted around pretty much all points of the compass. I did drop hints to the race committee from time to time that instead of drifting around aimlessly in Buzzards bay we could be ashore boosting the bar revenues of Beverly Yacht Club, or that maybe they could order us some pizza... but they wisely ignored me.

Eventually a lightish breeze settled in just west of south and they got the Vanguard 15s started. Just before our start the breeze went left by about 40 degrees and I confidently expected the start to be postponed... but I was wrong. The starting signal sounded, the whole fleet flopped on to port tack (we could barely lay the line on starboard) and we were off.

Hmmm. Well this was pretty clearly one of those "long tack" situations so I stayed on port. I guess the wind did square up a bit to the original direction but it still seemed to me that I was pointing closer to the mark on port tack. Plus it looked like more pressure ahead on the right while the boats on the left seemed to be in even worse air than us. And so it was that about ten of us (out of a fleet of nearly fifty) kept going and going and going to Cornersville.

Not long after we tacked on to starboard a tad below the layline a huge righty shift came in and we could reach in to the mark. Woo hoo, top ten at the first mark at BBR. The guys coming in from the left on a huge header didn't look like they were shouting, "Woo hoo!"

The wind eventually went so far right that the "run" was now a close reach. There seemed to be a lot of confusion down at the leeward gate. The Radials hadn't started yet and some were drifting around near the gate. There were some horns sounding. I couldn't see what flag was flying. Had the RC abandoned the race? It would not be surprising if they had.

But no. We were still racing and the RC was signalling a change of course to a new windward mark, roughly in the same direction as it was for the morning race. Somehow on the "run" and on the final beat I dropped a few places but I still finished comfortably in the top twenty, with what would turn out to be my best finish of the regatta.

If I had been a PHRF sailor I would probably have gone to Sailing Anarchy and written some long abusive post about the supposed sins of the Race Committee. But, thank god, I am not one of those mean, angry dudes. I am a laid-back easy-going Laser sailor. I assumed that our Race Committee felt that completing two races on a day when the winds weren't very cooperative was better for the sailors that only doing one race and blowing off the second one in a vain search for perfection. Thank you Race Committee. Good call.

Laser sailors, "Sail the long tack first!"

Plan

Laser sailors plan.

Well, if you're a racing sailor and you want to do well in a race then you sure as hell ought to develop some kind of plan before each race. Where do you want to be on the start line? What's your strategy for the first beat? Are you going to go right or left or play the shifts up the middle? Tide, current, wind pressure, wind shifts are all stuff that will help you to create your game plan.

As for me, I'm pretty bad at this part of the game. The first race at BBR on Friday was a case in point.

The fleet launched in an extremely light northerly zephyr for a long, long, drift down Sippican Harbor to the racing circle almost three miles away. It was frigging hot. I was already sweating like a pig at 9 o'clock in the morning. After what seemed like a couple of hours we arrived at the race course and hung around waiting for the breeze to build and maybe settle into some sort of consistent direction. It felt like it was going to be a long day. Did I tell you it was hot?

Eventually the race committee laid a course and a start line in a light north-westerly breeze coming off the shore. I was feeling lazy in the heat. I looked up the course. What's the wind doing? I had no idea. Looked pretty much the same all over the course to me.

Some sailors were sailing up the course before the race, checking out the wind pressure and the shifts and all that good stuff it says you're supposed to do in the books. I was feeling lazy. Did I tell you it was hot? I thought it made more sense to conserve my energy for a long day of racing than go hacking all over the course before the first race. So I lolled in the boat and drank some Gatorade.

My friend Captain Judy came sailing by. She was one of those keen types that had been sailing the beat, doing their research.

"So, what's your game plan?" she asked. (She is a high school sailing coach so she's probably asking her students stuff like this all the time.)

"Ummm. Plan? I don't have one," I replied.

Now I was feeling inadequate as well as unprepared. Then I thought to myself, "Hey, even if I'm too lazy to work out my own plan, I can always steal hers."

So I asked her, "What's your game plan?"

"Go left," she said. "It feels like there's more pressure over there."

Woo hoo. Aren't friends wonderful? Now I had a plan and I hadn't had to expend any physical or mental effort to create it.

I can't really recall what happened after that. Maybe I was dehydrated. Maybe I should have drunk more Gatorade. I had a terrible race and only beat a handful of other boats. It was ugly.

After the race I asked all my friends how they had done. They had all had good results. And when I asked them how they did it they all said, "I got a good start and went left."

Me, I got a bad start and went right. What was I thinking?

What we have here is a failure to plan. And a failure to execute a plan even after I had stolen one.

Oh well, things can only get better in the next race. Surely. Can't they?

Laser sailors, "Plan!"

Travel

Laser sailors travel.

We travel to regattas (as they call them in America) or to "open meetings" as we used to call them in Real English in the old country.

Sooner or later most dinghy racers become tired of racing against the same old people around the same old buoys on the same old stretch of water. They decide to spread their wings and sail a regatta at the club in the next town, and then maybe try their hand at the district championship. Sometimes the travel bug strikes so bad that they drive halfway across the country to race in their National Championships, or head south in the winter for the Midwinters, or even travel abroad to international events.

I think Laser sailors travel more than many other classes, partly because it's so easy to transport a Laser, partly because of the sheer number of events to choose from in such a popular class, and partly because of the frequent availability of Lasers to charter at more distant regattas.

There are many reasons to travel to regattas. Variety. Meeting new people. Sailing against better competition. Experiencing different sailing conditions. There's no doubt that if you want to improve as a racer you really have to travel.

After my crazy attempt to sail my Laser 100 days in 2008 when I traveled all over the place, I've been pretty lazy about sailing in regattas over the last couple of years. I had all sorts of excuses. The weather forecast doesn't look too promising. I might have to get up early. It's too far to drive. I hate staying in crummy motels. There's too much waiting around and not enough sailing at regattas. I would rather play with my grandkids. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I had forgotten the real reason I used to travel to regattas. They are (usually) so much damn fun.

Last weekend I sailed my Laser in the Buzzards Bay Regatta. Hardly travel really as it's only half an hour down the road. It was a three day event, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Part of my motivation for going was that I am signed up for the Laser Masters Worlds in England next month and I thought it was about time I got some serious regatta practice in, not to mention checking out whether I am still even fit enough to race hard for three consecutive days. (The Worlds format is three days racing, a lay day, followed by three more days of racing - weather permitting.)

I was not disappointed by BBR (as everyone calls it.) Friday was a bit of bust with one light wind race, then a lot of waiting around, and then a second race with two huge shifts. But Saturday and Sunday were awesome. The kind of days that you come to Buzzards Bay for. A strong breeze of 15-20 knots, a little west of southerly, for all seven races on those two days. Gut-busting, leg-trembling, hard-hiking grinds upwind and plenty of waves to ride downwind. There were capsizes. There were breakages. There were retirements. And for those who could handle it, there was lots of fun and plenty of close competition.

That guy was there. The other guy was there. Many other old friends of mine were there. If I can summon up the energy after an exhilarating but exhausting weekend, I will write several more posts about my experiences at BBR 2010 over the next few days.

I came. I saw. I sailed the Buzzard.

Laser sailors travel. But as Frank Sinatra said, "It's so nice to go traveling but it's so much nicer to come home." When I arrived home on Sunday evening after the regatta there was a very pleasant surprise waiting for me. My son and his wife and their three kids were paying us a surprise visit on their way home from Cape Cod. My daughter-in-law and my grandkids stayed over at our house on Sunday night so I had the best of both worlds: three days of Laser racing and a whole day playing with my grandkids!

Life is good.

Laser sailors, "Travel!"

Work

Laser sailors work harder.

Tuesday night racing this week delivered the best winds this summer so far. A solid 15-20 knots out of the SW that held up all evening. Sadly, only five of us were there to enjoy it.

The first couple of races I found myself off the pace upwind and I was fourth in both races. Before the third race the wind picked up a tad more and I told myself, "You're tall, you're heavy, just hike your socks off and blow them all away." (OK, you're the oldest sailor here too (by far) but just forget that.)

So I reached down to the rabbit, hardened up around his transom and started hiking and working the boat like a demon. I channeled all those videos of "real" Laser sailors torquing the boat through chop, throwing my upper body out and back on every significant wave. Coach Rulo at Cabarete told me that one of my faults was that I was "too quiet" in the boat upwind. Well, I wasn't "quiet" in this race. It certainly felt fast. Surely all this work must be worth it? After a minute or two I was huffing and puffing with all the effort. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that I was sailing faster and higher than all the other boats and that I could easily cross them. Another minute or so of a-hiking and a-torquing and a-huffing and a-puffing and I tacked, crossing the fleet easily. I arrived at the windward mark in first place. Woo hoo.

It must have been windier than the first two races because halfway down the run I heard a splash and looked back to see that my closest competitor had death-rolled. Woo hoo again. I surfed down to the finish winning the race by the largest margin that evening.

One sailor went home after the second race (broken tiller) and another packed it in after the third race (tired.) And then there were three.

I lost count of how many more races we sailed after that. The wind strength held up and in every race we were close at the windward mark and close at the finish. Perfect winds. Hard close racing. Race after race after race. Great training.

And so I confirmed what all the books say and all the coaches say. If you want to go fast upwind in moderate to heavy winds and chop, then you have to hike hard and work the boat. The harder you work the faster you go. Simple really.

Laser sailors, "Work harder!"

The Finger

I don't know if my 6-week-old grandson Owen will grow up to be a sailor, but he has already perfected one of the essential gestures that all sailors should master.

Feeling

Laser sailors have feelings.

Esteemed blogger O Docker published a typical wise and eloquent post yesterday in which he compared the merits Of Big Boats and Little Boats.

Briefly...

Big boat - big enough to sleep on and to drink distilled and fermented spirits on after sailing.

Little boat - one sail, one tiller, one sheet - feeling better - better feel.

He concludes, "For my wife and me there will be more days of feeling things in the little boat. I think that's really what little boats are all about."

Feeling things?

Yes.

Sailing a Laser is all about feeling things.

Yesterday I went for a sail on the Sakonnet River off Fogland Point in my little boat, my Laser. The wind was a steady southerly at 13-16 knots, enough to stir up a few whitecaps and generate some juicy rolling waves.

I concentrated on feeling things.

Upwind I was feeling the pressure of the deck on my calves and my thighs as I experimented with how hard I could hike. How does it feel with knees slightly bent, or locked straight? With toes pointing up, or out straight? What's the difference in feel when I tighten the outhaul a tad and crack off a couple more degrees? How does the speed feel if I work through the waves with a lot of upper body movement, or a quieter style?

Downwind I was feeling the pressure on my tiller hand when sailing at different angles of heel. Where is the sweet spot when the helm goes neutral? How does it feel to sit further forward, further back, to move forward and back as I go over the waves? How does the tension in the sheet feel as I bear off to sailing more and more by the lee?

Sailing little boats is all about feelings. I am pretty sure that feel is the secret to boat speed. I hope it is.

Before I went sailing yesterday I was feeling shitty. My younger son came to see us three weeks ago and confessed that he had what he called "walking pneumonia." Whatever it was, I caught it. Tillerwoman caught it. We both felt like shit. I call it The Man Cold. I didn't run for two weeks. I didn't sail for two weeks. I hadn't seen my grandchildren for three weeks. I felt miserable. I felt sorry for myself.

At the weekend I thought I was feeling better. Then on Monday, I felt worse. On Tuesday I felt even worser.

I thought to myself, "F*** it. I might as well go sailing. It couldn't make me feel any worse. Kill or cure."

So I went sailing. Concentrated on feeling good things in the boat, instead of the bad feelings in my head and my chest.

Last night I felt even more like shit.

Today I feel a lot better. Thank you for asking. This evening I will go sailing again. Tomorrow I will go and see my grandkids.

Is Laser sailing the cure for The Man Cold? Probably not, although perhaps the Sakonnet River salt water nasal sprays helped clear my sinuses. But I'm pretty sure that Laser sailing is a cure for feeling sorry for myself.

It's all about feelings.

Laser sailors, "Have feelings!"

Bananas

Laser sailors eat bananas.

Or at least Laser sailors should eat bananas, according to an article by Evan Lewis H.B.KIN., CSCS, CK in the latest issue of our class magazine The Laser Sailor.

(I have no idea what all those letters after Evan's name mean, but I am impressed by them.)

The article is titled 10 Power Foods to Boost Performance This Summer. Wow! That's what I need. Power foods. Some of them don't sound very appetizing though. Quinoa. What the hell is that? Tillerwoman tells me it is pronounced Keen Wah. Tillerwoman knows about that kind of stuff. It's a seed, apparently.

As well as other unappealing "power foods" such as flax seed (ugh), Evan recommends bananas. "Great nutritional value... mix of complex and simple carbohydrates that provide both rapid and sustained energy..."

I like bananas. I eat a lot of bananas. I usually take a banana or two with me when I go sailing and eat them before and/or after sailing. I have even seen Laser sailors with a couple of bananas duct-taped to their mast so that they can eat them between races. But some sailors are superstitious about bananas on a boat.

My father hated bananas. He wouldn't touch them. When I asked him why, he explained that it was because, when he was in West Africa during World War II, he saw (and smelled) huge piles of bananas rotting on the beaches, and for ever after the sight of a banana nauseated him.

Evan Lewis H.B.KIN., CSCS, CK says that "bananas are an excellent source of potassium, which is an electrolyte needed for proper muscle function that is lost in sweat."

Hmmm. I sweat a lot. I am a prolific sweater. I am an embarrassingly prolific sweater.

Whenever I partake in any vigorous exercise the sweat pours out of me. Even standing outside an a moderately warm day can stimulate my sweat glands into hyper-action.

Earlier this year I joined a running club and started doing their weekly five mile runs on Thursday evenings. Part of the attraction, I admit, was the prospect of beer and pizza after the runs. I was really looking forward to hanging out with other old geezer runners over beer and pizza.

The first week I did the run and went to the pub for beer and pizza. I was sweating. I was sweating a lot. I couldn't stop sweating. I sat in the pub chatting over beer and pizza to the other old geezers while desperately mopping up sweat and trying not to drip too much sweat in my beer and on my pizza and on the other old geezers. It was awful. Even thirty minutes after the run I was still sweating profusely. Not one of the other old geezers was sweating like me. I am an outlier on the "propensity to sweat" scale.

So now I still do the runs but I skip the trip to the pub. Instead I just sit on a towel and sweat in the car on the drive home with the AC on full blast.

Where was I? Where am I?

Oh yes. Bananas. Potassium.

I figure that if I sweat out a lot of potassium then it's a good thing that bananas are an excellent source of potassium. After all, I certainly need some of that "proper muscle function" that Evan writes about. A lot of my problems sailing a Laser are caused by lack of proper muscle function.

I like bananas. I eat a lot of bananas.

Laser sailors, "Eat bananas."