[Public-list] Practice day on 4/21

[J Bergquist]

Fellow Alberg 30 Racers,

If you are receiving this multiple times, I apologize. I want to make sure
that it gets to everybody, not just the racers.

As I announced at last Saturday's racing seminar, I will be organizing a
racing practice session for 4/21 which is the Saturday before the NOOD. My
goals for the practice are as follows:

1. Give everybody an opportunity to get on the water and work out the kinks
from not having been sailing over the winter.
2. Give less experienced racers an opportunity to baseline and hone their
skills in a low-stress environment where we are all friendly and working
together.
3. Foster and maintain the wonderful attitude of friendly competitiveness
among the A30 racing community through on-water communication and knowledge
sharing.
4. Help to raise the performance bar across the board to make the racing
more competitive and more fun for everybody involved.
5. Boost turnout for the NOOD by lowering the barrier to entry and getting
people enthused about going racing.

Pursuant to these goals, I would like the practice session to incorporate
the following particular elements:

1. Get experienced racers sailing with the less experienced with the
explicit goal of knowledge transfer.
2. Use drills to give people opportunities to work on specific areas where
they feel improvement is needed.
3. Communicate actively via VHF and cell phone to share knowledge and help
others to improve.
4. If possible, utilize a powerboat to facilitate rotation of people from
one boat to another with the goal of maximizing the amount of mixing that
goes on between coaches and crews.

There are 2 main areas where we can focus: boat speed, and boat handling.
Boat speed practice will mostly involve set up, sail trim, and technique for
both upwind and downwind sailing. Drills for boat speed basically involve
lining up boats together and sailing on the same tack for enough time to
determine who is going faster and why. Boat handling practice involves going
through the exercises of performing sail changes, turning the boat, tacking,
gybing, rounding marks, etc. I think that having a mix of both elements will
be good for everybody, but I would like to get input from interested parties
so if you have specific items you want to work on, please let me know.

There are 2 possible ways that you can contribute to the practice session:

1. Participate as a skipper or crew member.
2. Participate as a coach.

Please contact me off-list (by responding to me at jbergqui at gmail.com) to
indicate if you are interested in participating and if so, how. When you
respond, please include a list of specific items that you would like to
focus on. For example, if you always have problems dousing the spinnaker,
indicate that. Or if you feel that your upwind speed is just not as good as
other people's, indicate that. Also if you have particular suggestions about
schedule etc, let me know about them too.

My general plan is to organize a 10 AM rendezvous somewhere in or just
outside Annapolis harbor with the plan of being tied up back at the dock by
4 or 5 PM. If you want to join later or leave early that is fine. The goal
is to maximize participation and fun - not to stick to any hyper-specific
schedule.

If you cannot make this particular session, I do believe that there will be
other organized sessions through the year, so this is probably not the only
time that we will do this.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Kind regards,

J Bergquist
Calliope #287