The past 4 days of sailing have been very productive working a lot on the same stuff everyday. It has been all work on boat handling and starts, which have always been a weak spot for me on the boat. It was extremely helpful because every other day has been different wind, and wind produced currents which forced me to start from scratch and tackle the conditions each day. The best way to look at this week is a crash course in competitive high performance catamaran racing. There has been a lot of information thrown at me at once with very little time to digest it all. It has been a good preparation for what is to come over the next 4 years as these kind of situations will come from different coaches and locals from the venues that we will be sailing at.
We worked on drills from as simple as tacking and follow the leader, to as complex as line judgement and layline judgement. It was a huge help to me because everything is different from an 8.5 foot boat to a 16 foot boat with an 8.5 foot beam. I noticed this not to long after getting on the boat the first time, but have never been at a high enough level with my boat handling to get into the more complex sides of sailing the boat.
Tomorrow starts the big half of the regatta, but just like Sunday, it looks too windy to race, with winds looking to be up in the 25-30 range and waves from 7-17 feet. As of right now, most of the boats are already planning on not going out and not risking 6,000 dollar masts and 25,000 dollar boats.