Staying In the Loop- April 2022

Team Black Tidey 49er FX

2 International regattas this month and our first sail on the new rigs – a pretty full on month with a ton of learning!

PALMA REGATTA

We headed back out to Palma for a lead into our first international event together. After a few days of training on our goals (especially some windy gybing that came in very handy for the event!) we were very excited to get racing, with of course a few nerves added in.
Our goals for the event/ focuses on to debrief:

Starting: Holding station under pressure, Triggers, Settle success
Comms around the racecourse. Anything to flag of uncertainty

A little summary of the event:
Day 1 brought us some breeze! 15-20knts off-shore shifty and gusty definitely made for some interesting racing! 3 solid results and keeping the mast in the sky made for an amazing start to the regatta.
A complete change of conditions for day 2- 6-8knts offshore, slight chop. To put a 2^nd of the scorecard in a 6-8ish day was really cool. After little training in light winds, we were really pleased to score a 2^nd. It gave us confidence in ourselves for our feel and problem solving in this condition. It then picked up to 15knts for the second race of the day. Unfortunately, we had a swim in this race and finished 20^th. Next up, gold fleet racing!
The washing machine had been turned on for day 3 with 15-17knts. 4 races planned, it was going to be a big day out. We scored a 4,3,13,8 with plenty of points left out on the water due to our boat handling not being quite there yet for the correct racing winning decisions. A great day on the water.
A challenging day 4 for us. Late to the racecourse after a postponement saw us lacking information and not being confident on our boat set up. A 15^th and a 5^th put us in 8^th overall making the medal race. Unfortunately, due to a protest after a port ww mark approach, we were disqualified from the last race, dropping us to 11^th overall and missing out on the medal race.
A disappointing end to the week after some great racing but we learnt a lot and we were very happy with our progress throughout.

HOME FOR 10 DAYS

We were luckily enough to come home to a forecast of light winds and not freezing temperatures to get out on the new kit for two days with Adam and Sid. It was great to see the kit and start the learning. Two very productive days.

HYERES REGATTA

We flew out for a short lead into Hyeres for the French Olympic week.
Day 1 brought us two races in 15-20knts, another breezy start to a event. A 12^th and a 3^rd was a solid start to the regatta. Day 2 was a challenging day for us. After rounding the ww marks in pretty much top 5 every race, we struggled downwind and lost a lot of points. The new style kit was definitely quicker downwind making decisions pretty hard. It was a hard day to swallow after so many promising moments as a team. Oh day 3! Most of the day was spent in the protest room then on the water! Two races with bad starts ended with average results and one final good race saw us just sneak into gold fleet. Unfortunately two incidences, one from lacking boat handling (for which we did spins) and one of a judgement call, caught us up in two protests. Silver fleet racing for us but still with lots of learning to be had. After a solid reset, we came out fighting with two bullets on day 4. No more racing for the week due to no wind. A difficult event for us but these events have been all about the learning.
WHATS NEXT?
We are home for two very busy months. Tuning on the new kit, back to the gym for a fitness block and getting our new boat ready to send to the worlds (thank you to GRP!) are all on the cards. It is great to have the support of Adam and the SSsM team around us and we really appreciate it to make these months very productive.
Last but not least, we would like to announce a new sponsor coming on board- Mainbrace Rum. We are really excited about this opportunity and if anyone wants to try some, please let us know for a discount code 😉