Helicopter Assisted Sailing

Had a great week in Coronado for the PCCs. It was the first time I'd sailed with the good US guys, and it was an awesome learning experience. It seemed like that boat was going ok, most of my issues were in my boathandling and not boatspeed, which is encouraging, I even managed to sneak into the top ten a few times. I pulled of my first foiling gybe ever sailing out for the first race on Friday, and managed to make more gybes upright and foiling than not over the course of the weekend. I'm going to try do do as much sailing as I can while everyone is off to Hawaii and then the Worlds so that I can be up to speed when the boats get back.

The conditions through the week were a mix of lowriding and foiling, but overall you couldn't ask for better during the winter. The thing that made the whole experience was the Coronado locals, with Charlie hosting a great dinner and organizing the regatta, and the Henkens providing housing to half the fleet as well as their usual amazing hospitality.

I've progressively cranked on the angle of attack on the mainfoil and have been foiling more and more bow down as a result. The rudder is longer than the daggerboard, which seems to be a good call, as the rudder has yet to ventilate even at extreme bow down angles. The boat is definitely more draggy when lowriding, bringing to mind thoughts of on the fly mainfoil angle of attack adjustment... The fact that I don't have a dial to take off flap angle when lowriding doesn't help much either. These issues have started a lot of thinking about different wand linkage systems, but I'm going to try to stay pretty conventional while I figure out how to actually sail the boat

It was cool to see how the guys have developed their light air foiling technique. I think it made the light air races much more interesting, and it would be a shame to make everyone sit perfectly still and lowride when they could be flying. I managed to get a nice boost from one of the Marine helicopters that was circling around the racecourse. In pretty much lowriding conditions, it left what felt like a 15-20 knot puff behind it which needless to say, easily popped you up on foils. Maybe I've found my perfect light air foil technique, the fuel bills could get expensive though.