One of the best traditions of Newport's Laser frostbite fleet is the weekly words of wisdom, where the winner from the previous week shares a few tips on what was working for him. Hopefully we'll be able to do a similar thing with the J/24 fleet. Technically Anthony Kotoun didn't win the first night of sailing, losing on a tiebreaker to Charlie Enright's Rooster. But I didn't have the results at the time I sent the questions out and as a former world champion in the class, Kotoun is definitely no slouch. So I sent him three questions. Here are his repies.
Stuart Streuli: With a strong incoming tide and a moderate southerly, last night featured some very flat water on the bay. How do you adjust the set up of your boat for conditions where the water is flatter than expected for the wind speed?
Anthony Kotoun: We were at 24-21 but were overpowered and had 100-percent back stay on. Kind of got caught when the breeze increased there the last few minutes and should have tightened the back stay adjusters. As for flat water, we all know the answer: pinch! You have to use the mantra of, “If it feels like crap, you are going well.” Every once in a while the crew should have to pull up their feet to keep then out of the water. Mainsheet was really, really tight. Biggest thing for me though is someone good calling puffs. When the puff hits, in a perfect world the boat should never feel it because you have pulled on the backstay, and pinched a bit and the genoa guy has eased 7 inches.
SS: We don’t often start in the cone of tide relief south of Rose Island. Conventional wisdom said you needed to get right to get out of the tide as fast as possible, but in the second race you were not among the first group to head right, and instead chose to come in from the middle/left side two-thirds of the way up the beat. What was your thinking there?
AK: I could see that the boat was going to be very crowed with about 1 minute to go so I chose the avoid and safe route. I was confident in our speed and wanted to be patient. Most importantly though, it wasn't my boat and I wanted to avoid a potential crash. As we saw, a big collision is no way to start of the season!
Current-wise though, the western channel is deeper and I thought it might be stronger over there. I think the left would have worked but the breeze went 7 to 10 degrees right up that beat. When we tacked onto port two-thirds of the way up we were looking good but it faded and we had to put a really weak leebow on Will Welles, who eventually rolled us at the mark.
SS: Downwind was a fetch, but just barely. What did you feel was the key to having a successful run?
AK: I hate fetches. They are so boring. We worked hard on our lane last night and it was semi helpful. More important though is to know ahead of the rounding if it is going to be a fetch or jibe set and be ready to set up your lane appropriately.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment