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Sailing with BBBS: Sail Trim (12 Jul 20)


Reflections:
Objective of letting out sail more to find wind direction was met a little better today.

However today, I was still also having difficulty finding the right direction of wind. And I realised my challenge was more with not sheeting in enough (when close hauling). And probably need to get more familiar with the points of sail too to acquire the appropriate sail trim (which needs good judgement of wind direction to determine correct point of sail). 

Moreover, I was overly avoidant of entering the no-go zone, so I find that maybe my apparent available directions of sail were a bit more limited in my mind. 

There were many times when I was having difficulty with assessing whether it was the wind that was weak, or if I was in the no-go zone.

After the coach mentioned about the luff of the sail, I began to eye it more as well, and was looking up at my sail a lot more. I felt like I was still quite confused about the telltale, although I was trying to read them as well (my particular sail had telltales, yay).


I noticed the lack of control/rudder centring after completing a tack/gybe. Find it hard to spatially assess in my mind, without looking back at it, the position of the rudder. Moreover, when I try to switch hands in holding the tiller extension after a tack/gybe, I find that the rudder also ends up shifting.

I think I also had some difficulty with sailing straight and centring the rudder while my rudder hand is still behind my back (before I switched hands).



So I didn't really work on the "three things", cos I was really just trying to focus on: 1. Assessing wind direction correctly
2. Acquiring appropriate sail trim


Oh one more thing: because I also set for myself the goal of not capsizing today (I think I did pretty well as I only capsized once towards the end when I was getting a bit slower in reaction speed), I was a lot more cautious in sheet control and also trying to shift my weight around faster. There was once, though, where I forced myself to hang on to the sheet when the boat started heeling, and hiked out quite far all the way. That was like, first time ever. But I think I will try to hike first, and release sheet as a last resort. I've still got to work on releasing sheet swiftly but in more controlled gradual increments. Now I dump in rather large increments.
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