Day one of the RYA Sailing Level 3 course at DOSC.

The basic plan for the Level 3 course is to spend one day working as a team and racing on a Laser Bahia, and then the second day doing some single-handed racing and improving skills on a Laser.

In the morning of day 1, the wind was crazy low. So low, in fact, that we had to get towed back to the marina harbour. But the morning was not a complete loss, we at least got a couple go-rounds of the “triangle-sausage” classic racing course. Not for racing, but just to get comfortable with working as a team on the Bahia. In the afternoon, we at least got enough wind to be able to do some real racing. The instructor broke down the basics of racing to us, and here’s what I captured:

After the course is set, the starter boat is placed on a straight line from the starting pin, such that the line from the boat to the pin is exactly perpendicular to the wind. This forms the starting line. So they way it works is, there are 5 different signals that serve as a countdown until the race begins. The first signal indicates that there is 5 minutes to go. Then there is a different flag that goes up , to signal 4 minutes left, and another flag goes up to signal 2 minutes left. The final flag goes up to indicate 60 seconds remaining, then the starter sound and the race begins. During this time, the basic idea is to either (a) get the sailboat going at a good clip, such that you are crossing the line at a full clip when the race starts, or (b) in crowded conditions to get your boat in the best spot, such that you cna take off once the race starts. As for starting position, the trick is to sail back and forth across the starting line, in an attempt to identify if there is a bias towards one end of the starting line or the other– if one point is higher upwind than the other, then that is the place you want to start racing from since the total distance upwind will be shorter.

I actually had a great time racing, we were two guys and one lady in our boat against two bigger guys in the other boat. It started off pretty lame with our boat devastating the competition at first. But at my second time as helmsman, the boat race started to get close, we even had a close-call collision and were neck-and-neck rounding the last starting pin. But we won 6 races in a row, then headed back to the harbour, full of the adrenaline from some close racing.

(Later we found out that our boat had a slightly larger jib– but I’m sure we won purely on our seamanship skills alone 😉 )

I’m not sure if I will enjoy single-handed racing on a Laser quite as much, but I guess we’ll see…I’ll check back in next week when day 2 of the Level 3  course takes place.