Best yet!

Great to see 13 on the water. I think thats a seasons best for any day, brilliant. Cheers to Jamie and mike for the course in testing conditions for both us and them.

There were plenty of shifts and big variations in wind strength. Predicting the shifts was pretty difficult so I opted to sail for pressure first then worry about the heading second. The wild starboard lifts in the top half of the beat combined with bigger patches of sustained pressure coming out of seaton further down meant we spent a lot of the beat on starboard. For this reason I tried to put in the lion share of the starboard leg work in early, this allowed me to pick a couple smaller port hitches later in the beat to work my way over to the right side near the top. The key was to predict the gusts ie track them from further up to windward than the mark and try to intercept them. If you sail to where the pressure is , it'll be gone by the time you arrive. Downwind I sailed radical angles to intercept the pressure. On the reaches though, pot luck. Some you win some you lose! Some you gain massively (as I found on round 3), you gotta love private breeze!

Its fair to say the breeze turned out a lot different to the forecast so I'm hoping I can be forgiven my plan. In the end though I stuck reasonably close to my plan, middle left for the most part but with a crossover to the right for the final approach! You just can't always trust Windguru.

Sail setting wise, when the breeze is up and down a lot I reckon I adjust the kicker more than any other control. Probably between 20 and 30 times per beat, 3-5 times per reach or run. The cunningham and outhaul, 5-6 times a beat, once or twice per reach or run. Two reasons for this. Its the easiest control to adjust as the cleat swivels to look at you and it has the best purchase, plus, it controls the largest amount of power. I try to have the loop close to hand so I can pull it on just before a gust hits (dropping it in time to concentrate on keeping the boat flat by feathering and playing the sheet) and ease it immediately when the pressure fades.