J 70 Worlds Venue Tune Up Session Brief

By  Greg Dair

Photos Courtesy of Lisa Bronnitt

https://lisabronitt.com/?fbclid=IwAR0kjr8WRG-R2laJn3egE5KGVh5kXbzWhZpO9aizGI5vk9WviyGaSiFKyiU

Ullman Sails One Design

The So Cal J70 fleet recently organized a “Group Sail” tune up practice weekend.  Special thanks to Bruce Golison, Jeff Janov, Jim Murrell and many others who put in a great effort to pull off what turned out to be an awesome event.  The Ullman Sails team loved the opportunity to sail the boats in a setting that was a mix of practice while racing, facilitated by coaches Jud Smith, Willem Van Way and Eric Doyle.  Sailing keelboats in a practice setting with a coach was almost reminiscent of the Junior sailing days and was overall a great experience with many valuable takeaways.

There’s another “Group Sail” next weekend September 12-13 for all J 70 sailors to join in!

Ullman Sails Newport Beach had Greg Dair sailing with Jim Murrell’s team Huckleberry and Bruce Cooper was sailing with Steve Wyman’s team on Nunuhunu.

Light Air in Marina Del Rey

Huckleberry #249 using The Ghost

Sailing Review

Boathandling

There was a focus on downwind boathandling for a lot of the drills and talks over the weekend.  As wing on wing can be such an effective tool in the J 70 the downwind gameplan really opens up.  You have 4 possible angles at two possible speeds you can be sailing at any time (starboard normal, starboard wing, port normal, port wing) and it’s critical to pick the speed and angle that matches your tactical position.  It’s just as critical to execute the correct maneuver (full gybe, gybe kite, gybe boom) that sets you up for the speed and angle of your tactical position.  If you break it down by all the different tactical scenarios you can encounter in a race it can get surprisingly confusing relatively quickly.  Sit down with your team and diagram all the situations you can think of and chat through your plan of attack in each scenario, then hit the water and put it into practice.

Tactics

The biggest takeaway was to understand what the boat is capable of and what it requires to sail optimally.  How many seconds exactly do you need to go from start line approach speed to full speed?  What time and distance should you have to execute that properly.  The top teams are not winging it or going by feel on the start line, they have actually tuned themselves into the boatspeed, time and distance numbers and with their experience their approach to nailing a perfect start becomes more of a science and less of an art.  Once you’re tuned in to the point of knowing how fast the meters on the velocitek drop at a given boatspeed you can start to identify right and left windshifts in your approach to the line when you see the meters dropping faster or slower than expected.

Another key point is to dial right in to your compass and constantly be aware of your angles.  With the Steady Seabreeze in MdR shifts more than 5 degrees can be rare, shifts of more than 10 degrees don’t happen.  When it’s a game of capitalizing on 5 degree oscillations the team with the most dialed in compass monitor is going to come out on top.

Strategy and Venue

Their are two main wind conditions you’re likely to find racing in Marina del Rey; the Steady Sea Breeze, and all the weird Light and Meely states below it which could be further subdivided.  Steady Sea Breeze sailing in MDR is some of the most fair and average sailing conditions on the planet which make the venue great for major championship regattas.  This wind state features around a 12 knot average, occasionally slightly more, and a very stable oscillating wind pattern.  Both sides of the course are relatively even and the race committee usually sets a near perfect starting line and course axis.  You can generally start anywhere and win as long as you’re right on the line with full pace, an open lane and you keep full pace while hitting every 5 degree oscillation in the breeze on your way up the course.

The light and meely conditions are where things get more interesting.  We are likely to see some teams contending for the title taking some big numbers in these conditions.  Understanding the geographical factors at play is critical.  The two main light and meely phases can be thought of as the southerly Pre Seabreeze with a wind direction noticeably farther left than the 240 degree seabreeze and the Northerly Anti Seabreeze.  If the wind is light and from the right, its generally bad news on wind for the day overall and things are about to get weird.

In the Pre Seabreeze light phase, especially early in the phase, major gains can be found leveraging significantly off the left edge of the fleet.  The pressure fills from the left out of the ocean and the left most boats are able to get the lefty puff first before consolidating and crossing back across the middle.  Watch for private lefty puffs forming for teams willing to send it that extra 100 meters left.  Unlike the MdR seabreeze phase wind is likely to be dramatically different across the course and private puffs are common for those with a sharp eye.  The righty factor is still in play as you should be anticipating a big picture righty as the sea breeze fills and stabilizes.  Getting a feel for exactly when this change happens is critical.  Watch for the wind to become more consistent and increase as any marine layer burns off, if your still out hunting for private lefties in this transition you could be in for some punishment.

In the Northerly Anti Seabreeze which we saw a surprising amount of for summer  (It’s a frequent winter weather pattern and would have resulted in huge potential gains for teams who did the West Coast Winter Series this year) the geographical patterns really come into play.  A “compression channel” often forms on the right side of the course as resistance from the land seems to compress wind along the beach, creating puffs and right wind shifts closer to the beach on the right side of the course.  As you get farther out into the ocean you sail into a big picture geographic lefty sailing away from the influence of the coast and into the influence of the ocean.  Downwind was difficult as gybing early to port generally sent you into better pressure near the beach but was often accompanied by a 20 degree header by the time you wanted to gybe at the bottom of the course.  Upwind, I use my port tack angle relative to the angle of the coastline as a guide, the closer we are to paralleling the beach the more likely the “compression channel righty” will take the race win.  The more we lift off the beach on port the more likely a big picture lefty windup from the ocean becomes.

In the final race of the tune up regatta the fleet was on a long port tack with a lefty lifting, we decided it was a big picture wind up not a short term oscillation, we tacked onto starboard out of phase with the group took transoms and crossed the middle of the course.  It paid off well as the lefty wound another 15 odd degrees sending us to the lead at the first mark.  Always play your side in the Steady Sea Breeze but in any of the light and meely phases keep a sharp eye out for big picture wind ups.  It’s very likely the regatta could be won by a team seemingly tacking out of phase, taking transoms, cutting losses and digging into a big picture windup, salvaging what would have otherwise been their worst race of the regatta.

Sails and Venue

The dates for the practice were set on top of the cancelled 2020 World Championships.  Our team has been hard at work designing venue specific sails optimized to outperform the competition on what is now the 2021 World Championship venue, summertime in Marina Del Rey.  This opportunity turned out to be the perfect test for our recent developments as we were able to sail on the same days that the 2020 worlds would have been.  We had been betting on a lighter to medium breeze regatta with an average windspeed of around 8 knots and a top windspeed in the mid teens.  Our MDR 2020 line sails had been specifically designed and built for those conditions, as well as the Marina del Rey sea state.

Earlier in the season there were quite a few uncharacteristically windy days and we were almost getting a little nervous, “no way should we actually be designing for heavy air?”  In the end the weather for the event turned out to be exactly as we expected or even a little lighter and our MdR sail line performed beautifully easily keeping pace with the top teams.  We were able to plan some further improvements and are confident our 2021 Worlds line will easily be capable of winning the event.

We’ve been playing with a new crosscut jib (now radial head) that pushes the boundaries on a high clew, longer foot and a very full powered up bottom third to punch through the MdR chop.  More Details Here: https://newportbeach.ullmansails.com/essential_grid/releasing-the-ghost-the-first-2020-mdr-j-70-sail-takes-flight/ 

Countless practice starts throughout the weekend kept everyone on their toes.  It was a great opportunity to learn how to make the most out of your velocitek, capitalizing on the repetition as the teams studied the numbers.

Observations and Potential Changes

Jib

• So much shape in the lower two panels from one seam seems to be creating a wrinkle out of the tack, we love the shape but need to experiment with the panel layout and construction to perfect it.
• Almost too full down low for light air, we went a little crazy with telltales on the test sail and I’m glad we did.  The lowest tell tale train showed less than perfect flow down low.  Sail is nearly too deep with the light air having to work too hard to establish flow in the real light air.  Speed however was still great relative to other teams here with us never feeling slow once.  Tested well but an interesting observation.  Sorting this balance will be the difference between fast and fastest.
• Overall exactly the shape we wanted to test, and it tested well with us not struggling for speed once, more testing to lock in the ideal forestay length.

Main

• Design born from the same main the won the World’s in 2016
• luff curve has been improved to match the rig bend characteristics better
• Happy overall, might experiment with a fuller and a flatter cut just to ensure we’ve nailed the chord depth, but so far already testing beautifully.

Spinnaker

• Soaker Kite – designed to keep you powered up in the light and turbulent breeze of a 100 boat fleet in Marina Del Rey.  The drawback is this will be the hardest kite to plane, but its going to bail you out of all the tricky light air congestion taking you lower with more power than the rest.  Our AP and planing kites are also undergoing constant development but our team is preparing to sail the MdR worlds with the Soaker.
• developing lighter weight spin with MdR size patches
• venture tape only seams for best zero porosity