Ullman Sails One Design Coordinators Past and Present go 1,2 at Lido Class Championships

August 20-22, 2021

Results

50 Lido teams showed up at Mission Bay Yacht Club for what was the largest Class Championship in a very long time with 50 boats competing for the Championship.  No surprise given the awesome venue and all the work the class officers put in to promote and pull off the event.  After qualification racing Friday the class was split into a 25 boat gold flight and a 25 boat silver flight.  Erik Shampain (long time Ullman One Design Coordinator from a few years back) handily won the qualification day with a string of three bullets.  Scores from the day are only used to split the fleets, then the gold and silver divisions showed up to a fresh start Saturday.

Erik and crew Bobbie Sterbins winning the pin end in a qualifying race

The first day of racing saw Erik continue his form winning 2 of 5 races to lead the event at the end of the day.  He was followed closely by Stu Robertson who also won two races on the day.  USNB’s current One Design Coordinator Greg Dair ended the day in 3rd a few points back with a consistent scoreline.  Then there was a big gap to Chris Raab in 4th who had two deep races one attributed to a course mix up.  The points made it pretty clear that there were only 3 people with a good shot at winning the event after day one.

Greg Dair and Nick McCabe chase Jeff Lenhart, our long time hand cut One Design Sailmaking expert, around a mark in qualifying.

The first race on day two (race 6) went Greg’s way with a second while Erik notched in his throwout and Stu also had a deep race.  Things tightened up quite a bit after that one.  Then Stu took the win in the next race (7) with Erik taking a 5th and Greg 7th.  Greg’s day one consistency paid off as he was able to throwout the seven and keep a 2,2,1 in the days other races. Erik then won the next race (8) to keep his slim lead going into the final race.  On the final race (9) Greg took his first race win to Erik’s 4th, it was just enough as it put him in the lead by 1 point, when he would’ve came off a tie break second best.

Kathy and Butch, class presidents, asked Greg to write up a few insights as to how they pulled it off.

Greg’s takeaways;

• A “don’t lose the regatta yet” approach in decision making, taking the conservative option in all high risk scenarios and setting up for clean lanes and open water that made it easy to avoid high risk scenarios in the first place.  We were almost a little bit too conservative overall, it might have been better to hit the gas (take more risk) a little harder earlier.
• Consistency and repeatability in strategy when race course conditions were similar, if you have a successful strategy and the race course stays the same there’s no need to change.  Keep things simple and improve the execution.

Greg and crew Nick McCabe in 4794 with a healthy gap to leeward.

• The first two points led to a starting strategy that saw us consistently starting too leeward of the boat end pack.  Boat end starts were strong but high risk.  Starting just to leeward of the group allowed us to have great starts in every single race and set us up for an incident free event.  In the final race we were down a few points and needed to up the risk factor, it was the one time we set up to win the boat end, which we pulled off successfully.  That set us up for the win in the final race.
• 80% of the time it was easy to tell what tack was favored, it was the 20% of the time where it was difficult to know that was critical.  In those times prioritize that you’re heading to the next pressure filling in down the course, set yourself up in a healthy lane (don’t be scared to tack for a better one), focus on your boatspeed and be ready to react well to the next shift whether it’s what you wanted or not (this is especially hard to do when it’s not what you wanted).  When in doubt on pressure and lanes, head to the side that seems big picture favored, was often left in the lighter times and right with the pressure, but keep geographical factors in mind.
• Watch for getting lifted too leeward of the fleet on port heading into the right corner, just before the righty header to tack out on.  It’s not always there but its a big gain when it works.
• Also we had a lot of tell tales

This was a very cool event for the Ullman Sails team.  It was great to have Erik checking back in with us for sails before the event.  He was quite involved in the process as we discussed small tweaks and changes.  We definitely made some improvements.  It was also cool to see Jeff Lenhart down competing after cutting everyone’s sails.  The loft was happy to see it’s sailmakers show up and prove that were still the brand of choice for anyone looking for the fastest Lido sails on the water.

For information on sails or any general Lido information don’t hesitate to call,

Ullman Sails One Design Coordinator

Greg Dair

310 683 9618

gdair@ullmansails.com