By Doug
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| Paul Goodison (GBR) coming off the starting line. He finished third. |
The results of Mussanah Race Week
have just been published. This was a
practice run for the Laser World Championships to be held there later this
year. There are pictures and videos that show what the conditions could be
like.
The first thing that I noticed is that, for open water sailing, it was not very windy and the waves were small. In fact, it looked more like the lake sailing that we get here in Dallas . Interesting...
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| Lots of speed wrinkles! |
The next thing I noticed was how
the fleet set up for these conditions - they often sailed with "speed
wrinkles." This was the fad that started in the 80's for medium conditions where, as
shown in the picture, the cunningham is left lose so that there are wrinkles
from the mast down to the clue. Frank Bethwaite once explained to me how these
can be fast because the turbulence "washes away the boundary layer,"
which is also why sharkskin is not perfectly smooth. But the speed wrinkles in
the pictures are bigger than I have seen for many years, including with many of these same sailors when they sailed in the Olympics. Interesting...
Multiple Master World Champion
Wolfgang Gerz (GER) was there getting used to the conditions. I'll be competing against Wolfgang. He's very fast but
only managed to finish 28 in a fleet of 44 boats. His best finish was a 16th.
Very interesting...
The local women appear to wear
normal clothing on the water but wear their Hijab on shore. The women travelling
to Oman
will be pleased to see in the picture that foreign women are wearing their
normal clothes.
Blowed if I can find the results!
ReplyDeleteThey keep moving the link. Try this: http://mussanahraceweek.com/en/2013-results.html
DeleteFantastic, thanks!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I watched the RC44 round at Oman today. On the last day they had 50kts! It can get rough.
Multiple Master World Champion Wolfgang Gerz (GER) was there getting used to the conditions. I'll be competing against Wolfgang. He's very fast but only managed to finish 28 in a fleet of 44 boats. His best finish was a 16th. Very interesting...
ReplyDeleteI think that 28th is quite a respectable score. I have raced against the top 18 sailors at this event many times and I can tell you that the top 9 are all capable of wining medals in Rio (shame they wont all be able to compete) with possibly 4 potential gold medalists in this fleet alone. Tom Burton could quite possibly be the next world champion.
28th in this fleet is quite good as you can instantly remove any thought of beating the top 9 or 10, ever. So that leaves Gerz with around an 18th.
To put it into perspective for you since you mention Brett B. a bit in your blog he would most likely have finished between 9th and 14th if he had raced.
You mention the speed wrinkles also. They look about right to me for the wind and sea state and it has been that way for many years now in under 10 kn or so. They do not seem any deeper or larger. You can clearly see the 2 bands of creases running up to the mast. It is maybe just the angle of the photo that gave you that impression.
Cheers.
Thanks for your comments. I wanted to go to this event and really miss being able to sail with and learn from these great sailors. It would have been a great way to prepare for the Master Worlds.
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