Is anyone going to the student nationals.

i am going to sail my old 14 there. it is a top even and is a great laugh just everyone getting peeved and having a laugh.

I don't remember being particularly peeved last time I did it - mind you that was a quarter of a century ago, maybe students are less happy these days

Mike

I think you're trying to be too accurate Mike. I've got the sneaky suspicion Ollie's telling us that everyone is getting inebriated.

They should provide a glossary of approximate terms for old fogies like us. I always admire those who state their opinion "defiantly", unless they mean "definitely". And have you noticed how slow they want to be? Every weekend, they're always braking something...

Maybe you need to start a "ask BNS" thread covering the finner points of grammer and spelling for us. Im sure Pierre and some of the others can help out on it as well  

"there's too much blood in my alcohol system"

I'll be out in Weymouth on the Friday night

isis where have u gone to uni.

ur not a v neck are u

come to the even the more the merrier just be warned that it is a P course so i am screwed for the 14 with a massive kite.

and i got one kite given to me by someone on the forum and have been offered to buy one by a guy on the 14 website.

got to hope for a nice winward leward. fly down those downwind legs

but am almost sure that it is a p course

and isis thank god u didnt go to southampton uni

yea im at solent.

how are u getting down there

and u got ur place in the house yet

ok if the wind is up they are good fun. but if it is light they are just dull

The boat that makes the right tactical decision will probably win. The 49er might go really high and try to hoist later, the musto (in your scenario) would sail point to point, the 800 might try something else, hoist and go high, sail beyond the mark and gybe once you reach the other lay line for it, the boat that sails the best leg for their boat will more than likley win the leg. Or at least limit the damage if the boat doesn't reach well.

At the SGP recently we had several different reaches, Some favoured us in the FD, some favoured the laser 2's who can almost beat with their kite. The 505's have their own paticular favorite. On some occasions we decided the best way to get to the mark was to fly and stay as high as possible and then drop the kite and beat up to it, we were never going to fetch the gybe mark so we just went as fast as possible in it's general direction. The 505's with their Monster kites on tried to fly then got taken low by a gust. They went with massive speed as high as they could and dropped, and still won the leg.

Mind you at the SGP we sailed a knitting pattern, a trapezoid outer loop, a inner loop trapezoid, a couple of sausage triangles and a P as courses. Maybe PRO's for handicap events should be encouraged to run several different courses throughout the weekend, if nothing else it makes it more interesting than the standard olympic or windward leeward.    

Also depends how windy it is, we might just go straight for the pin on a reach because 49ers do 2 sail reaching pretty quickly in higher wind strengths. Some Aussie sailors have been claiming the boat is quickest when its windy on a 2 sail reach, and their GPS recordings have been supporting the theory....

Hope the event goes well and everybody has fun. We are not entering our boat this year.

Yep, The RS200 fleet does have a habit of playing funny tricks on you on tight reaches.....just make sure you head high first when you round the mark then bear away and get the burst of speed before the other boats do it to you, otherwise you're stuffed......as we found out a few times this year

Generally though......unless you have a part of the course that is very tight, it's better to try and sail lower as quickly as you can, unless its blowing then you head up for speed and bear away as soon as the speed comes on, but the RS200 kite will lose it's shape very quickly if you use it on tight reaches too often......a lot of the boats at the nationals had completely stuffed their kites within the week just because they were comstantly tight-reaching when they should have been bearing off more.

If you do have to sail on tight reaches as part of the course though.....have the luff always curling just slightly......esp when its windy. We were the only RS200 at the RS pursuit this year at Datchet that could carry the kite on the tight reach beacuse we were having the luff on the curl slightly....all the other boats had to two sail it....which was slow as we gained miles on them by carrying the kite.