The Solution.

Resisting the urge to be sarcastic.....which is unusual...

Vang sheet is where you control the leech tension going upwind by using the mainsheet rather than the kicker (known as the vang to by our colonial cousins which is where the term vang sheet may have come from).

The trick on the stern quarter is a flick of the sheet as the boom starts to come across (Laser style....should I say Laser, it seems to be a 4 letter word)....

As to the race itself, sadly it's not a boat I'm happy to be in, it lives with Lasers, got an absolute hammering by a Phantom and even when i caught him he was gone again, the Thermal wind we get at this time of night eventually switches off and or goes offshore then does battle with the gradient wind so you either go out to sea and punch even more tide but have more wind, or go up the coast get hugely favourable shift but not much pressure to punch the tide, the first beat I dithered went middle and left which will inevitably lose out to one side or the other and it was the sea side that everyone late off the line had opted for, Contender, Phantom, an RS100 with the big rig had similarly dithered like me, and a Hornet went up the coast, my Laser nemesis went out and by the windward mark had twenty boat lengths and a few more with the now favourably tide as he took off down the reach.

This is where I don't like the light sheet loads, when you need to pump to catch waves you really need something akin to one to one to haul the boom in, as you see that fine example of pumping excellence Sir Ben achieving by grabbing a bunch of the tackle in his Finn and this boat if you can find it will respond well to the appliance of kinetics, I just couldn't find a rythym, I gained a bit but not much, then on the next tighter leg I felt I lost it to the laser which is an eminent surfer with it's extra length then when I arrive at the bottom mark the bloody bridle is wrapped round the rear quarter with all the too-ing and fro-ing as I'd sheeted in to bear off then back out again, hardening up, snaking waves.

As luck would have it he then went out to sea again, I sensed the land breeze was getting the upper hand as the sea breeze backed further off shore so I went inshore out of the tide and reversed the twenty boat length lead back into my favour, then punching the tide, by now pretty much in full ebb, I'd gone high enough to clear the weather mark, but along comes a bloody 470 sailed by a Sailing Instructor who knows how to use the word starboard but not how to sail a short course round marks and she bloody put me about (it's  a starboard windward mark, don't you just hate that, had it been say the EPS or another faster boat my speed would have been enough to get round ahead of her, but in these little things with small sails you are at the mercy of faster boats belatedly catching you up. By the time I made it round fouled by the 470 wind shadow as she overstood even further, the laser was on me again less than ten boat lengths, this next bit, the run, was where I really wished I'd attached that elastic the wind was light and the tide was taking all the apparent wind out of it so the sail constantly wanted to fall back, I slackened the forestay to let the rig go as far forward as possible but still the Laser was very slowly catching. On the dead run in light air even sat on the side rocked right over and doing a bit of subtle ooching I couldn't do anything other than watch the ten lengths become seven, then luckily I spotted a shift & puff gybed, managed to unhook the rear quarter again this time before I hardened up and the beat then had become a fetch into the tide which sorry anti lee bow folks if you managed to get the nose to the right of the counter flow on the occasional lift it gave enough extra pressure to out point him and eventually he tacked off, a fatal move in a tidal fetch which pretty much finished it, but the rest of the fleet including the Phantom had got the favourable shift while we were still battling down the run and by now they were round the weather mark and gone as the wind dropped further.

 All in all not something I enjoy, being in a slow boat at the back of a fleet in an unfavourable tide especially with no-one sat next to moan to. So it's back to the lake with the Solution I think, it's not a handicap racer for our water at Hythe, certainly not in those conditions I fear, the first night of the year when that blessed Icon or the Alto would have destroyed them, maybe had the wind held up, maybe it's the lack of company, maybe it's small man syndrome not wanting to be in a small boat, (although it wasn't difficult to launch and recover once someone held the boat whilst I got the trailer,) but I just didn't enjoy it the way I would have done had I beaten the Laser on the lake, funny isn't it, your stupid brain and mood swings, or maybe it's just me being weird about having to be right at the bloody front of a given fleet, I guess it's what your used to..