<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><div id="yiv1933023459">Hey,<br><br>Since there's no fleet races that night, who wants to work on this team racing stuff with me that evening? Of course, six boats make an actual team race, but with anywhere from 1 to 5 boats, we can still work for various drills that would allow us to work on the team racing moves.<br><br>5:30 leave the dock. The practice area will be just a few hundred yards into the bay. <br>We'd borrow 3 to 5 buoys. If starts were in the mix, somebody on one of our boats will blow the 3-minute whistle sequence.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Please let me know <br> who of you is in for this, <br> who of you will bring a boat, <br> and who you'll bring with you.</span><br><br>If weather/wind doesn't cooperate, we could still do some kind of seminar.<br><br>The drills include:<br>1
boat: boat handling related to team racing, such as <br> full-speed roll
tacks and roll jibes<br> down-speed roll tacks and roll jibes<br> parking for a long time, then accelerating.<br> mark-rounding nuances<br> 360s, 720s<br><br>2 boats: <br> mark traps<br> ducks, lee bows, slam-dunks, and related offense and defense<br> match-racing-like starts, i.e. dial-up, circling, and other tactical maneuvers to gain <br> advantage at the start<br><br>3 boats:<br> "piggy in the middle" which is where you pretend the middle boat is on the opposing <br> team and the front boat tries to block and/or slow that middle boat to
pull his third place <br> team mate up. As soon as the positions change, the drill
continues with the new <br> middle boat as the "piggy in the middle". This drill can happen in open water or can <br> include marks which then allows mark trap practice as well as the open water <br> pass-backs.<br><br>4 boats:<br> The winner of a 2 on 2 team race is the team that does NOT have the boat in last place.<br> i.e. 1-4 loses to 2-3 even though the total points are the same.<br><br>5 boats: <br> There's an imaginary 5th place boat. I need to get clarification on the mechanics of this <br> scheme from Blake, but it allows work on team racing tactics and <br> maneuvers.<br><br>6 boats:<br> Obviously an actual team race is an option, but perhaps we'd start with two 3-boat "piggy <br> in the middle" drills to warm up since that drill is especially fruitful
in learning the moves.<br><br>More than 6 boats? Could it happen? If so, we'll figure something out.<br><br>Thanks,<br>MF<br></div></td></tr></table><br>