Friday, February 20, 2009

Ender Team Member takes to the Ice

Last week Ender-Racing Team member and avid DN sailor Mike Rehe competed in the DN World and North American Championships here in the Midwest. Most of you know Mike from all the sailing he has done around the club and around the country, but in the winter Mike is one of the top ice-boaters in the country and works with 3 time world-champ Ron Sherry at Composite Concepts; designing, building, and testing the latest in DN sail, rig, and runner technology. After having a few conversations with Mike during the regatta I realized that things were not going as well as he would have wanted them to. He finished 35th out of 118 at the Worlds, and 41st out of 99 at the North Americans....he was shooting for the top 10. According to Mike he was a bit off the pace with the leaders; we're thinking that he changed too many factors leading up to the event. New sail, new rig, new plank, and a new hull.....in a sport where a 1% drop in speed could be the difference between top 5 and mid fleet, changing everything at once might have been a bit too much to overcome. That's a mistake that every sailor needs to take note of, in any class, at any level. We change things all the time, our rig tune, our sails, our crew....it is important to change one thing at a time in order to measure the results against a constant. When we change too many things at once we lose sight of what is working and what is not. If we take a systematic approach to the process we can keep our trial results in order and our race results going up.


Check back in to the blog as I am going to attempt to get a debrief out of Mike and possibly some video. If you have never seen this stuff before you need to check it out. F'n cool!! I'm sure if you buy Mikey a beer at the bar he will bring you up to speed...also, congratulate him on his new girlfriend. :)

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