Chicago Match Race Center opens

So for the past three weeks a group of us here in Chicago have been getting out twice a week and practicing our match racing. As the director of the Chicago Match Race Center, Bill Hardesty has put together a solid curriculum that has benefited both novice and advanced match racers alike. It really has been a great experience. The Chicago weather has held up for us so far and we have been able to practice our starting, timing, and first beat tactics....helping to steepen our learing curves.

The CMRC has four regattas scheduled this summer; three grade 3 events and a grade 2. Obviously the goal of Ender Racing is to use this oportunity to sharpen our skills, learn, and gear up for big events this summer and next year. Keeping our long-term goals in mind; this provides us with a great opporunity to gain points without a ton of travel, and sail against some of the best match racers in the country. If anyone wants to become a member, or wants any more information about what we are doing check out the website at http://www.chicagomatchrace.com/.

Season Starts Strong

With the First match race of the season quickly approaching, Ender team members decided to spit duties and sail with two other teams in the qualifying regatta for the BYC Invitational. I sailed with Kevin Shrage and Stu Argo while Mike Rehe sailed with Lauren Knoles and Sandy Svoboda. The one day event was filled with ups and downs; with the fleet split into two groups the limited time meant that the top two boats from each group would move on to a final-four round robin. Knowing this we had to get moving immediately within our group, we couldnt risk letting one race slip through. Unfortunately the first race of the regatta was sailed in big breeze and we managed to snap our rudder off in the pre-start.....in match racing if anything breaks while in sequence or racing you dont normally get redress...so after a long discussion with our PRO, CHUMP, and many of the other fabulous umpires they decided that it would be best if I, aaahem, "let it go" and "moved on with my life." Okay, okay, I can take a hint. So now we enter the regatta with one loss and we have not crossed the starting line yet. After that mishap Kevin's calming nature really put us back on track and we went undefeted through the rest of the round robin and moved on to the finals.

Mike was having the same sort of success in his group. After starting off slow Lauren, Mike, and Sandy started to get into rythym and finished their round as the team to beat. The stage was set for a Schrage, Knoles final showdown....and Ender team bragging rights for the summer....but it was not meant to be. As the sun sank over Detroit and the breeze got light and flukey we were able to win our first race and STEAL our second from Trey Rose by taking advantage of a 30deg shift. These things happen on the River near the end of the day, I feel like I have been on the losing end of it more times than not...fortunately the dice rolled our way this time. Lauren and Mike could have forced a final showdown but were unable to win their second race. After having their opponent on the ropes several times in the prestart the other boat somehow managed to slip through and actually started in a better position...controlling the race and ultimately winning. This caused Lauren to slip to second and with the sun setting our PRO called the regatta with a clear winner. US! Actually, in all honesty to have both members of Ender racing in the top two is great. It is always a plus when we can have team members sail with different programs, that different experience is something you can draw from in difficult times. But seriously....I still won bragging rights....you know it Mike!

Not that im in to giving out lessons; but I think the lesson any new match racer can take from Laurens mistake is this: The goal in starting is to position yourself off the line to be able to go the direction you want to on the first beat. Its not about fouling. Its about controlling, hearding, gaining the advantage off the line and leaning on the other team up the beat. Very rarely when sailing against good teams will they give you an opportunity "slam-dunk" them on the start....so I think starters need to have a "control" mentality, not a "kill" mentality. Lauren could have won the race if she just backed off her opponnent (on several occasions) and kept her priorities in check. Your number one priority is to get off the line clean, going the direction you want to go...all else is just gravy....as soon as that control begins to fade it is time to think about your priorities again.

A great quote

For some reason this quote kind of hit home this morning:

"The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating—in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life." - Anne Morris

Ender-Racing competes in Bacardi Cup

Mikey is down in Miami sailing the Star boat in the Bacardi Cup this week with Jack Jennings. Jack has been sailing the Star at a consistently high level this winter and the two have some experience sailing together so we are all hoping for a good result. Hopefully I can get Mike to send in some daily updates; otherwise please send him some good luck vibes as the fleets is stacked (http://www.stardistrict20.org/bacardi/entries.htm) and they will need all the help they can get.

Update (3/10/09) : I received a text from Mike last night, and I quote, "Just checked the blog. Yesterday we both showed up hungover as piss...got a 31. Today we showed up with our game faces on and ended up 8th. It was a pretty good day." And 8th at the Bacardi Cup is very good, hopefully the guys can lay off the booze for the rest of the week. For those who dont know, the Star class typically only sails one race a day with legs greater than 1.75 miles, so its a daily grind...showing up hungover is not the ideal way to approach this regatta...but these guys know that. I cant blame them though, for some reason every time I put flip flops on I want to have a beer too....

2009 Farr40 Miami Match Race

Last week I was fortunate enough to be invited to drive the Farr40 "Flash Gordon" in the Miami Match Race. .....what an experience!! When I showed up in Miami the once eight boat fleet had been reduced to 5 boats; however, fortunately we were still sailing against 3 of the top 4 Farr40's in the world. JoeFly, Nerone, Barking Mad, Atalanti and ourselves made up the fleet and the talent was stacked. JoeFly, last years worlds runner-up had Francesco Bruni. Barking Mad was sailing with Terry Hutchinson. Our crew was the same as it has been for the past year, which proved to work in our favor; Bill Hardesty calling tactics, Joe Londrigan trimming main, Dave Gerber trimming Jib, Matt Cassidy on the bow, Ed Norton floating, and T-Ten on the mast...and we had Carrie Howe, a local Detoit girl, doing offside trim for us.

Having Carrie there was pretty cool. I had never sailed with Carrie before on a big boat, although we have sailed dingys together quite a bit. She was very professional on the boat and turned out to be a valuable addition to the crew. Other than that it was business as usual...yeah right....it was like getting the keys to a ferrari. Brand new boat, new rig, new sails...best crew in the world....how could I lose? ha.

We practiced for two days before the regatta started and day one didnt turn out how we wanted it to at all. I was too timid on the starting line, and the communication between Bill, myself needed work; and the information coming from the software was lagging. We went 1-3 on the first day, only beating Atalanti. Although we had some moments, I was not doing a good enough job of getting us off the line and the conditions were such that there were not many passing lanes on the course. The thing is that these are still the top Farr40 teams in the world with the top pros...so even if we do win the start, we still have to stay ahead of them around the course. So giving them anything off the line put us in a very tough position.

The second day went a bit better. More wind is normally better for us as Helmut was driving a bit more on the second day. Bill and I sorted out all the communication issues and we were getting timely and reliable info from the software. The starts all went well, and in the first race we led Nerone around the first two marks until they passed us up the last beat. That was a tough loss to take...it turns out that a win there would have put us into third for the regatta. We lost the second race to JoeFly and won our third race of the day against Atalanti.....as we went into our bye the crew was focused on the last race of the day against Barking Mad, one of the fleets top boats and a crew that we have a bit of a history with.

See, thats the thing about the Farr40 fleet. The owners and the programs are, for the most part, very consistent from year to year in their participation. So if you sail in the fleet for a while you develop relationships with the other crews; I cant really describe it, but the owners provide us all with an amazing plaform on which to compete. There is something about travelling all over the world with 200 of your closest friends, its really pretty cool. So Barking Mad, being a US boat, and given all the different people on their boat, has had a close relationship with the Flash Gordon team over the years....and there was nothing we wanted more than to "beat the &@* out of them!"

The start was interesting to say the least. We entered from port in about 13kts of breeze, dialed up and were able to escape off to port underneath them. As we led them behind the boat Bill and I had a bit of a discussion about what to do next....and mind you, it was a discussion, no yelling. He wanted to continue, I wanted to circle...so we circled, sort of. I started my circle and decided to jybe back, playing a bit of cat and mouse with him; but Terry had Jim Richardson in a good position to avoid me and subsequently I put us into a terrible position...err, a "really F'n weak position."...according to Bill. Anyway, we ended up somehow making something out of nothing and we started even with Barking Mad, slightly to leward on stbd. They were not able to get control of us up the beat and we rounded right behind them at the first mark. As we ran the breeze picked up right before the three length zone, changing the timing for everything. Matty was able to key in on this and called for the no pole jybe, jib up, chute down...all inside the zone while the boats were overlapped. Barking Mad was unable to pull off the maneuver, they shrimped their kite and we were able to round inside of them and sail on to the win. A great race....a great way to end the regatta. It was an amazing time in Miami for me...four days of sailing in the sunshine, I missed a hellish storm that ravaged the east coast and chilled chicago, and I got to see all my best old friends. A win win no matter what our win-loss was.

By the way, we went 3-5 and finished in 4th. We'll do better next year.

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. :)

Quick Update:

For those of you who actually read this blog there have been several changes in our lives over the past few months; in all honesty it has been hard to keep up with them ourselves, let alone update the blog for everyone.

First off, I started a new job in December in Chicago working for Geneva Trading. Many of you may have heard of Geneva Trading, who's founding partners are all world-class sailors; most notably Tom Freitag, Art Bererton, and Brian Porter (Full Throtle). I took a job designing and trading quantitative strategies for the firm...things are going well, but home always calls. The decision to stop sailing full time and pursue a different path came on the heels of my brother Evan's passing. Evan fought Lukemia for 21 months before it got the better of him; and from there I decided that it wouldn't be fair to him if I continued to half-ass my life. So Ender-Racing has always been about sailing.....and the occasional political rant....now I am dedicating it completely to the Ender-Racing team and the acheivement of our goals in Match Racing.

The move to Chicago was timely when you consider that Don Wilson is opening his US Match Race Center this summer here in Chicago. The venue is being funded by Don, and directed by Bill Hardesty; which means that world-class Match Racing talent will be in and out of here weekly, not to mention all the women's Olympic teams that will use the facilities to practice. The timing and the placement could not be better for us.

Mike Rehe and I decided after last years USMRC that we were going to put forth a serious effort in the events from now on. Our goal is to win the 2010 USMRC at Bayview Yacht Club, and we have a two year Match Race plan in place to get there. As the sailing season gets going again we will be updating the blog frequently, so please check back in for regatta debriefs and other information.....and political rants (damn Pelosi!!).

Also, the Ender-Racing team is not exclusive; we are open to anyone with a passion for Match Racing and an Objectivist philosophy. Good luck, and good sailing.