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Over the last 2 years Matt Bismark has divided his time between the Viper (in Marblehead), and an FD and OK dinghy (in New Zealand).
While the rest of the Marblehead fleet sits out the cold winter months skiing or frostbiting in Tech dingies and ICs, waiting for the start of the sailing season Matt has had a successful start to his FD campaign in the southern hemisphere. He writes:- The New Zealand FD Nationals went well for us. This is the beginning of our build up for the Worlds. We produced our most comfortable Nationals win ever, with a scorecard of 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3. Overall we were quick, and simply more polished than the others. Reliably very good starts, great speed, height and very few mistakes. All according to our dictum of "start well, go fast, go the right way, do it every race". Perhaps most importantly neither of us had any trouble with our 'ailments' (my recently repaired knee , Andy's not-so-recently repaired back).We have been working a great deal on fitness to remove limitations imposed by these injuries. Our new carbon rig (going through its first ever race on the first day of the Nationals) was quick. Andy had a done a beautiful job of rigging it and we had no teething problems with it at all, being able to get it to do what we wanted from the get go. Others doing their first bit of racing with new carbon rigs did not have the same accurate foundation in the fitout and spent much time fiddling to try get their rigs under control. An accurate demonstration of the value of detailed and methodical preparation, even with brand new equipment Our mainsail was not a great match for the new mast. Still pondering what move we make next on that front. We still have a fair bit of work to do to get to the height of our previous potential and beyond. My experiments with training methods in the Viper and OK Dinghy has made travel along the road to success faster than we have previously managed. The Viper strengthened my downwind tactics and allowed me to sail competitively in what would otherwise be downtime. The OK dinghy allowed me to try out various performance building concepts in a one person enviroment when the only person I had to communicate the ideas to was myself. If they work, then I figure out how to communicate them to my crew. My crew in the Viper will be pleased to know that the starting technique that we developed in the Viper using mast height to judge the distance to the line in crowded starts works very well. Spring in the North-east is not too far away and I expect to see the Vipers flying around the place soon. Good Luck All. |
