i don't really care if no one reads this. cny is here, january is almost ending and this was three weeks back. no, this is totally for my own memory's sake.
. . .
it's hot here in the summer. especially when our air-con isn't functional.
the last couple of days had been real fun. over the new year we had a bbq over at the girls' place, with melcolm and shu yan joining us. it's been a while since i've seen them so that was really nice. he's serving a 10 year contract to the air force and he'll be here training till march thereabouts. 10 years is a real long time.
i also spent the first few hours of 2009 holed up on an unfamiliar couch, exchanging words in a darkened room, at times laughing so hard i was fearful i would wake up the rest of the house and get a decent scolding.
today would be different from previous days though. the start time would be earlier than it had been for the last few days at 930 am, which meant the fremantle doctor probably would not have arrived yet. it also meant that shane, scott, peter and i had to wake up earlier so as to reach the club with enough time to get prepared.
today was different. brett thought that we would only have one race. the scoreboard looked like this:
R. Bott 194962---- 2 - 2 -(5)- 1 - 1 - 1 - (5) -- 1 -- 2 -- 10
C. Cheng 185402-(4)- 3 - 4 -- 1 - 3 - 2 -- 3 -- 2 -(13)- 18
G. King 193378--- 4 -- 1 - 1 - (6)-1 - 2 -(13)- 10 - 6 -- 25
assuming that there would only be one race, we realised that richard bott would win regardless of his result in the last race. he would then count the 5, so his maximum score would be 15, which beats my lowest possible score of 19. oh well that makes things simple at least. i only had to worry about gabrielle king, who had to finish in the top 6 and put 6 boats between us to take second place. we thought.
for the first time in these 2009 australian laser championships we raced in a land breeze with less than 10 knots for the 930 start. not really my cup of tea, but it didn't suit richard or gabrielle either. i had a difficult start with elizabeth yin lee-bowing me off the line, and found myself pretty deep in the 20s. i played the left side which was a good thing, and suddenly there i was rounding the top mark next to gab. we stuck to each other over the next downwind and upwind legs, exchanging positions, even engaging in a short tacking duel. turns out that was a tricky upwind for the whole radial fleet but she caught up to about 4th or 5th and i was about 10th. things were getting a bit close.
but as we were reaching to the outer loop, a glance ahead revealed that the laser stds were sailing on a run to their top mark. the sea breeze was filling in! i quickly let out sheet and went on a run directly to the new pressure, and though i only covered about 10m before the wind swung, those were a very precious 10m. elizabeth won, i finished 4th; gab was caught behind a bunch of boats and never quite got going when the new wind came in - she finished 12th.
i heaved a sigh of relief, went over to her and told her she'd sailed a great regatta and hey i'm sorry it had to end like that. i went alongside brett hoping for a drink and a ride home, not thinking that, guess what, the race committee was planning another race!
"I think we need to have a look at the points Brett."
these days it is rare to see a match race during regattas. the sailors in contention must have a certain scorecard in order for something like this to happen. it is so common that either a) the leader is so far ahead on points that he can afford to not sail the last race or two and still win, or b) there are 3 or more sailors still capable of coming first, so the leader can ill afford to engage in a 1v1 fight and lose to a 3rd sailor.
the most famous match race (possibly across all classes, though i may be biased here) would be at the sydney 2000 olympics where ben ainslie sailed robert scheidt off the course to win the laser gold.
now with the olympic medal race format where the scores are doubled in the medal race and cannot be discarded, a) is much less likely, and match racing becomes quite possible. at the olympics we saw paul goodison match race the 2nd placed swede out of the medals just to ensure 100% that the gold would be his. although i think the commentary in that video is pretty dreadful and says nothing about what's actually happening in the race.
well, we didn't have a medal race format here, and this was what we had written on a piece of paper.
R. Bott ---- 7 --5 -- 1 -- 2 -- (20+) - 15
C. Cheng - 13 - 3 -- 2 -(13) -- 4 ---- 22
G. King --- 9 -(13)-10 - 6 --- 12 ---- 37
we didn't know how richard had fared in the previous race, other than he had done poorly - brett could only guess that he was in the 20s.
down to the maths. my worst possible score was a 35, counting the 13. this meant that i no longer needed to consider gabrielle.
winning now became possible. i could try to put 7 boats between richard and me, and finish in the top 12. however this was always going to be difficult - with the sea breeze up to 12 knots and freshening, these were the kind of conditions which richard had been winning in. he was just faster than everyone on those upwinds.
it's not hard to see where this was going. richard's worst possible score was 35+. my worst possible score was 35. if i could hold richard out of the top 20 in the last race, i would win.
i had a pretty interesting discussion about this sudden prospect with b-man at this point. i asked him what he would have done had he been in my position, and he, well, thought about it and said, "i don't want my answer to change the way you sail, you must ultimately believe in your own choice fully." fair enough and point taken.
i told him, i'm happy going out there and sailing my own race, taking it easy and enjoying myself. at the same time i'm equally happy taking it 100% serious and engaging richard in what would certainly be a pulsating race.
also, think about how a well-meaning middle-aged aussie will see a chinese teenager bearing down on him. i can't imagine!
eventually i considered the fact that match racing opportunities like these don't come often at all, and i decided that if i didn't do it i would probably go on thinking about what it could have been. to be honest i've never done this sort of thing in an actual race before, and it was maybe a dream to put to practice all those match/team racing techniques introduced by jacob palm and watching america's cups. that recent training session with cai and victoria comes immediately to mind.
5 min to start, and i was keeping an eye on 194962. i wasn't about to fight him yet, not when he still didn't know my intentions.
with about a minute to start, he lined up just to leeward of another boat. i tacked beneath him and we proceeded to have a luffing match, with him trying to create as much space as possible between us so he could still start. great credit to him, when the gun went i was surprised that he still managed to start so cleanly. i was still to his lee though, and i was pretty sure i could have continued to go high and lee bow him on the upwind had the general recall not sounded! there goes my element of surprise!
wow, round 2 then. at 5 min we were both behind the committee boat keeping tabs on each other. he gybed around behind me, and i followed suit. we even did a couple of circles which i thought was really exciting and certainly got my heart rate up. he eventually sailed away on starboard and stopped some 10 boatlengths behind the fleet, and i lined up behind him with my options still open.
with about a minute to go he approached the line and positioned himself just to leeward of another boat. once again i went below him and sandwiched him between 2 boats. we jostled for a while, and i managed the start a bit better this time and lee-bowed him off the line. he was stuck with a boat on his windward hip so he had no option to tack, so i had him where i wanted.
we sailed like this for a good 5 minutes, and when he finally got to tack, i followed and covered him really closely, slowing him the whole way. at this point i think it was greg adams who appeared below us and lee-bowed richard as well, he would eventually finish 9th. all through this i felt calm, as though this was just routine team racing training.
it was amazing how high up in the fleet we were despite all this. in theory we should be the 2 slowest boats out there yet we were still in the 20s. i even saw gabrielle king go past us on the port layline. this was after we had a bit of an incident involving the indian sailor fouling us when he was on port and richard and i were on starboard.
the downwind was uneventful. i was easily faster than him here, but i tried to stay close to him so that i could cover him again the next beat. however upon rounding the gate mark he tacked to port when i had a starboard boat on my hip, so i was unable to tack to follow. thus for most of the 2nd leg i sailed out to the favoured left side hoping that i would still be fast enough to keep my nose in front of him and stay in control. once again i was amazed at how quickly both of us were making places through the fleet, and when i next met him at the top mark, i'd think that we were about 14th in the fleet. i could actually identify who was leading the race because they weren't that far ahead.
as he came up behind me, i tried to hold him head to wind at this top mark. while i held him for a while, only 1 or 2 other boats managed to pass us at this time. i realised later that this is because boats move slower on the upwind leg than off the wind, so fewer boats passed through. richard managed to sail to windward over me, and actually took the lead here.
however i passed him on the reach to the outer loop. on the way down to the the bottom mark, i started counting boats. with only a reach and a short upwind leg left to the finish the race was ending soon. i counted... 15 boats ahead of us! 15! that's not good enough.
this was the climax of my race and i think my proudest achievement. the people whom i team raced with in our opti days will vouch for how difficult it is to hold out a boat on the downwind leg by luffing - the defender can easily manouvre to leeward of the aggressor's stern and gain control and room at the bottom mark, or sail quickly to windward and hope to cover the aggressor's wind and break the overlap.
with about 30 seconds of sailing left to the bottom mark i managed to hook under richard on starboard tack and luff him away from the mark. this manouvre was even more difficult now because we were surfing at different speeds, and it was crucial that i sail parallel to him so that he could not duck my stern. furthermore, there were so many other boats around us that i was amazed we didn't get caught up with anyone else while we were dueling. somehow i managed to pull it off, and he helped me somewhat by continuing further for a while, then pointing up head to wind. at this point i gybed back and headed for the mark, now with a comfortable gap between us.
while the whole process was over within 20 seconds, because boats were moving fast on the downwind leg, a whole bunch of 10+ boats got through. somehow i had managed to time it such that i rounded the mark cleanly, free of boats, while richard had to round outside another bunch of boats that were just behind me. what a feeling!
i could see that he was visibly frustrated after that, and was working hard to catch up. the reach was a quick one, and i dumped on top of him once more on the upwind leg to the finish. again he managed to slip away from my cover courtesy of another starboard tack boat, and when we met again, he was ahead. but the race was over so quickly, and i came away feeling incredibly satisfied. in the end he finished 25th, just ahead of me in 26th. i accomplished what i had set out to do, and in doing so, i think, sailed one of the races of my career so far.
the excitement for the day wasn't quite over though. we came back to shore realising that i might have to face a protest from richard over the incident on the port layline with the indian. to cut a long story short, richard eventually withdrew the protest seeing that it would not have affected the results anyway. because, as it turned out, i had succeeded only in tying with richard on 35 points, with him winning the championships virtue of his winning 3 more races than i had. because, as it turned out, he had finished 20th in the 2nd last race, which throws off our earlier calculations by just 1 point. we had been assuming that he had finished 20+.
which means that, in hindsight, my match racing strategy was never going to work. the only way i could have overtaken him was to have put 7 boats between richard and me. and, well, now the 'what if' blues kick in; what if i hadn't lost those 2 boats on the down wind on the 7th race, what if richard had finished 21st instead of 20th, what if i hadn't touched that mark etc. that's racing for you.
truth is, not knowing that richard had finished 20th was a great thing. cuz i sailed an incredible race that'll i'll be remembering for a long time. thanks brett and thanks richard. thanks fremantle doc.
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