This year the Port Credit open saw the largest J24 fleet on the Canadian side of the lake this year so far. After a seven race series, Katie Nicoll and crew – which includes her 2 kids Carter and Clarity walked away as the overall winner.
After the event I asked Katie and Carter to tell me their secrets to winning the event since it may help everyone out for the 2016 NA’s and 2017 Worlds. See the article below.
How did you guys get consistent results when it seemed as if everyone was all over the map?
Katie: One of the key things is to sail with a core of three people that you have sailed with for a long time. My son, Carter did trim, flew the spinnaker, and has sailed with me for close to 12 years. My daughter, Clarity, has done bow for me for close to 10 years. I initially taught them to sail and had them on the boat from an early age; however they both attended sailing school. I have also encouraged them to sail on boats other than J/24s and learn from other good sailors which they have both done and now know more than their mother! I have complete trust and faith in their calls which allows me to just keep the boat sailing fast. Our fourth was a young sailing instructor from Port Credit YC who is now going into his second year on the boat and is very keen and quick to learn. Our 5th was a fellow from another PCYC boat that did not sail that weekend. There was very little talking on the boat other than information about speed and point and darker spots on the water. Two key ingredients are chocolate after every race – seriously! And a brand new Evolution genoa – which came out of the bag on the way to the race course – easy to trim and fast.
Carter: We were using a new evolution Jenny which we didn’t get to speed tune with as much as we’d liked to. However, boat speed seemed pretty good. We were able to fight and hold our lane off the starts, when we got a good start.
How did you tune for all the different conditions? (as I heard it was everything from super light to breeze on)
Katie: We had a base setting and went up one setting for |race 3 and 4 on Saturday – which was helpful for one race but not the other. We had a lot of sag in the forestay and a little bit of backstay on to stop the mast from pumping in the chop
Carter: Rig was at base setting the majority of the regatta, except for once race on Saturday were it was tightened a few notches. I was doing majority of the upwind tactics even though the trimmer probably shouldn’t but the trimmer usually gets the best view of the fleet from the leeward side sometimes. We had two guys in the middle I have never really sailed before with but they there were on the ball with compass headings and were constantly feeding me with numbers from our reference heading. The breeze was very up and down so we had to constantly change gears, up wind and down wind keeping the boat fast in the lulls.
The boat doesn’t have the best set up..but it was important at the beginning race day to check all the gear and equipment several times to make sure that everything was shipshape. Covering all the variables that can mess you up while racing. ie taping shackles on halyards, or anything potentially sharp that could catch or rip a sail. When stuff goes wrong its usually at a bad time. Fortunately for us we got lucky and when things did go wrong we were in positions that did not cost us anything. But usually that’s not the case. ( Like losing a spin sheet with a half leg lead). After that I put extra long tails on the eight knots on the spin sheets.
What was the overall weight of the crew?
Katie: Our overall crew weight was a little light – though we always seem to be light – about 820 lbs
Carter: We were light, probably 100 pounds under the Limit.
What were some local conditions people from other clubs might not be aware of?
Katie: always check for current – especially when there has been rain a day or two before or a wind that has been blowing from the same direction for a while. – always look for dark spots on the water away from shore – if there were no thermal clouds forming on the shore, it is not always advantageous to sail that way
Carter: Breeze was south/south-west. A good 80-90% of the time going to the left worked out well for us. Which I’ve noticed over the years is common. Especially from that direction on Sunday where it would lift and look not so good and then a new wind line would come in and knock 10-15 degrees we would flip and look pretty damn good.
Other than that we seemed to be going fast in the right direction most of the time and had good team work on the boat. We tried to keep sibling bickering to a minimal.
You can view full results here
Congrats again Quick Nick