Video Review

Hi Lorenzo,
Awesome videos! You are looking good and look like you are having lots of fun too - really nice work.

Generally speaking, it looks like you need to sail with more vang on upwind. Minimum vang setting once you are sitting on the deck (IE, not crouching in the cockpit) is: sheet the main all the way in and take the slack out of the vang, maybe easing just a little bit of vang from there (like 0.5"). This will give you a much more efficient sail shape. When you get a gust, even with the main out a bit, you want the sail to stay more or less rigid to transmit power down to the boat... you don't want your boom to go up and lose the power... some people sail around with no vang on upwind and their sail looks like a wet noodle when they sheet out. So when you are sheeting out a bit, you want the boom to go out, not up in the sky. This keeps the sail efficient. Take a look at some of the worlds videos and olympic sailing (not masters) - you will never see their vang slack unless they have just rounded a leeward mark and are about to put it on. So once you are on the deck or certainly whenever you are hiking, trim into block to block and take the slack out as your minimum setting. If you are having trouble keeping the boat flat, put some more on until you feel the boat unload. This will also take a lot of the mainsheet load off of your hand, which will allow you to hold the sheet without wrapping it around your hand. Try it and see.

Your outhaul setting looks good, maybe sometimes a little loose upwind. So you want it to be about 8.5" off the boom cleat in light wind... and then you are fine tuning it based on your helm. If you have too much helm or feel a bit slow, pull some outhaul on - usually to about 50% of the original light wind setting once you are hiking. If you feel like you aren't pointing well, you can ease it a bit and see if that helps. Your outhaul is important - it is impacting all of your battens the same up the sail, your entire leech shape.

Otherwise, it's hard to tell because in the videos you tend to sail around a bit randomly. If you make another video, setup an upwind mark and a downwind mark and sail around them practicing focusing on upwind sailing, tacking, roundings, downwind, gybing, roundings etc. with 100% focus on getting to each mark as fast as you can. Then we will be able to give you more feedback on your technique.

C
 
Yo,
Cool vid. -1st rankings of term race 1.
First thing to mention is your use of the kicker, or lack of it.
Going upwind the boat is way not flat and you're throwing your shoulders as far out as poss but also down and arching your back, while this may feel as though you're working extra hard in terms of leverage you'd be better off staying flat so you can see your belly knees toes...
While ashore, pre launch, with everything slack. Tighten your traveller as best you can then sheet in the main until the boom block and traveller block actually touch....hold it there and at the same time max on the kicker.
With a permanent marker, put a solid stripe across the kicker lines about four inches below the fitting.
Then you'll have a visual mark to set toward when you're about to hit the bottom mark.

I know you were using old style set up but adjusting the outhaul in combo with the kicker will power up / de- power the sail and help flatten the boat.
The cunningham, about half way through the vid could do with pinching on a bit - note all the creases pointing onward the clew - all those little bumps in the sail murder laminar flow.

I liked how you slow mo'd your tacks n gybes, to show ( yourself as much as others I guess ) your body movements through the manoeuvres , the grabbing of the high rail to pull yourself up with tiller hand is classic sailing school teachings....I imagine you'll develop your methods to suit you best as you progress, but doing that ( the above) will sap your strength in no time.
Maybe position your feet underneath you in readiness and use the big giant muscles in your legs to do what they are designed for ? Also while your tiller hand is static in pulling you up, so too is your tiller in the water behind you...

Everyone will tell you to flatten the boat, everything works better when the hull's flat in average conditions - the sail, the hull shape, the daggerboard and of course the rudder....the trick is getting and keeping it flat.
 
I know about my vang setting but as you'd see i have a traditional vang which can be a real pain to adjust and i believe i actually did fix it later but i edited it out but im getting a new harken one soon. Thanks alot both of y'all for the great advice ill definitely try what you said with the hiking. First rankings was actually an old one that i re-uploaded so some of the other ones may be a bit newer.
 
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