elmo said...
Is that a normal start with sailors coming in from 2 different directions? It looks insane
YES, actually! When you get fleets of +40 guys at big events you will get a lot of guys starting on port tack even if it's not favoured just to get clear air as when everyone starts on starboard, it's really hard not to get rolled by the top 4-5 guys and it only takes one guy to go quicker than you and you can lose 20 places out of the start...
In PR there was a big lift from the beach if you started on port (although we were doing mark roundings the OPPOSITE direction so you had 2 tacks to do if you started port, where normally you only do 1), so most of the Top 10 guys started on port every single race. All the race winners started on port except for Race 9 and 15 which Micah Buzianis and Michal Polanowski won by starting on starboard.
Port gives way to starboard but what happens when you have this many guys coming together at high speeds is some of the guys lower in the rankings start giving way to top guys on port (which is what you SHOULDN'T do) and this is where the carnage started. If the port sailors know they have to dip people they do, but if half the fleet on starboard starts giving way to them, they get confident and start not giving way to guys on starboard and crashes started happening...
Most of the worst crashes was when a starboard guy tried to dip a port sailor instead of holding his course and the port sailor assumes that isn't going to happen so he ALSO dips - then they just plow in to each other head-on!
To me it would be safer if they only allowed the top 50 guys in the World to race at a Worlds (ie, locked the entries), but formula has always been an open class for anyone to compete in and so in this instance we had some carnage!
