(Annapolis, MD)- Stephanie Roble, Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year and USA Women’s #1 Match
Racer, has been sailing for the past two years with John Brim on his
J/70 RIMETTE. John loves sailing his boat and he has assembled a
fun, easy-going, and extremely talented crew. Steph has been helping
John and the crew sail faster, get better organized, and focus on
teamwork. Here are some of Steph’s pearls of wisdom after sailing in
the Helly Hansen Annapolis NOOD Regatta:“I had a great time with Team Rimette (John Brim (driver), Collin Leon (trim) & Dave Wright (tactics/bow)) at the Annapolis NOOD present by Helly Hansen. This was my first time sailing the NOOD in Naptown and first time sailing in the “non college sailing” venue. We arrived two days early for some practice where we focused on upwind speed and boathandling. The team sailed in the Wednesday night race against about 20 other boats, it was super fun and a great pre-regatta reminder of pre start processes. Despite a light air event with minimal races, we had a great event, finishing 8th overall. Here are some take-aways from Team Rimette:
- Be consistent with pre-start homework & dock off time: For an 11 am start, we left the dock at 9:30 every morning. This gave us enough time to cruise by some crab pots on the way out to confirm the current. A big goal for us this event was to develop upwind speed, so we also left plenty of time to get the rig dialed in and made an effort to always be lining up with the same, fast teams each day. With the strong current and light air we often kept our engine on the back until we knew we were going into sequence. Also, with the current, we made several time runs at the line so we could understand how the current would affect our approach with angle and speed. This was super helpful and hard with the adverse current the last day!!
- Raking back was a positive move for our rig: In Charleston, we had our rake set at 4’ 6 ½” (with North Sails). We consistently felt stuck in a lower/faster to lower/same mode and the driver had minimal helm. So, we raked back to 4' 6 3/4" in hopes of finding a higher groove and we did! We still used the North Tuning guide as a base for the rig. However, with the rig further back, we had to be conscious of headstay tension, which was a combination of lower tension, and mainsheet tension. In general, the event was pretty light so we generally found headstay sag to be fast. But, in the puffs when everyone was on the rail and we were slightly overpowered, I would put on slight amount of backstay, little bit of vang and just gave the mainsheet a bump to keep the boat under us.
- Speed kills: With a light air event, we focused a lot on proper weight placement fore/aft as well as side to side. If it was super light, we had weight together and forward as much as possible. When the puffs came up, we were very quick to get weight on the rail so the driver didn’t have to pinch up in the puffs & lose speed. Overall, John and I focused on creating good target numbers UW and in the super light stuff we made fast target numbers and made a team rule of absolutely never going slower than that (which is hard!). Downwind, we are super fast because Collin is constantly communicating pressure in the sheet to John and we try to focus on using weight to turn the boat rather than the rudder.
- Be consistent with communication: I run the starts on our boat and I have been focusing on developing consistent communication with the team and John. Starting with 60 boats in light air in adverse current is super stressful for everyone onboard and around us. So we find that we can calm down and create all around the best start when we revert back to the communication we have developed. All around the course Dave was very good at saying “if this, then that” which kept things cool on the boat. And downwind Collin’s communication is clear and concise to keep the boat moving.
- We love our water filter! Collin purchased a water filter that hooks up to the hose on the dock. It is extremely handy! We fill 4 Nalgenes on the dock each morning and 1 gallon jug. Easy to move the weight around and obviously less use of plastic bottles. Definitely worth the investment and pays itself off pretty quickly!
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