"...its all about judging the distance from the buoy and getting that spot on!"—Bernd

Today was another beautiful day in Maui. The sun was up with the wind and there literally wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But I wasn’t spending my time slacking around looking at flowers, I had to train for the Maui Race Series!

      My focus was mainly to tie off my starts since I was focusing, mostly, on jibes throughout the last few months. I would practice with a buoy, starting a 2 min timer at the buoy and then sailing out for a minute. After a minute I would jibe around and cruise in until the time on my watch matched the time it would take me to sail in, at full speed, to the mark. That would give me pretty good results, its all about judging the distance from the buoy and getting that spot on!

     The other thing I was working on was jibes. Lots of people overlook jibes. You’ll see them flying around in a straight line and think “How am I ever going to beat that guy?”. The truth is that guy isn’t working on his jibes and he will probably fall or lose valuable speed in the race. And the people I am racing against are all faster than me so my only two advantages are starts and jibes.

     Hopefully this practice will pay off in the race, I’ll let you know if I win but I won’t I lose!