It was a bit daunting going into the first race of the Etchells Mid-Winters with the new windward gates. We now had to determine which side of the course we would come in from to pass through our windward gate and which mark to round before heading south on the downwind leg. For us, that decision was not always made well in advance. I found it was not always choosing the favored gate, but sometimes choosing the path with the least resistance in order to keep our boat speed with clear air.

The gates seemed to form a larger area of disturbed air and chopped up water if you were in the middle to back of the fleet, This scenario was always true with the standard windward mark, but the area became much larger with the gates. In the one race, we found ourselves in the top 20 boats, between two Etchells World Champions on the last downwind leg. For this race, many of the obstacles we had dealt with before were not there. We didn’t have a wall of boats to sail through at any of the turning marks and it was a lot easier not having to try and dig out from the back of the fleet. It was a great thrill to have the boat tuned for the conditions and to see that our boatspeed was able to maintain with the fast guys.

When we used the starboard gate, we put our pole up on the starboard side and waited to jibe around the offset mark before the spinnaker hoist. Our boat is set up with two spinnaker bins, one on each side, but we never really knew ahead of time which gate we would round, so we stuck to the port side hoist that we were used to. There were plenty of other boats that used our strategy too.

The most positive thing about the gates was watching the fleet change positions. You had to really think three steps ahead to keep yourself out of trouble with other boats and to position yourself on a clear path around the mark. We didn’t always make the right choices going into it, but we sailed clean, we were challenged and it was fun and exciting. I think it worked well for a large fleet and I hope we will see the gates at the Worlds in Chicago this year.