Yokoo focuses on Roschana’s sail trim.
Sailing Osaka Bay with Yokoo is always a great pleasure. Yokoo is a top sailor with many years experience sailing and racing keel boats. My name is Mark Smith and most days you can find me enjoying time with my family working at one of our English schools, attending to the needs of our real estate business or on the Internet. However not last Saturday. Last Saturday it was time to take Roschana out sailing Osaka Bay.
Roschana arrived in Japan in July of this year after sailing from Adelaide, Australia up to Osaka Bay, Japan. Mark Smith sailed the boat with crew member Ben, a 21 year old lad from Canada. On such long passages the main challenge is to stay focused and keep moving. Yes we do our best on keeping the boat well trimmed however it is not the main challenge. Between Australia and Japan the goal is simple, whatever happens we keep making our way North. Just keep Northing and we will arrive at the destination. By contrast sailing shorter distance races the discipline of correct sail setting and boat balance becomes far more important. Inshore races mostly pit one boat against another over the exact same course. Every second becomes important and therefore we need to trim our boat to do it’s absolute best over the short distance at hand. In other words the challenge moves from long term endurance to short term performance.
To me when we trim a boat to perform we must follow the standard disciplines that any of us can pick up from reading books and blogs. However trimming that same boat to achieve it’s best performance under varying conditions goes beyond discipline and becomes an art form. We need an artist and they are hard to find. Roschana is lucky to have just such an artist as a friend. Yokoo loves to trim sails and balance boats. Last Saturday Yokoo and I went out on the bay and practised sail settings on four sails from the sail wardrobe of Roschana. We practised trimming the mainsail, Genoa, Fractional Genneker and our skimpy little upwind genneker for which we have no name.
All in all we had a great day and managed to get in some decent practice and good fun. If you have an interest in Sailing Osaka Bay then let us know. I am sure we can get you out on the water. Yours, mark Smith.