The less glamorous side of one-design

There are a lot of benefits to racing one-design, great competition, no (or less) complaining about unfair boats, eventually depends only on boat prep and crew work. Part of the crew work also involves the crew needing to make crew weight. The Melges 24 has a max crew weight of 794 lbs. The goal is to weigh-in just prior to the regatta as close to max weight as possible. At the same time, you want to have as much crew weight as possible on the rail, so this leads to the crew needing to diet before the regatta, but also wanting to quickly gain the weight back after weigh-ins.

Some crews take this to an unhealthy extreme with people sweating out everything they can in saunas and crash diets. The trick is to figure out a healthy way to cut weight, and then gain a bit of that weight back prior to racing.

So for Karma, this means that all of the crew will need to cut some weight prior to Long Beach Race Week. For some it is only like 2-3lbs., others (like me) it is 12 lbs. Loosing 12 lbs from 176 in a month isn't easy, but it has been done before, but being that all I can think about right now is weight, boat prep, work, and school, I figured this would be the most entertaining entry.

So all of my spare time is going to be dedicated to drinking lots of water, riding my bike a lot, and playing with the new Wii Fit. If this is done right, no one will need to spend time in a sauna before racing. Let's hope it is done right.