Using photo's to tune your boat
Above. It is always a great help if you can get a friend or a skipper not sailing in your heat to snap pictures of your boat around the course. In this pic my IOM, 63, is later passed by top NZ skipper Goeff Smale, 61,  The picture makes it clear why this happened. With the amount of back winding I have in the mainsail it is clear I either have to much twist in my mainsail or not enough twist in the jib, perhaps also I could have opened the jib slot up by sheeting the jib boom a little wider. It just goes to show sailmakers don't always make the best sailors.
In this sequence of pictures yours truely, 63, tries to pick the shortest course to the first mark. After a good start there was an opportunity to sail into clear air by tacking on to port, clear space like this gives you choices at a later time. Note further out on the starboard side of the course there is a glassy patch of water which would suggest lighter air out there, with this in mind 63 tacks back on to starboard after a short while when a lifting breeze gives the opportunity to do so. this keeps us in the middle of the race track which once again gives you options of working a port or startboard lift as it comes. If you sail out to either side of the course on what appears to be a good lift you might find yourself pasted out there and having to sail back to the windward mark on a header and thus sailing a longer distance.. Using the centre of the race track if at all possible on windward beats is a smart move, you might not always be the first one to the mark but you won't get caught out on a limb and be the last to round either. If you can work more shifts than most the others you could come out well ahead.
On the wind tactics