Puffy Conditions

These questions were emailed to me earlier this morning. I thought you all may be interested. As always, feel free to comment.

When I'm calling puffs, should I be able to tell whether its a header or a lift, or does that just come with experience?

Start by just getting the timing down, You should be able to say that there is a puff in 5 seconds and then count it down. Once you get the timing, since you will have been paying attention, you will start to understand direction.

To keep it really simple, the axis of the header will be pointed such that it makes the boat want to bear away when the puff hits. The axis of a lift will allow the boat to head up to meet it,

In breezy conditions is it just as important to be playing the jib as in lighter conditions, or should I be more focused on keeping the boat flat?

It is just as important, just harder to do because of the load on the sheets. You still need to adjust with your skipper, regardless of the wind velocity. When it really nukes, that's when it pays to be able to ease with the skipper in the puffs.

When judging how to play the jib, is it based more on skipper communicating what they're doing with the main, or just anticipating the puffs?

Both. First off, your skipper should be talking to you about what they are doing with the main. Since you have your head out of the boat and are looking around, you should start to recognize what your skipper is doing when, and then start to anticipate