Many one-design classes, and some bigger boats, are fortunate to have convenient guides to help get the jib trimmed properly and consistently. Some of us use tape marks on our spreaders or marks on our splash rails and jib sheets so we have a ballpark placement for sheet tension after every tack.

While these guides do help us achieve our initial sheet trim quickly, they don’t necessarily key on the trim points that matter the most. Our leech telltales are really what we should be paying attention to most.

What exactly are leech telltales telling us? On the mainsail, the top telltale is telling us that the flow off the leech is fair and even off both sides of the sail. Often (depending on the boat and conditions) the mainsail will be trimmed hard enough so that the top telltale will be stalled when the boat is set up in “point mode.”  Jib trim, on the other hand, is rarely set up with anything other than constant flow on those telltales.

Our jib leech telltales provide us with a gauge on how the wind is flowing through the all-important “slot,” the open area between the mainsail and jib. When the slot is too narrow the telltales will stall. Oftentimes, there will be backwind in the main, a bubble at the luff area of the main is an indication that the slot is too narrow. While jib sheet tension has the greatest effect on the slot and the jib leech telltale flow, other trim adjustments can be contributing factors as well.

“Using your jib telltales to check what’s happening in the slot will help you maintain the right balance between the main and jib, often resulting in the boat and helm being perfectly balanced.”

For example, if the main is eased in a set of waves, or in a gust when the traveler is eased to leeward, the slot will be narrowed and the telltales will stall, dictating that an ease on the jib sheet is necessary. An inhauler jib-system, or weather sheeting will also impact flow through the slot. Using your jib telltales to check what’s happening in the slot will help you maintain the right balance between the main and jib, often resulting in the boat and helm being perfectly balanced.

Many jibs these days come from the sailmaker with at least one telltale attached to the leech at the top batten. If the jib doesn’t have battens, ideally the top-most telltale would be placed about 25 to 30 percent down the leech. These telltales provide the most consistent guide for sheet trim across all conditions, and the goal is to have your telltales flowing straight off the leech most of the time. If the boat feels sluggish, bound-up or slow, take a quick look at the leech telltales for a reality check because it can be very easy to over trim, especially in light winds. If you have a mainsail window that allows you to see the top jib telltale, consider that your window to boatspeed.

With the jib leech telltales (not to be confused with the luff telltales that help provide the guide to steering in “the groove”) the process is to trim the jib sheet until the telltales just start to stall and then ease the sheet until they just flow. In flat water and 8 to 10 knots of breeze, you can trim a touch harder and have the leech telltales just on the edge of stalling. But when you’re in this mode, be extra careful the stall doesn’t go from the edge to off the cliff. 

Often, we place two to three telltales on the leech, spaced 6 inches apart, and when sailing in ideal conditions, with the perfect trim on the edge, the lowest telltale of the top two or three will start to stall while the top still maintains a flow. When it’s windy, light or shifty and acceleration is key, avoid ever letting the telltales stall.

Another cause of jib-leech telltale stall may be that the mainsail is set up a touch too full, or the mainsail draft is too far forward. Stalled jib-leech telltales will provide that intel. Solutions to opening the slot could be applying more backstay or vang or easing the cunningham. A loose jib halyard could be a culprit as well, as a softer halyard tension allows the draft to move aft in the jib, rounding the leech and narrowing the slot.

Perhaps in stronger winds, when the boat is overpowered and the mainsail is to set to leeward to help balance the boat (i.e., a low traveler), it may be nearly impossible to maintain telltale flow off the upper leech. Moving the jib lead aft, if possible, may help open up the leech, and the slot, and allow better flow.

The post Use Your Jib Leech Telltales For Perfect Trim appeared first on Sailing World.

It seems as if, when boats get near each other, they both lose something. Let’s look at the classic upwind port-starboard crossing. Suppose you are on port tack heading in phase to the right. Along comes a starboard tacker that you are not quite crossing. Short of fouling that boat, you have three options: tack, duck or double-tack (tack, pinch off the starboard-tack boat, then tack back). Which is the right move? The answer is simple: It’s the one with the least loss.

You need to resign yourself to the fact that each of these three options is a loss. There is no option that nets a gain on the fleet. There never is. The tack options will cost you one boatlength, assuming your boat loses that much in a tack. If it’s a bad tack, you lose even more. It follows then that the double-tack option will cost you two boatlengths. The duck option costs you 1.5 boatlengths (a half-boatlength duck gets you bow-to-bow, and then it’s another boatlength from there). Which is the right move? The tack, because it loses only one boatlength.

But that is just a baseline. You also need to layer on your strategy. You are sailing to the right side of the racecourse for a reason; in this case, you are lifted on port tack and want to stay in phase. It’s a rough guess, but you need to estimate how much you will lose if you get out of phase. Let’s say for this shift example, you estimate four boatlengths of loss. The tack option sends you out of phase at a cost of five boatlengths (one for the tack and four for sailing out of phase). The loss with the duck and the double-tack options are unchanged because they both keep you in phase with no loss. Which is the right move? Factoring in strategy, the duck is the new least-loss option. At a 1.5-boatlength loss, it wins out by a half-boatlength over tacking twice (two boatlengths) and is way ahead of tacking once (five boatlengths).

Use risk aversion as the tiebreaker. If it’s a close call, the double-tack option loses out to the duck by only a half-boatlength. A duck is straightforward, so that’s low-risk. The double-tack option is dicey because it relies on planting a solid lee bow, successfully pinching off the boat, then tacking to cross. Much more can go wrong with boathandling and a potential rules situation, so let’s call this high-risk. Ducking loses less and is lower-risk. Duck it is. I’m OK with taking the risk when the math says it’s the right thing to do. But unless it is compelling, I avoid the higher-risk option.

The amount of loss is dependent upon both the boat type and the conditions. If you sail a boat that tacks very well, such as a round-bottom dinghy, your tack loss might be close to zero with a solid roll tack in light air and flat water, but it might be one boatlength or more in big waves or chop. A larger keelboat likely won’t fare as well. There will likely be one boatlength lost in ideal (flat water) conditions and three boatlengths lost in waves or chop. Most boats don’t lose much when jibing, but a dinghy dropping off a plane compared with a boat still ripping along means that jibe could be quite costly. The point is that each boat has its own matrix of maneuvers and its respective loss through the range of conditions. You need to know your boat’s matrix for this process to work. You don’t have to identify the trade-offs of maneuvers to a small fraction, but you should know within about a half-boatlength for all maneuvers in all conditions.

Unlike specific boathandling encounters that have a one-time loss—such as tacks and ducks—speed modes and dirty air have a continual loss over time. Pinching to hold your lane off the start might be a slow-burn loss of, say, four boatlengths per minute. If you need to hang in there for 30 seconds or so before you can tack into an open lane, that’s a loss of two boatlengths. Compare that against clearing out earlier into traffic that might require multiple ducks while weaving through a large pack. Waiting for 30 seconds in a tight lane at a loss of two boatlengths does not seem so bad if ducking a large pack or multiple boats costs you five.

Most leeward-mark decisions weigh the loss of going around outside the pinwheel versus the loss of slowing down and waiting to get in line. Slowing down is the right choice if you figure that doing so will cost you one boatlength, while going outside costs you three. The right answer is usually to slow down, but in a situation with a pile of boats jammed up, the outside route just might work. If you figure that it will cost you five boatlengths to stop while you wait for a large pack to round, going outside and losing only three lengths might be the least-loss move.

A windward-mark rounding has a different set of least-loss options. Getting on the layline early is a slow bleed. This needs to be compared to the loss of coming in late on port tack. Is tacking one minute out from the mark better than two extra tacks and some ducks right near the mark? If you expect to lose 10 boatlengths on a long starboard layline, the likely answer is yes. But it is risky, so you need to consider that too. I have found myself coming in late into an impossible situation and fouled, and I have also realized that there was no way in and had to duck 20 boats. High risk, high reward.

Letting people off the hook by waiving your rights is often the least-loss move. In a crossing situation when I am that starboard boat, I often hail the port tacker to cross and wave them through. Sure, I like to make friends by being courteous and letting them go, but it’s a selfish move. A duck will cost me maybe half a boatlength, and I expect that the sacrifice will likely be far better than having to do two tacks to clear, if they lee bow me. As a bonus, they just might return the favor later.

Boat-on-boat interaction is inevitable, and with each engagement, you lose distance to the fleet as a whole. You typically have options, but it’s not always immediately obvious which is best. It’s hard to give up your rights and duck a port tacker, slow way down at a leeward mark, or hang in there above a tough boat holding you high, but you need to understand your boat and have your strategy well in hand so that you can weigh your options and pick the one that is not as bad as the others. The right choice, of course, is the one with the least loss.

The post A Guide to Tactical Risk Management appeared first on Sailing World.

So many factors go into prepping for a typical around-the-buoys day race: rig tune, sail selection, start line bias, course skew, and currents, but one of my biggest pieces of advice to sailors is to remember to regularly “look up!” One overlooked component of sailing strategy is how the wind behaves around the clouds and by understanding how they can influence wind patterns at the surface, you can gain a competitive edge on the water, especially if you are the only one looking around at the clouds. Clouds are a big topic, of which entire books have been published, but to get you started, here are my five top tips for cloud management. 

Incorporate clouds into your race strategy 

What information can clouds really tell us about what the wind will do in the next hour, next half hour, or even the next 5 minutes? A lot, actually. First, we need to know which clouds we should pay attention to, and which ones we can ignore. This comes down to height, size and shape. Clouds that are low to the surface, have a flat or dark bottom, and/or are puffy in nature are the ones we want to pay attention to. If you see clouds that are changing quickly, getting taller (taller than they are wide) or moving fast, those will also tell you a lot about what the wind is going to do. For example, cumulus (those puffy, cotton-ball-like clouds) over land that are growing taller indicate heating and a strong thermal component to the wind that day, which is likely to be a sea breeze in action. Fast-moving clouds tell you what the winds are doing at the upper levels of the atmosphere. Thin, wispy, or high-level clouds could offer insight as to what the weather will do in the next 12 to 24 hours, but these clouds will not directly impact the wind on your short windward-leeward course. 

On days where clouds are a significant feature of the racecourse, I’ve made checking the clouds part of my pre-race routine. For example, in Miami, where cumulus clouds are routinely moving across the course, I make it part of my routine to look up and check the speed, distance, and height of the clouds every 5 to 10 minutes. Set an alarm on your watch to remind you, just the same way you would systematically check the wind angles and bias on the start line. 

I also check to see how much cloud cover there is across the course, and whether the coverage will change at any point. For example, if the left side of the course has about 40-percent cloud cover (puffy cumulus) and the right side has 20, I will favor the right side of the course (all else being equal) because there is more blue sky in that direction and therefore more of the upper-level winds reaching the surface without being impeded by clouds. 

Avoid sailing underneath clouds

Cumulus clouds are a clear indication of thermal updrafts, which are pockets of warm air rising from the surface. As warm air ascends, it creates lower pressure underneath the cloud, and much less wind at the surface (a relative wind lull). This phenomenon also generates more wind around the cloud’s edges where the air is sinking (relative high pressure) and can provide a puff if you stay on the edge of the cloud—just don’t get stuck underneath it. The best way to get good at reading the clouds, and learning where the edges are, is to practice. It takes experience with many different types of clouds to get really good at nailing the pressure zones and judging the speed at which they are moving

Check for rain

It’s also important to note whether the cloud is actively raining or not, as this will change your strategy dramatically. Clouds that are not raining are as described above, with rising air underneath. Clouds that are raining, however, also have a downdraft near the rain. The strength of the downdraft will depend on how big and intense the rain cloud is. Smaller isolated rain clouds will have a quick downdraft that will flow out from the leading edge of the cloud and provide a small gust of wind as the rain starts initially falling (you usually feel this gust first on the leading edge, or as it is coming toward you.) If you are on the side of the cloud (it is passing to the left or right of you), the wind will tend to shift outward and away from a raining cloud. For example, if a rain cloud is passing to your left looking upwind, you can expect a left shift from the outflow gust.  After that gust, keep clear of the rain cloud because the wind will typically die afterward for up to an hour as the cell collapses, and until the previous prevailing winds return. 

To illustrate this, I’ll use an example from a recent 49erFX Worlds medal race. Pre-race, winds were very light, around 5 knots, and we had many distinct layers of clouds with occasional rain, some clouds were lighter and higher and some lower and darker. In the final minute before the race, winds were barely raceable. Then, I noticed an area of much darker clouds approaching from the left with some spitting rain, and the right side of the course had whiter clouds that were a bit higher up. The darker clouds were approaching fast. I figured they would arrive within the next 5 minutes (just after the race started) and I prayed our sailors (on the US Sailing Team) could see this too. After the start, it was clear they had. They were the only boats going hard left. They got a massive left shift with enough pressure to launch them to the front of the fleet, which had mainly gone right in the old breeze.  With it being such a short racecourse, they were able to hold their lead through two laps and won the medal race. 

Practice navigating cloud-to-cloud
What should you do when you see a few puffy cumulus clouds heading downwind on your race course? Well, if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, more often than not, the clouds will be moving downwind and slightly right to left across the sky. This is because friction over the water tends to shift the winds on the surface to the left. The winds pushing the clouds are not as affected by friction, and therefore are relatively right-shifted. This would, of course, be opposite in the Southern Hemisphere. For example, let’s say I notice clouds coming down the course on the run, and they are moving faster than I am. I predict they will overtake me and knowing they are moving right to left (looking upwind), I decide to jibe to port to let the clouds pass to my starboard, while I stay under blue skies. 

We can also use this rule of thumb when we see low, flat, blanket-like clouds (stratus or stratocumulus) near or approaching the course. Due to friction, winds under large patches of clouds will generally be lighter and more left-shifted than the surrounding winds under clear skies.

Heed the big-picture forecast

Clouds from synoptic (large-scale) weather systems—fronts for example—indicate a new breeze arriving, if that is expected within the day’s forecast. To illustrate this, I’ll use an example from Miami a few winters ago. The forecast called for a light northerly wind to be replaced by a much stronger northwest wind.  As we sailed out into Biscayne Bay, sailors and coaches were focusing on getting into upwind drills and checking the breeze as it came from the shifty direction of Downtown Miami, where skies were sunny. No one was looking behind us, toward the west. I made it a point to spin around and check for clouds in all directions, as I typically do.

I noted to the coach I was riding with, “I bet the wind will drop in the next 10 minutes and then get ready because it’s going to blow 15 to 20 knots.” As he looked at me, surprised, I just pointed to the horizon where we both saw the clouds and it then clicked—those clouds must be indicating the new wind.

If one were to look at a satellite image from that morning, you would have seen the large cloud bank approaching. But let’s assume you didn’t, and you only knew the wind was forecast to shift and increase. Noticing this cloud bank and how quickly it was moving before anyone else would have made a big difference for your next-race strategy. 

The most accomplished sailors will attest that understanding and utilizing the wind around clouds significantly enhances your strategy. Mastering the wind around clouds is an art that requires a combination of observational skills, meteorological knowledge, and practical experience, so get out there and practice identifying and timing the clouds before your next race. In other words, remember to look up! 

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Racing editor Mike Ingham shares his insight and expertise on how to handle puffs and shifts on a typical lake when the wind is strong.

The post Sailboat Racing Tips: Lake Sailing In Big Breeze appeared first on Sailing World.

Over six months of thesis research and statistical analyses with professors at Yale and Harvard and the head of sports analytics at ESPN, I derived a mathematical model that predicts sailing race performance. This formula reveals which skills, such as turn rate in tacks or a boat’s VMG upwind, actually matter and to what degree they matter toward winning a sailing race.

We know this formula can tell us how to win because the numbers don’t lie. To understand the model, we first need to define the most fundamental component to winning a sailing race: crossing the finish line before your competitors. To do so, we need to have the shortest elapsed race time. With this in mind, we can produce a model to reveal which skills are the strongest predictors of a shorter race time. In other words, we can use this model to tell us which sailing skills help win races.

To guide you through this model let’s use the 49erFX during the last Olympic Quad. To get enough data to be able to make any discernible conclusions we take SAP boat tracking data from every 49erFX race sailed in every major regatta between August 2016 and August 2021. To decide which skills are necessary to win, we break down a sailing race into 38 individual skills that contribute to a boat’s performance. These are a combination of speed, VMG, time, distance, and maneuver-specific metrics, each in total and broken down for the individual legs of the race and the start. To better grasp the data behind the model let’s look at a snippet from the final data set below.

Now let’s dive into the stats. To get our race win model we can run a multiple linear regression (a statistical technique that uses multiple variables to predict the outcome) to see which skills are the strongest predictors of a faster race. We use total race time as our dependent/outcome variable and race skills as our independent/explanatory variables. In layman’s terms, we look at all the race skills to see which combination of individual skills produces a shorter race time. The model can be illustrated through the graph below.

Here, each bar represents a different skill. The length of the bar represents numerically how much a skill is correlated with total race time. The color of the bar illustrates the strength of the correlation; lighter blue indicates a strong, positive correlation and darker blue indicates a strong, negative correlation. A long, light blue bar means a skill has a strong positive correlation with total race time. This tells us as that value increases, total race time increases and you theoretically sail a worse race.

While the graph is nicer to look at, the actual model shown below is more important to us: total.time.min = 34.58 — 2.0vmg.l1 — .75dw.speed.kts — .66vmg.l3 — .39maneuvers.l4  + .35vmg.l2 — .29vmg.l4 — .22maneuvers.l1 — .17tack.turn.rate.deg.s  + .094total.maneuvers + .060distance.behind.line.bl + .0059dw_dist — .00065uw_dist

On the left of our mathematical formula we see total.time.min or the total race time. We are trying to reduce this value because less time equals a better race. On the right, we first see the number is 34.58. This is our intercept or the mean for the outcome when all of the explanatory variables are zero. Meaning, if all race skills were somehow zero, the average time it would take a 49erFX to finish a race is 34 minutes and 58 seconds. To say that race skills won’t impact race time is a ridiculous concept so we don’t need to pay too close attention to that number. What we do need to pay attention to is the value of the coefficient, the number in front of each skill, and the sign of this number, positive or negative.

The first skill to look at is vmg.l1 or VMG on leg 1, the first upwind. Vmg.l1 has a value of -2.0 which is the largest magnitude and almost ten times that of any other skill in the model. Its negative value tells us that as VMG on leg 1 increases, total race time decreases. What does all this mean? That VMG on leg 1 is by far the most important contributor to the total time spent on a race; having more VMG on the first upwind beat is worth more, ten times more, to a winning boat than any other skill on the race course.

Next, factor in distance.behind.line.b the distance behind the line at the starting signal. Its value of 0.060 tells us that the more distance you are behind the line at the start, the longer your race will be. Combine this with our conclusion about VMG on leg 1 and we see that having a good start and an efficient first beat is the most important combination to sailing a shorter race. This is something you probably knew, but the numbers confirm it is the most important factor to sailing a winning race.

Now let’s focus on maneuvers. First, glance at total.maneuvers, the total number of maneuvers. The coefficient is .094. This positive value tells us that more maneuvers equals a longer race. Again, this is pretty intuitive and you could guess that without all of the complicated calculations. However, this isn’t the part to focus on. Look more closely at the other two maneuver metrics in our model: maneuvers.l1 and maneuvers.l4—maneuvers on leg 1 and leg 4. These skills both have negative values, -.22 and -.39, respectively. Increasing either of these values will subtract a larger number from the average race time, 34.58, which decreases the total race time. What this means is doing more maneuvers on the first upwind or the final downwind decreases your total race time—sailing a theoretically better race.

At first thought, these negative values seem to contradict our positive total.maneuvers value that says doing more maneuvers means a longer and worse race. However, if you think about these two values in the context of a race, they actually make a lot of sense.

The first and last legs are where boats are typically the most clustered together; either right after the start or closing into the finish line. With boats closer together, these legs give more opportunity to gain or lose boats. It’s where you might double tack to leebow a close boat or do an extra jibe onto another boat’s wind to slow them. If we go back to our model, we see it’s telling us that doing these extra maneuvers on leg 1 or leg 4 can actually improve our race—and that does make sense. So, the next time you’re racing don’t be afraid to throw in that extra tack on the first upwind or jibe on the last downwind; the math tells us these can actually help win the race.

Now, if the numbers lost you somewhere along the way, just remember the following:

How do we win sailing races? 
Sail less time

How do we do that? 
Better use and execute your maneuvers

Do fewer maneuvers over the race

Don’t be afraid to do an extra maneuver for strategic reasons on the first upwind or last downwind

Get a good start and sail a fast first beat

Be on the start line at “go”

Have better VMG on the first upwind

That’s it. If you follow the numbers, winning a sailing race really is that simple.

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Sailing World contributor Mike Ingham explains the tactical nuances of ducking as well as the basic techniques of a fast duck.

The post The Tactics and Technique of a Duck appeared first on Sailing World.

When transitioning from racing in a smaller fleet to the big fleet of a class championship, the fundamentals of racing tactics and strategies require some adjustments.

The post Sailboat Racing Tips: Big Fleet Strategies and Tactics appeared first on Sailing World.

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Roller-furling jibs, once viewed as a convenience for cruising boats, have become a real game-changer in the sportboat world. For example, in the prestart, when you want to control your speed and kill some time, furl the jib. Feeling late and need to get closer to the line? Deploy the jib. Downwind, when a jib is not useful, it’s much better to furl than to put the weight of a bowman on the foredeck to drop the jib, not to mention the resulting beating the sail takes as it is shoved into a pile on the foredeck, instead of being neatly rolled around the headstay. Furling also makes transitioning between the soaking mode and the planing mode a much simpler affair. The roller-furling jib gives you the unique ability to do all that and more. The key is to know when to furl and when to deploy.

For a Fine-Tuned Approach

The basic rule is, in light wind leave the jib out, because you need speed; in medium and heavy air, furl the jib until the final acceleration. In light air it’s easy to get too slow and end up late. Maneuvering and accelerating also are tough without the jib, especially when it’s light. In medium or heavy winds, it’s easy to generate enough speed until the final acceleration with the main only. Only unfurl the jib early if you end up behind the game in positioning or need to perform a maneuver, such as a double-tack when someone steals your hole. Let’s take a look at some common prestart situations.

Let’s say you’re doing a timed loop in medium breeze and your goal is to be at “x marks the spot” at one minute. That spot is on the layline for where you want to start, for example one-third down the line from the committee boat. Having done a few practice starts, you know you want to tack around that spot about 197 feet from the line at one minute. But if you realize you are running late to get to that spot and you’re furled, deploy the jib and beeline it to that spot.

Or, perhaps your initial timing was wrong, other boats forced you to sail extra distance, or your last head-to-wind took longer than expected. Time to deploy and get where you need to be. Once you’ve made up the lost time, furl, do your tack, and now you’re where you should have been in the first place.

Here’s another common situation. The committee boat is favored so much that there’s a general recall, and the committee calls everyone back and announces they are going to move the pin up. So the whole fleet sails to the pin like a swarm of locusts to get their pings. It’s a chaotic battle, with everyone taking their turns and trying not to hit each other. After all this, you check the bias of the line and realize the boat’s still favored—they didn’t move the pin enough to windward. Then the sequence begins. It’s a 50-boat line, and you’re thinking, “Oh no! We’ve got to get back to the committee boat end, and it’s a three-minute sail.” Deploy the jib.

In my usual starting sequence, I do a timed-loop with the jib furled; if everything’s fine, I unfurl at about 20 seconds. With any instruments that allow you to see distance to the line, the goal is to accelerate and be at full speed within 6 feet of the line at the gun. The instruments help you understand the ratio of feet to seconds with and without the jib, which helps you know when to deploy the jib for your final acceleration.

### Pro Tip #1

J/70 World Champ Jud Smith has a saying about furling: “Never have a bad furl, it’s like kicking your dog; you just don’t do it!” Indeed, it’s easy to put big creases in the jib when furling, which reduces the sail’s useful life. To avoid that, make sure the sheets are slack. Then, tighten the jib halyard just before furling to increase the luff tension on the sail. On the J/70, we accomplish this by bow-stringing the jib halyard where it exits the mast.

The short version is, if you’re feeling late, deploy the jib to make up the time, and if you’re feeling early, stay slow and wait to deploy. The ability to furl or deploy the jib, with the guidance of a GPS, makes it easier to get that time and distance right. The challenge is that, because the whole fleet has the same tools, everyone is that much closer to the line at the gun.

As an example, on a J/70, with the jib furled in medium wind, it’s about 1-to-1. So if you tack at 60 seconds to the gun and 200 feet from the line, and you cruise with the main only, that ratio will be going down another 3 feet per second. If you did nothing, you’d start at 0 seconds, right on the line, but with the jib furled. Of course you’d never do that. Instead, tack at 260 feet and 60 seconds, giving you 65 extra feet to work with. Now you’re marching toward the line, and the feet and seconds are still reducing at about 1-to-1. You’re watching them both go down as you’re managing your east-to-west spacing, making sure you have a hole to leeward, and dealing with threats from other boats. You know from practice runs on the start that your speed doubles when you deploy. Somewhere around 10 to 15 seconds, deploy the jib and start going 6 feet per second instead of 3 feet per second. If you get it right, you nail the start—3 to 6 feet back from the line, at full speed and close-hauled.

Some people make spreadsheets with various time-and-distance ratios for given wind strengths to help figure out how far away to set up and when to deploy.

I’ve had little success with those. The problem is that a number of other factors, such as current, sea state, bad air and line bias affect your closing speed to the line. If the pin is favored, it takes longer to get to the line from a given distance. And if the boat is favored, it takes much less time for that same distance. The more line bias, the more it affects your closing speed. Add other boats and current into the mix, and it gets complicated. I’ve found the best way to get it right is to do some practice starts, keep your eyes open to changing conditions and figure it out race by race.

For Downwind Situations

If you’re in displacement mode and sailing deep, furl. Whenever the apparent wind is forward, jib out. Another basic rule of thumb is that the spinnaker is always the first priority. If you’re having trouble flying it, furl the jib. Think of the jib as a bonus when you can use it; you don’t need it all the time.

On a J/70, the jib is mostly furled unless it’s windy. The exceptions are if you’ve overstood, or if you have to head up to defend, such as when someone behind is reaching up to roll you. Then deploy. With the wind forward, it’s faster with it out, as the jib is not blocking the spinnaker. When the jib is furled or deployed depends on the type of boat. For instance, on the Melges 20 we keep the jib out much of the time. Only in really light air, when the sheet tension on the jib goes away, do we furl.

### Pro Tip #2

It’s just before the start, and you need to go head-to-wind to do a final wind check. But with the jib furled, the main doesn’t really luff in the center of the boat that well. Solution? Unfurl just 2 to 3 feet of the jib and use that as your guide. Once finished, use it to assist in bearing off by pulling it one way or the other to backwind and help the turn. Then you can easily furl that small section of sail without having to fully bear away.

If I am unsure whether the jib should be furled, I often look at other people’s setups and VMG, then decide. I only need to know whether I’m gaining or losing. If I’m losing, I match the other boat’s sail configuration.

The jury is still out about whether to furl when jibing. If it’s breezy, and the jib is out, some crews furl, jibe then unfurl because the jib can mess up the spinnaker a bit when it’s filling on the new tack. For those who leave it out in heavy air, a standard jibe includes letting the jib luff on the exit of the jibe to help the kite fill. Once that happens, trim and you’re off and running again.

Of course, blow-through jibes require the jib to stay deployed, because it acts as a wall that the spinnaker slides around while the jib is backwinding. For those jibes, the jib is left-cleated and the skipper turns quickly, backwinding the jib and kite against it, letting the kite slide around the forestay and onto the new side.

Once the kite is around, the jib trimmer uncleats the old jib sheet and trims the new sheet once the kite is full.

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At leeward marks you either need to deploy the jib, then drop the chute or drop the chute, then deploy the jib. I’ve seen people try to drop the chute while unfurling the jib at the same time, and it can get ugly. Because you have a spinning furler near a loose spinnaker halyard, it’s easy for the halyard to wrap around the jib and forestay—then it’s probably race over.

If you watch a video of a 50-boat fleet in the J/70s, 48 of them will deploy the jib, drop the kite, then round the mark. Two might drop kite, start heading up then deploy the jib. There are arguments for each. I like to get the jib out, then douse, just in case there is someone reaching in to the leeward mark before you head up. Two-sail reaching is always faster than one!

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Dear Doctor Crash,

The skipper and crew of Gunga Din thank you for the lovely photograph of our vessel at zero velocity due to contact with a rock off Beavertail Point in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.

Needless to say, Gunga Din‘s placement on that rock was a total navigational error, not an iota of blame on the [New York YC] Race Committee, which did a phenomenal job during the 175th Annual Regatta, which was remedied in a matter of minutes.

As soon as the vessel went from 5 to zero knots, thanks to contact with the rock, the crew panicked and started lowering sail. The skipper, having grounded a number of times on sand in the Bahamas (primarily on the way to Spanish Wells where channel markers are frequently moved by the locals), remembered how important it is to hoist sails and heel the boat, as opposed to dropping sail, which would give it an 8-foot draft as opposed to a 3-foot draft when heeled. After reluctance on the part of the crew to follow the skipper’s orders, the spinnaker was hoisted back to the top of the mast, the sheets were strapped in and the vessel sailed off with considerably less draft than eight feet.

The next morning, a diver inspected the minor damage to the keel, patched it underwater with waterproof compound and the vessel sailed in the next races. Upon hauling the vessel after a week or so, inspection showed minimal, if any, damage to the keel.

The vessel is a Lloyd’s certified Sweden Yachts 41, built in 1988. Other vessels, particularly the more racing oriented boats might have left their keels behind on the rock.

While we don’t plan to stop on rocks in the future, it does show the quality of construction and the importance of heeling the vessel as opposed to lowering sail and increasing draft.

Sincerely yours,

The Skipper
Dayton T. Carr

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