It’s not the first mistake, it’s the second,” world champion sailor Bora Gulari once said while I was coaching him in the Nacra 17 for the US Sailing team. When asked if it was OK to quote him, he said, “In fairness, I got that from Terry Hutchinson.” Regardless of the origin, I like its message—that the unexpected is inescapable, and that it’s how we manage problems that matters. That doesn’t mean being complacent, however. It means finding solutions.

When I’m sailing, I make ­mental notes of any adversities such as “spinnaker takedown late.” Then, once onshore, I add details into the Adversity Spreadsheet that I keep. It’s an incredibly useful tool to keep those second mistakes from happening again. I recently added an Impact column to the spreadsheet, which is a measure of how many boats were lost due to a noted adversity. This is easy to estimate sometimes, such as our flubbed takedown cost us two boats, so the impact is simply “2.” But it’s harder to estimate the impact of a bad start. Did it cost me 15 boats at the moment, or five? All I can do is make my best guess.

The Impact column also helps me identify my repeat offenders, understand which ones cost me most, and motivates me to work on improving. It’s eye-opening that, for any given regatta, even in winning, I might have an impact of 30 or more. In losing, I might see just a few things I could have done better that would have made all the difference.

This Impact column has led me to pondering the risk ­versus reward trade-offs of an OCS. For example, I recently sailed a regatta where I pushed the line and was OCS in one of the 10 races. But the other nine starts were excellent. It’s hard to measure, but maybe my finishes would have been five places worse per race if I’d held back. Over nine races, that’s 36 points. But the OCS cost me 60 points. Without a discard, ­pushing the line risking an OCS is a major error, but if there were a discard, I get to shed those 60 points, so risking the line is the right move.

The whole point of ­gathering all of this information into the spreadsheet is to come up with solutions. For our poor spinnaker takedown, my teammates and I concluded that there were two solutions. The first is to start the process a little earlier when we are not fighting for mark room. But when we don’t have that luxury, we came up with a process change: When we need to carry the spinnaker late, we need to put the board down and jib up very early, then strip the pole and free-fly the spinnaker. The Solutions cell in the spreadsheet can be simple and to the point, or long and in depth.

Boathandling adversity is definable and mostly in our control. Practice is usually the solution, but in the long run, I think that the best way to reduce it is to empower each team member to succeed and equally empower them to be human and, with that, make mistakes. When I see someone on another boat lay blame and even yell at their team member, I cringe. I expect an occasional boathandling error from my teammates, and they expect the same from me. In the moment, the right response is to work together to recover. Then, after the race, the spreadsheet is a low-conflict way of defining problems.

Boat-on-boat tactical adversity is often our mistake. If I am on port tack and feel strongly about wanting to get right, for example, a mistake would be to lee-bow a starboard tacker instead of taking the big duck. Most tactical errors can be solved by the tactician clearly planning and communicating. A good comms example would be: “We are going right, so if anyone comes, then we are ducking.” It reinforces planning for specific moves with an if/then.

Strategy is an interesting study in adversity mitigation. We can put solid thought into our race strategy, but in the end, Mother Nature does whatever she wants. Suppose I identify the adversity in my spreadsheet as: “I went left as local knowledge dictated, but instead a persistent righty won.”

If, in looking back, I can see no way to have predicted the right shift, I can’t count that as an error. However, the error might be that I did not mitigate the damage. The root cause would be: “I did not see the righty soon enough.” The solution could be: “We need a team member assigned to regularly to check the opposite side of the course for signs of change.”

Boatspeed adversity is the most frustrating because the root cause is often hard to identify and elusive to solve. But it is always in our control. 

For adverse tactical situations over which we have little control, we switch our focus to mitigation. Suppose we identify adversity as “we were tacked on.” We might call it an error because “we tacked into too good a lane and it was inevitable we were getting tacked on.” The solution should be: “We should have tacked in a compromised lane, that way the odds of ­getting directly tacked on would be low.”

One easily identifiable adversity is a protest situation. Many fouls can be avoided with clear communication with competitors. Suppose the error was: “We thought it was obvious that we were clear ahead at the zone, yet someone jammed in anyway.” The root cause is: “We did not communicate that they had no room.” The solution is: “We should always start the overlap conversation 10 ­boatlengths out. Doing so establishes the overlap status in case of a protest situation, but more importantly, it leaves enough time for both boats to think things through and be mentally prepared to round in the proper order.”

Boatspeed adversity is the most frustrating because the root cause is often hard to identify and elusive to solve. But it is always in our control, and as such, is listed as a mistake in our spreadsheet. If the problem is: “We are slow in medium wind and chop,” and the root cause we might have to write is: “We have no idea why.” In this case, the solution is: “We need to ask some of our friends who are doing better in this condition, come up with a list of things to try, and then find medium wind and chop to train in with a tuning partner.” There is no simple solution to boatspeed woes, but to do well, we must be fast, so we must never stop working on speed.

An ongoing boatwork list, along with regular inspections and replacements, takes care of most mechanical adversity. But mitigation comes into play too. For example, born from things going wrong, I have added redundancy to some systems. For example, my outhaul broke once, and it’s ­impractical to inspect it often because it’s inside the boom, so I have added a safety line. I’ve busted my spin pole more than once, so now I carry a spare. While coaching, whenever my athlete asks, “Do you think I should replace my—” I interrupt with a “Yes!” before they can finish. It does not matter what they were about to identify, if they question whether it should be fixed or replaced, it should be. If ­nothing else, for peace of mind.

Managing adversity is a deeply personal mental game. For me, when something goes wrong, I take a deep breath, hold, then exhale. It probably takes only about 5 seconds for that full cycle, the amount of time my brain needs to move on. And with my breath held, I can’t possibly do something in the heat of the moment that I will regret.

I once coached an ­emotional team of three sailors, and we used the word “helicopter” to get the team back in focus. Anyone on the team could say it, and the agreement was that the others would each visualize being dropped into their boat from a helicopter, with no knowledge of how they got into their current position. The message was: “No blame, no bad history, just focus and hard work from where we are.”

Even in winning major events, I have never raced without plenty of adversity. Some clear mistakes, some completely out of my control, and plenty somewhere in between. I have learned to expect them, and with that, I am free to move on to managing whatever the problem might be. In the moment and with a clear head, I want to quickly come up with the best solution. Postrace, I want to identify the root cause and hopefully agree with my team on a solution. Even if I can’t identify the root cause, the solution will be to study it to find the root cause. Those that are squarely in my control, such as ­boathandling, I want to do everything I can to eliminate. Others, such as picking a side, are less in my control and I am only playing odds. For these, I work on mitigating their damage. But most importantly, when the inevitable problem does come our way, I want to empower my team to do the best they can to mitigate the damages and move on, ­avoiding that second mistake.

The post How to Manage and Measure Mistakes appeared first on Sailing World.

One of the coolest uses of a centerboard I’ve ever seen was at the Smythe Laser Championship qualifier—a junior sailing regatta. The two best sailors were fighting for a chance to go to the finals as they approached the leeward mark with the trailing boat barely overlapped. In an amazing move, John Torgerson, who was slightly ahead of the competition, pulled his daggerboard up all the way, and pushed his tiller toward the competitor to start sliding sideways, breaking the overlap. He literally slid into the zone like a race car drifting around a corner and started hailing, “No room!” He then slammed the board back down into the trunk and jibed to round the mark ahead. There was a protest, but he prevailed in the end and off to the Smythe finals he went. So cool.

For many dinghy sailors, the centerboard is hardly a consideration. It tends to be out of sight and out of mind, and either up or down or somewhere in between, but rarely dynamically adjusted. As a high school sailing coach, I can see that most sailors focus on other skills first before thinking about the importance of the centerboard, but this important underwater appendage can make a world of difference in your performance and speed, so let’s discuss in the simplest terms how it’s best used.

The first rule of thumb is that you want your centerboard, daggerboard or leeboard all the way down while sailing upwind to create more lift and side force, and to give you more power while reducing leeway. Downwind we prefer the board as high as possible to reduce drag while keeping the boat tracking, especially if we’re not sailing dead downwind. And let’s not forget stability—no sense in capsizing for a small gain in boatspeed. 

In most boats, this means putting the centerboard all the way down upwind while sailing in light to medium winds. On some boats and in certain windspeeds, it can be faster to pull the board a few inches, but we’ll get to that later. As a point of making sure the centerboard is fully down and then some, I’ve noticed top FJ and 420 sailors experiment with the type of blocks used on top of the board to allow it to go down just a little bit more than the competition. This deeper board gives them more power and less leeway upwind, which is a performance gain. 

Downwind, if running very deep, let’s say close to dead-downwind, we don’t need the board dragging through the water, so we can pull it all the way up. However, if the boat starts rocking excessively and is hard to control, we can drop the board down until the boat becomes stable—think of this as your “roll control.”

Top high school and college sailing crews are very active with the centerboard downwind, dropping it down a few inches in puffs to prevent the boat from overheeling, and pulling it up in lulls when it is less needed. Playing the board can be very fast.

If you are reaching, the basic rule of thumb is to pull the board up until you notice the boat starting to slide sideways, then put it down a touch so that you are tracking straight. By doing so, you’re reducing drag as much as you can and using only the amount of board necessary to track and go forward.

When sailing downwind with the board up to some degree, it’s also effective to put it down for a maneuver, which gives you stability and helps you power forward out of roll tacks and roll jibes when you’re generating a lot of side force. As a bonus, it also clears it out of the way for the forward crew in doublehanded and triplehanded boats. 

For more high-level thoughts on centerboards, I reached out to my friend Will Ryan, a fantastic Olympic International 470 gold medalist. After dominating the class for many years, he’s got a solid handle on how and when to play the centerboard. As a general rule, he says, having the centerboard to its maximum down position is useful when sailing upwind or in light air. Having the centerboard at its maximum down (or vertical down such as in an International 470 or 505) helps the foil create its maximum side force, which helps generate power in the boat and to create lift. That’s a good combo. This setup is also fast when you’re overpowered but trying to sail a “high mode.”

In smaller boats especially, Ryan adds, pulling the board up a few inches in breeze is fast: “The centerboard acts as a power control. Water has more drag resistance than air, so the benefits of reducing hydrodynamic drag can outweigh the benefits of reducing aero drag (smaller sails) because often the bigger sails can still be useful on the downwind legs.”

For many dinghy sailors, the centerboard is hardly a consideration, but this important underwater appendage can make a world of difference in your performance and speed.

Ryan also reminds us that raising the centerboard is a good way to optimize the balance of the boat when overpowered: “Changing the centerboard’s side force can make the boat more responsive  to gusts and easier to handle in waves, while also making the boat easier to steer, which generally makes the boat easier to control. Upwind, more side force might be required from the centerboard to help with the boat performance (because the lift from a centerboard is related to the speed it is moving through the water). Conversely, more centerboard up may be used downwind when the boat is traveling faster (a smaller centerboard area still giving the same amount of required lift or stability with the boat traveling at a higher speed) or when the course of the boat does not require as much side force (i.e., downwind); even less centerboard can be used in the water because reducing wetted surface area might be even more beneficial.”

In lighter airs, he says, some boats such as 470s and 505s can rake the centerboard forward—even forward of 90 degrees. “Raking the board forward can help to provide a greater side force, giving the boat more power. The board shape can create more lift, and this can also help to optimize the maneuverability of the boat because it makes the distance greater between the rudder and the centerboard. On boats such as these, where sail shapes have a number of available controls, and mast rakes or mast step adjustments are also allowed, the rake change of the foil can also help to balance the boat for better upwind performance.”

Next-Level Board Play

What we’ve covered so far are mainly straight-line considerations, but let’s take it back to Torgerson’s slick slide into the zone at the Smythe. If your ­centerboard adjustment is easy to play, consider how you might use it like Torgerson did so masterfully. Someone once told me about what he called the “­prestart slide.” If he got to the line a fraction too early, was exposed, and had room to leeward to rumble, he would turn to a reach, pull up the board quickly, and laterally slide the boat one width to leeward. When it was time to turn up, all he had to do was drop the board, let it bite, turn, and trim.

In the prestart, Ryan says, having maximum centerboard down provides the aforementioned side force (or grip) to help hold a boat in position, and minimize leeway. This can be particularly helpful when the boat is sailing at slower speeds. Keep in mind, however, that you’re not overpowered when you trim in and go. Also, raising the centerboard a little might help the boat to bear away and accelerate.

One additional tip Ryan shares is that for small boats that might be prone to getting caught in irons, or ones that don’t have a jib, raising the centerboard briefly can help get a boat to rotate the bow away from the wind. This is not a practical maneuver on all boats, but having some centerboard angled aft or raised up a bit can also help on the exits from tacks.

Here’s my final thought on the centerboard when in close quarters, and this applies ­especially in windward/­leeward luffing scenarios. If you’re the weather boat, remember to drop that board before the attack. And if you’re keen to try Torgerson’s move, remember to drop it before the turn—unless, of course, you like leaving the barn door open.

The post Next-Level Centerboard Use appeared first on Sailing World.

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.

The phone rings with an incoming WhatsApp call from Stuart Bannatyne. I’m at my desk at Google, so I jog to a conference room to have a private conversation. Bannatyne, from Doyle Sails, is a legend in the sailing world—and that’s no hyperbole. When it comes to leading successful grand-prix race programs, there’s nobody better. He cuts straight to the chase: “Lewy, you interested in going racing?”

“Yeah, Stu,” I answer. “Always interested to hear what you have on the boil.” 

He’s got a new program shaping up for the 2024 Newport Bermuda Race, a TP52 named Summer Storm, a boat with a solid winning record and a new owner in Andrew Berdon. My excitement is building, but I keep my cool while mentally running through the checklist of elements needed for a ­successful program.

My next questions are about the sails and the crew. Bannatyne rattles off from memory every sail that the boat will come with and what new sails we will need to be competitive. The crew are not only top-shelf sailors, but most of them won line honors and the corrected win in the Gibbs Hill Division with us in the previous Bermuda Race (Richard Clarke, Mal Parker, Chris Welch, Dylan Vogel and David Gilmour) as well. That’s all I need to hear, and I give Bannatyne an emphatic “I’m in!”

A few days later, a FedEx package arrives at my door from boat captain Alec Snyder, and my daughter asks, “What’s in it?”

“It’s a present from the new boat,” I tell her.

“Is it a puppy?” she asks.

“No—it’s even better. It’s the boat’s computer, and now I can start digging into the polars and sail charts.”

We all know that polars and sail charts matter. That’s why we have them laminated and mounted in the cockpit of our race boat. One chart tells us our target speeds and angles (which are derived from polars), and the other tells us which sails we should have up.

Understanding these two crucial pieces of information can be the difference between a podium finish and a participation award. We’ve been using them for a long time, and much has been written about how to use them, but today the importance of understanding a boat’s polars has added significance with the adoption of the new Forecast Time Correction Factor rating system.

Iconic ocean races such as the Transpac and the Bermuda Race recently announced that they will use the new F-TCF system to calculate race results, which will rely on meticulously calculated polars using a velocity-prediction program. This new scoring adaptation underscores the necessity for skippers and crews to have an even deeper grasp of their boat’s sail plan and polars. No matter what boat you’re racing this year or next, your first priority in preparation should be refining your polars and sail charts.

Digging for Oil

My technologist neighbors in Silicon Valley celebrate the principle that “data is the new oil,” and this is true in sailing as well. Nowadays, it’s easy to collect treasure troves of data from every sensor on the boat. With the powerful navigation tools at our disposal, it’s easier than ever to take our polars, which forecast a boat’s performance at every wind angle and every wind strength, and crunch them with accurate weather files and racecourse mark information to produce optimal routing. We can also repeat polars to our displays, in real-time, with target speed and angles as well as polar boatspeed percentages. With this level of ­functionality accessible to virtually every boat, it’s fair to say that polars are more important than ever. 

Gone are the days where a professional sailor could eyeball a headsail and make some profound-sounding ­recommendation that no one could challenge because of their years of experience and enviable track record (even if the comment was just an assertive hunch). With today’s tools, BS is replaced with real science. Remember the scientific method you learned in high school? It still matters, and we now have the tools to ­confidently test whether A is faster than B. Unsure whether the J1, J2 or jib top would be faster at a deeper true-wind angle? Well, test it. That’s science, sailing’s new “moneyball,” which ­translates into speed. 

Granted, while all this new ­science might be easy for top-end navigators, it can be daunting for amateur programs to take a data-based approach to performance improvement. But it’s absolutely possible. The crux of sailing moneyball is to make use of your log files and process them into analyzable and actionable data. Thankfully, Expedition—the gold standard of navigational software—has this functionality built in, and so do other analytics platforms. Without the tools to notate and process log data, all you have is a pile of files on memory sticks, which do you no good. If you want oil, you have to go digging.

Once you have the ability to analyze your data (and there are plenty of webinars and seminars to get you there), the next big hurdle is determining your data quality or data hygiene. In this category, the first two considerations are instrument calibration and data labeling. Instrument calibration is probably the most obvious.

Science demands that if you are comparing boatspeeds, then your boatspeed calibration needs to be spot-on for both. That’s also true of your wind calibration. You can’t compare apples, oranges and ducks. Data labeling is not obvious at first, but there are fundamental best practices: keeping track of when you were racing and when you were just motoring around between races (imagine how good your light-wind polars would look if you had your iron jib helping); logging which sails you had up and when; and keeping accurate real-time notes, like when you might be in the sweet spot of a sail, for example. You have to be meticulous and disciplined with your data-collection practices, even while you are doing your primary sailing jobs. Make it a priority.

A few examples of ­next-level considerations would be noting wind shear (which is especially noticeable on cold mornings where there’s 8 knots at the masthead and nothing on water), boat weight and balance (don’t compare numbers with a laden boat prepared to go to Hawaii versus a light boat set up for daysailing), and variables such as who was driving and when. Good science is about eliminating variables so that you see the signal, not the noise. 

Speed Is in the Percentage 

My personal catchphrase is “speed is all about finding 2 ­percent” (even though it could be a bigger or smaller percentage). Imagine a beautiful sunny day where you have flat seas and 12 knots of well-mixed wind. On such a day, we’ll have a wish list of things we want tested, and high on the ­priority list might be the edges of a sail’s coverage. For example, how deep can we sail on the J1 or J2 before performance percentages plummet versus how high can we sail a reaching sail?

In order to find out, we sail in the same direction with the J1 at 80 degrees true-wind angle for 3 minutes. Then, we drop the sail and ­continue with the J2 at exactly the same true-wind angle for the same 3 minutes. Finally, we do the same with the jib top. Assuming that the wind conditions don’t change during this window, each test will produce a polar boatspeed percentage; imagine the results are that the jib top is 97.2 percent, the J2 is 95.1 percent, and the J1 is 94.8 percent. We have the answer of which is faster in exactly those conditions and we found our 2 percent.

Once decisions are made about which sails to bring for the race, you also have to figure out the best ways to fill any gaps in your sail plan with other sails you are taking.

The reality, however, is that not all of your tests will be perfect, so scientific excellence would dictate that you’ll want more testing data points to prove any conclusion by ­repeatability. Once you’ve successfully proved something, you can nudge the potato shape of the sail chart to implement what you’ve learned. Now imagine doing that for every square of your sail-chart grid by building out an entire database of carefully curated data points from racing and testing conditions. You’d be 2 ­percent faster all the time and you’d be able to dial-in polars with high quality data. It burns me up to imagine that during a race, I might be sailing 2 percent slower for hours by having the wrong sail up in a distance race.

The reality is that even the most sophisticated grand-prix programs can’t test everything, so apply judgment to your own resources and prioritizing tests for what matters most. The same methodologies can be used to test anything—rake settings, staysails, rudder, outrigger, water ballast, etc. The list is limited only by your curiosity.

Pre-race Sail Optimization

While much has been written about how polars and sail charts are used while you are racing, they also play an important role before crossing the starting line, or even before locking in your rating certificate. While your boat weight and design might not change much, your declared sail selection can have a significant impact on your polars. The first step in optimizing your sail quiver is typically consulting your sailmaker, but if you want to level up, there are consultants who can help run and analyze trial certificates to help find advantages.

Sail optimization is ­essentially the science of trying to find ideal sail combinations for the course and your particular boat—combinations that allow you to sail faster than the rating agency’s VPP predicts you can. Said differently (and perhaps more traditionally), you are looking for sail combinations that are favored, or have a sweet spot under a rule, while avoiding sails that are punished disproportionately.

I like to look at the delta in each cell of the polar table to see how a particular sail will change the predicted polar speed. Then the game is to decide whether actual performance exceeds or misses the predicted changes, so you can then decide whether a particular sail is worthwhile from a ratings perspective.

Once decisions are made about which sails to bring for the race, you also have to ­figure out the best ways to fill any gaps in your sail plan with other sails you are taking. Of course, the best way to do that is sail testing, using the very same methodologies ­previously ­discussed to determine the answer to each question with cold, hard data instead of speculation. 

Whether you’re racing for a local trophy or tackling an iconic offshore challenge, ­understanding polars and sail charts is the key to ­achieving the highest level of performance in which your boat is capable. Trophies are there for the taking for those with ­insatiable curiosity for ­unlocking the secrets to speed in their boats.

The post How To Refine Your Polars and Sail Charts appeared first on Sailing World.

As a sailor who floats among many different classes, I tend to seek out transferable performance patterns. More valuable to me than the ability to memorize a tuning matrix is the understanding of how to interpret the location and prominence of overbend wrinkles in a mainsail, the amount of tension or dangle in the leeward shrouds, or the frequency of stall or flow over the leech telltales. Utilizing the sail plan’s power and balance cues that will present themselves on any boat is the key to reducing the learning curve in a new fleet and outperforming the tuning guide in an established class.

Once we turn downwind, however, the underlying indicators of net VMG gains are trickier to recognize and isolate, especially in sportboats with asymmetric spinnakers where we are trying to decide when exactly the transitions occur between the fully planing, lazy planing, low displacement, or occasional wing-on-wing modes. So how do we get down the course successfully in the absence of a mode-crossover bible? Rig tune and sail trim are substantially less nuanced downwind than they are upwind, so a balance of sheet load, helm load, boatspeed, and heel angle can hold the answer.

Feel Your Sheet Load

The most basic goal of asymmetric-spinnaker trim is to ease the sheet enough to maximize projection to windward of the main, without sacrificing too much pressure in the sheet. A good visual indication that we are achieving maximum projection is a small amount of curl flicking into the luff every few seconds. This does not, however, indicate that we have adequate power in the sail, which is why the trimmer’s job of communicating the sheet load is critical.

If the sheet load is notably soft, then our angle is too low and we need to transition to a faster mode. The turn up should be induced by shifting crew weight to leeward and forward while trimming the main accordingly. The biggest risk here is sailing extra distance for negligible speed gains in a dying breeze. Be sure that the conversation includes information about the big-picture breeze on the course as well as localized puffs and lulls so that the trimmer can recalibrate their target sheet load periodically.

On the other hand, if the sheet load is consistently heavy, even with accurate luff curl, then our angle is too high and we must shift the crew weight to windward and aft, ease the sails out, and/or use the rudder to turn the boat down. A moderately loaded sheet and happily curling luff are good indications that we are starting to home in on the correct mode. If the turn down is not enough to alleviate the excess sheet load, then we know that it’s time to unfurl the jib, transition to a lazy plane or full plane mode, and start focusing more on helm load.

Balance the Helm Load

In light air, when the helm load is quite light, the goal is to avoid leading any turns with the rudder because it will be slow and draggy. Once the conditions have us fully powered or overpowered, the rudder becomes quite important, and awareness of helm load will help keep us in control. While deploying the jib will add sail area and increase boatspeed, the more important feature becomes its ability to balance out some of the helm load. As the breeze and boatspeed continue to trend up and waves start to come over the bow, crew weight must shift aft to keep the rudder deep in the water and maintain grip through turns. Too much helm load or too sharp of a turn could cause the rudder to cavitate and the boat to wipe out. A heavily loaded helm will require eased sails to free up enough to turn down smoothly. As the driver and trimmer are able to calibrate and coordinate loads in the helm and sheet, the boat will gravitate toward its proper mode.

Strive for Consistent Boatspeed

In the simplest terms, the proper mode is indicated by a barely sustainable boatspeed. If speed is too easy to maintain, you are sailing too high. If speed drops off quickly or continuously, you are sailing too low. The goal is to sail as close as possible to the “cliff” without falling. Catching speed dips early and settling back into the groove quickly will minimize VMG losses, whereas letting the boat truly decelerate will cause a big swing aft in the apparent wind and force an exaggerated turn up to build speed again. Once the trimmer is reporting good sheet load, the driver has a manageable helm load, and boatspeed is consistent, then a stable heel angle is the last indication that our mode is correct. 

Lock In Heel Angle

In underpowered conditions, some leeward heel is good. As the power decreases in the main first, the spinnaker will lure the boat down, but the leeward heel will counteract it without having to induce drag via rudder angle. As the breeze comes up slightly and spotty puffs come through the course, we can utilize heel angle to force the bow down in the puffs and up in the lulls, while maintaining consistent boatspeed is still the primary focus.

In fully powered and overpowered conditions, we shift the target to maintaining as flat a boat as possible. In order to achieve this, the team should settle into hiking positions that are sustainable for an entire downwind leg. Stable crew weight and heel angle will allow the trimmer and driver to really lock in on the correct mode. Quick turns with the tiller down to drive off excess heel and up to reload the windward rail are rewarded in the fully planing mode. 

The major exception to constant boatspeed and heel angle is in the presence of a surfable sea state. When the waves are generally perpendicular to our angle, we can pump the sheets to induce the surf, then hike and drive the boat down as we accelerate. This is an active mode and requires accurate driving to maintain the surf for as long as possible without crashing the bow into the wave in front. The decrease in speed and rebuild after coming off a wave should be short and efficient to maintain net gains. When the waves are more broadside, they will tend to roll the boat. Aggressively squashing crew weight to windward to counteract the leeward heel and to back to leeward to counteract the windward heel can prevent the helm from sharply loading and unloading while helping the boat surge down the course.

Learning to find the proper boatspeed and heel-angle grooves while balancing the appropriate sheet and helm loads is a crucial step in finding optimal downwind sportboat modes. They provide the necessary road map to locating mode crossovers from one boat to the next, one team to the next, one venue to the next, and one condition to the next.

The post The Building Blocks of Asymmetric Spin Trim appeared first on Sailing World.

We are on port coming into the ­windward mark, and I know that the rules are not in our favor. “The starboard layline is crowded; it’s going to be messy,” my tactician tells me. I take a quick look ahead and to leeward to size up the situation, and indeed, it does look dense. Oh, boy. I return my focus back to sailing fast, absorbing what I just saw. Getting closer, my tactician paints the picture. “You have three boats to worry about: Bow 72 is short of layline, then bow 54 is on a tight lay, and 16 is overstood.”

I take a longer look to leeward, identifying those three boats as he continues, “It looks like you will cross 72, likely you will have to duck 54, then tack below 16.” Followed by, “It’s yours.”

“It’s yours” is a simple and clear explicit handoff from our tactician to me, the driver. Now it’s mine to execute. It needs to be mine, because in these moments, things are happening quickly, requiring split-­second decisions with no time for our tactician to micromanage. Besides, the driver is the only one who can possibly know what can and cannot be done within the inches that are necessary for success.

“Copy” is the required response, but it alone is not quite enough. “Copy, I’ll get past 72 and 54, then tack below 16” confirms that I indeed got the message, putting our whole team at ease. But if I missed something, it gives a chance for my tactician to correct me.

The explicit “It’s yours” and “Copy” handoff routine is peppered throughout the race as necessary, but during starts and mark roundings, the driver always takes the lead. These are implicit handoffs because it is always that way.

For starts, this implicit handoff begins at the warning and remains for the rest of the sequence. Because speed is not our primary concern during the sequence, I have plenty of bandwidth to focus on positioning and boat-on-boat tactics. Although ultimately it’s my responsibility, and I know I will have to make quick decisions, there is plenty of time for conversation. We constantly discuss things such as our distance to the line, finding just the right place to make the final tack, and how best to defend our hole. It’s a careful balance, and the tactician needs to know when I need to be left alone to execute without distraction, and when it is appropriate to interject. For example, when we are on the starboard-tack final approach to the line, if all is going to play, the tactician is mostly quiet. But if my time and distance are off, or someone is trying to poach our hole, the tactician better chime in and help.

At marks, the handoff happens just as we are about to round the mark. Unlike the start, where there is conversation, there is usually no time and I need to be left alone. To do that, I need to know the plan from my tactician well ahead of time. For example, before we enter the fray at the windward mark, I need to know if we want to do a straight set or jibe set.

If the tactician says, “We want to jibe as soon as possible after the offset,” he’s telling me that my job is to position our boat on the inside on the offset leg so that we can pull off a jibe. “Straight set” tells me to defend high. Even though it is implicit, the handoff can begin early, such as our example where the tactician paints the picture of the crowded starboard layline, then explicitly hands off the execution well before we get to the mark.

Occasionally I will take control when something unexpected happens and there is not time for my tactician to say, “It’s yours,” let alone paint the picture. This can happen because the tactician failed to look ahead, plan, and communicate.

“If bow 54 tacks, lead them back” prevents this sort of surprise. But something totally unusual could happen, such as a boat that capsizes in front of us, or their skipper drops the tiller and spins out. Either way, I will have to make my own quick decision, with no time for a handoff.

Similarly, anyone can chime in to avoid disaster. When I hear “Crash tack!” or “Duck hard!” from any team member, I react immediately, with no questions asked. Yes, it will be a bad tack or duck. The trimmer will need to sort out the jib, and all those hiking need to struggle to the new side, but it beats the alternative.

Whether explicit or implicit, the handoff is binding and absolute; only one person can be in charge. For example, if I hear, “Duck if you can’t cross; we want to continue on port,” and I respond with, “Copy, ducking if I can’t cross,” I can’t have any micromanagement from my tactician or anyone else because it’s too distracting. Likewise, when it is not my turn, my tactician is the boss, and aside from infrequent constructive information, I need to just do my job and drive fast.

Whenever I finish my duck, round the mark, or whatever the maneuver is, I don’t say something like “Back to you” to hand back the reins. It’s not necessary because it’s obvious to all when the maneuver is done. But I do like when the tactician makes it clear that they have things in hand, like, “We are still lifted on the long tack, no traffic and no plans to tack anytime soon.” That makes it super-clear that they are back on task and puts my mind at ease.

Other team members have important strategic and tactical support roles, and it is important to acknowledge that. Someone might help the tactician look for wind in the distance, while someone else is reading the compass. A collaborative tactician is a good tactician. I have a smile on my face when I hear the team debating what to do next. But there can’t be more than one boss at a time—it’s either the tactician or the driver. Input is fine, but the rest of the team can’t confuse the situation by making calls.

In rare circumstances, I will override my tactician. I recall a scenario where the tactician could not find the new mark and insisted it must be on the right side. But I could sense uncertainty and frustration, and my gut had a strong feeling that we had been on port way too long. I recall saying, “Sorry, I just need to tack and center up while we look,” as I pushed over the helm to lead a clump of boats back. This is a touchy thing to do; it is not a good thing to undermine your tactician. My tactician has a phrase: “If you override me, you’d better be right!”

I don’t take “you’d better be right” to be literal; it’s just a phrase we use to put it in perspective. When I override, one of us will be wrong. If the mark indeed was to the right, I will be wrong. If it was more centered up, my tactician would be wrong. But neither of us should look at it that way; we both need to be empowered to make decisions and with that, to fail. Strategy and tactics are inexact, and I expect mistakes, even when we are on top of our game. The teams who move on and quickly work on what to do next are the teams who succeed.

I regularly sail a singlehanded boat and often verbally hand off to myself. That might sound silly since I am the tactician and make all the calls, as well as the driver with all the power to execute. But it is a mental cue for me. I need to shift my concentration from speed to tactics and back, which is not easy to do. Saying the handoff out loud helps me define the priority of the moment.

Sailing fast is a driver’s best contribution to tactics because, as it’s widely accepted, nothing makes a tactician look smarter than boatspeed. I am in charge implicitly at the start and mark roundings, and explicitly when handed to me at scattered moments throughout the race. The rest of the time, knowing that the tactician is fully in charge, I put my head down and go fast. I must admit, I look forward to hearing, “It’s yours,” as a welcome break from staring at my telltales. “Copy,” I’ll respond while looking around to assess the situation. I’ll finish that maneuver and then, refreshed from the break, focus once again on going fast.

The post Fundamental Tactics: How To Handoff appeared first on Sailing World.

Racing Editor Mike Ingham shares his insights on one of the most fundamental strategic decisions of a buoy race: stick to the middle of the course, or play the edges. Your overall strategy will dictate this decisions when considering the wind trend, geographic windshifts, current influence, and of course, the rest of the fleet.

The post Racecourse Strategy: The Middle Versus the Edge appeared first on Sailing World.

Charlotte Rose, a ­two-time youth world champion and US Sailing Team athlete, has boathandling skills that are off the charts, which gives her the ability to quickly shift left or right on the starting line to get into an optimal position. While observing her at a recent clinic, I learned that she has four key starting moves: high build, double-­tack, half-tack and reverse. After watching her execute these moves with ease, I wondered how effective they’d be in boats other than ILCAs, so I brought them to the 2023 J/70 Worlds. My teammates and I spent a few days practicing them, and discovered that they worked well, even in a J/70. These four approaches can be used in almost any small boat—and in bigger boats, to a degree.

The High-Build Start

The high-build approach is powerful in medium to strong winds, when you’re on your final approach and you want to crowd the boat above you to create space to leeward. The setup starts by positioning your boat close to the boat above you and, with sails fully trimmed, steering just above ­closehauled. Be careful to keep the boat moving slowly through the water to prevent stalling. After sailing high and slow and creating space to leeward, just before the start, rotate the bow down and leave the sails fully trimmed. The boat instantly heels over and feels powerful. Then bear away 5 degrees or so, and ease the sails a bit to go for full acceleration. If it’s windy, you need only to turn down to a closehauled course. The boat will get up to speed quickly because there’s plenty of power in the sails. Because you’ve maintained flow across your blades and sails throughout, acceleration will happen fast and require less of a bear away. If you bear away less than those around you, the space to leeward will be bigger and the boats to windward will be unable to bear away to full speed.  

There are a few ­important subtleties. Keep both sails trimmed, and use the jib as your guide. Head up until the front of the jib starts to backwind—usually one-third to halfway back—and the boat will flatten. The key is to keep the boat flat. To maintain the high and slow sailing, trim the sails in and out. For example, if the skipper is having to push too hard on the tiller because the boat wants to bear away, ease the jib and trim the main. This helps the boat continue to track forward. If the boat wants to head up, trim the jib and ease the main. 

At the J/70 Worlds, the wind was mostly 12 to 18 knots—perfect conditions for high-build starts. It doesn’t work well in light air, because in these conditions, you need to keep the speed on and also bear away a fair amount to properly accelerate. Also, if you try to sail too high and slow in light air, the boat nearly stops, and it takes forever to get moving again. But in 8 to 9 knots or more, the high-build is a ­must-have in your tool box.   

Double-Tack Reset

The double-tack is another powerful move that’s underutilized. It allows you to create a ­massive amount of space to your left while filling space to your right. Basically, it’s two quick tacks, first to port and then to starboard, but there’s more to it than that. International 470 gold medalists Matthew Belcher and Will Ryan were masters of the double tack. They got it down so well that they could do it in the final 10 seconds and, in their second tack, would come out racing. Doing it in the final few seconds and with perfect timing also meant that if the boat to their left tried to match them, that boat would be late to start.

Use a double-tack whenever there’s space to your right and someone comes from behind and hooks or overlaps their bow just to leeward of you, or if a boat comes in on port tack and sets up in a lee-bow position. It’s a quick way to get separation and reclaim a hole on the line. On the J/70 or the Etchells, my teammate, Erik Shampain, audibles if the double-tack is an option. Whenever things are getting tight and we need an escape route, Shampain says to me, “Double-tack open,” and we roll into a tack, sail for as long as we need to, and then tack back. 

Most people feel as if they have to have a lot of space to do a double-tack without fouling the boat to their right, the windward boat. In the clinic, however, Rose could double-tack in the tightest space I’d ever seen. When I asked her how she did so, she said that the key is a normal first tack, such as a roll tack in a Laser, and then an instant tack back onto port with no roll. Doing the second tack as a roll tack is OK if you are feeling late, but a flat tack allows you to turn in a tighter space, and you don’t advance on the starting line.  

You need a bit of speed to begin a double-tack. Don’t try it from a stopped position. If you have room and want to sail for a length or two before tacking to starboard, you can. A subtlety to the double-tack is that when you complete that first tack, come out deep, aiming behind the boat to your right, which might make them think that you’re going to go behind them. Then, when you tack back, you’ll end up overlapped with them, with bows even. They’re now “locked” so that their bow is not free to hook you, and you’ve secured a nice hole to your left. 

Another basic rule of thumb is that if the boat to your right double-tacks, match them. When they tack back, lee-bow them. You’ll have created a huge hole, and they won’t have one. 

There are other purposes for a double-tack and considerations, other than just closing the gap between yourself and the boat to your right or separating from the boat to your left. If you sense that you’re early, tack, dip really deep to burn off time, and then tack back. If you’re late, tack and sail upwind, then tack back again, fully racing upwind. If the pin is favored and you need to close distance on the line, for example in a last-minute left shift, the port-tack part of the double-­tack will help you close distance on the line because that tack is more than 90 degrees to the line. If the boat is favored, when many general recalls happen as closing speeds are high, and you need to kill time, spend more time on port tack when doubling because it’s closer to paralleling the line, and you will kill time. For those scenarios, it comes down to being confident with your time on distance and your closing speed on the line.  

Half-Tack Reset

A half-tack is used when there’s not enough space to your right to do a double-tack. It works best in light and medium winds when you have speed.

Let’s say there’s a port-tack boat coming your way, and they’re likely to lee-bow you, and there’s a boat just to windward of you. Rotate your bow down, aiming just above the port tacker’s bow, and sail at them, which increases your speed. As you anticipated, they tack just to leeward of you. If you do nothing, they’ve stolen any space you’ve created to leeward, and you’ll be out of luck for this start. But, with your increased speed, do a half-tack, heading up and trimming your sails in, and sail about head to wind or maybe a touch past. Leave the jib in to the point where it backwinds. On an ILCA, the skipper can put their hand or left shoulder against the boom, pushing out a foot or so to backwind the main for just a few seconds. The backwinded sail pushes your bow to the right, opening up space between you and the boat that just tacked to leeward of you and sliding you closer to the boat to your right. Again, be sure you have speed going into this. In small boats like ILCAs, it helps to pull up the daggerboard to help the boat slide. In keelboats, we obviously leave the keel alone, but backing the jib really pulls the boat to the right, helping it slide or track toward the boat to your right. Be careful with this move, however, because you are considered a “tacking” boat. As long as you do not hit the boat to your right, you are fine. Once you’re close to the boat to the right, cut/release the jib, and rotate the boat back down to starboard closehauled to avoid a rules infringement.

To prevent tacking, the skipper must fight the helm, pulling the tiller toward them, keeping the boat gliding at either head to wind or slightly past head to wind. A more common move in the start is to shoot head to wind to get space to leeward. That’s fine, but this backing of the sails adds the slide to the right. While doing a half-tack, or as the ILCA sailors call it, a “slide,” keep the boat flat. The crew might even have to hike on the port side, the jib side, while the jib is backing, especially in medium winds. As the boat slides to windward, you can open up about a half-boatlength on the boat that just tacked beneath you. Now you have a hole to accelerate into. As your speed diminishes, uncleat the jib. We use the command “Cut!” The jib luffs, the skipper rotates the bow down to closehauled or slightly below, and we’re off. 

The half-tack doesn’t work well in big breeze, because it’s so windy, you might not be able to keep the boat from tacking with a backed jib. And if it’s really choppy, you risk losing your speed if you smash into a wave during your slide.    

Drop it into Reverse

Let’s say you have boats close to leeward of you, and you realize that they’re going to prevent you from accelerating because there’s no hole for you to drive off into. Nor is there room for a double-tack or half-tack. The solution is to reverse out of there, backing up until your bow can clear the transoms of the boats around you, and then reach off and find a better place to start. It’s a great move when you really have no other options. Because the leeward boat is probably luffing you, you’re pretty much head to wind anyway, so you’re in a good position to start the reverse.

The most important part of this is to recognize early enough that you’re in a tough spot and need to get out of it. Otherwise, you won’t have enough time for the reverse. In a J/70, it might be with 60 to 90 seconds left; in an ILCA, it’s probably around 45 seconds. The technique starts with pushing the boom out just until the boat starts to reverse, then release the boom and let the sail luff. This point is where a lot of people run into trouble. Rose taught me not to hold the boom out very long. If you hold it out too long, it might cause the boat to tack, and you could lose control of the bow. Also, briefly holding the boom out keeps the boat from going too fast in reverse, which will make it difficult to stop. Again, your goal is to start the reverse to get your bow free, then sail somewhere else.

Steering backward takes time to learn. The tiller loads up, wanting to slam to one side or the other, and the boat will be more responsive to helm movements, so keep the tiller as close to centered as possible, and keep weight adjustments subtle. It will help to hold the tiller or hiking stick firmly in both hands. Once your bow becomes free of the boats to leeward of you, turn the boat down, away from the wind, and you’re now free to reach to the next open spot on the line. Remember, the whole line is open to you; you can exit to starboard or port.  

The “bail out and sail somewhere else” technique works well because it’s better to be going fast in the final minute than to have no good option for accelerating because someone’s close to leeward. That’s death. If you bail and start reaching, you have a much better chance of pulling off a good start than if you just sit there in a tough situation with 40 seconds left. Typically, everyone else is bow up, going half-speed, while you can be reaching down the line with pace, searching for your next spot. And when you do find your opening, you can shoot into it with more pace than the boats around you.

We did a couple of scramble starts like this at the 2023 J/70 European Championships, which we won. Both times, we found a gap in the final 20 seconds, sailed into it with pace, and were able to tack and cross the fleet within 30 seconds after the start because the pin was so favored. You might call that lucky, but we were following a basic rule: When you feel like you’re in trouble, bail and go as fast as you can.

The beautiful thing about these four moves is that they not only help you create a gap, but they also give you more of a lateral game that you might not have otherwise. Practice these moves so that you’re  good at them, and make sure you have the mindset of trying to find open space. A good practice drill is to try to sail a full lap around a stationary mark ­without tacking. We tried it in an Etchells once, and we actually pulled it off. Start by sailing by a mark on starboard tack, leaving it to port, with speed. Shoot head to wind, and do a half-tack. Let the half-tack glide you above and to the right of the mark. Then release the jib, let the boat slow down, and go into a reverse. Once you’ve reversed past the mark, kick the stern out so that you’re now on a starboard reach, and sail back around to the port side of the mark. You’ve now done a full lap around the mark without tacking. It’s also a great drill to practice slow-speed maneuvers. Try it first in 5 to 12 knots. 

With these four starting-line moves, the next time you’re in a crowded spot in the final minute and half and don’t feel like you’re going to get a good start, you now have the option of positioning your boat somewhere else. As my high school students say, “Make your momma proud; don’t start in a crowd.”

As a multiple class champion and longtime coach, Steve Hunt has now expanded his ­coaching services to include virtual coaching at stevehuntsailing.com, a site created for the racing sailor to take their skills to the next level. With video tutorials and in-depth insight, Hunt and other top-level sailors aim to help ­sailors improve their speed, sail smarter, and improve regatta results—one race at a time.

The post Four High-Level Starting Moves 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.

National Sailing Hall of Fame inductee, Snipe and Star world champion, and PanAm games medalist Augie Diaz has been getting up to speed in the Lightning, another classic one-design that continues to produce generations of smart, fast and technical sailors. On the first day of the 2024 Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series in St. Petersburg we staged an “Ask Augie” session with Lightning sailors as we waited out a postponement. We invited a few to ask away, but dozens lined up at the chance to quiz a legend. Here’s what we gleaned in less than 20 minutes of wonderful advice from the legend himself.

What’s your favorite thing in a crew?

That the crew gives me as much information as possible, and never gets insulted when I don’t do what they’re telling me to do.

What’s your routine?

Generally, I’m late, So I try to go early. But I just try to get my mindset ready, look at the weather, get a weather update, and then try to get to the park in time to make sure my tune is good. And just to not be rushed. Because generally, if I’m late, then I’m rushed. Then I’m not relaxed.

What is the breakfast of champions?

I like a good breakfast because you have to have something in your body for the day. Generally what I like to have is just some eggs, and maybe some protein. This morning, I went off track a little bit because my buddy Enrique Quintero made some bacon. Bacon is always great, but why is bacon so great and then it’s bad for you? So, I like to stay away from bacon. But generally, I get toast, eggs and protein. 

Favorite boat: Stars or Snipes?

I get this asked all the time: What’s my favorite boat? And it’s a very simple answer: It’s the last one I sailed.

You seem to sail with light women? How do you make the boat go so fast and the big breeze?

Generally, I sail with girls that are used to hiking; like those that are Snipe sailors. And those girls are pretty used to hiking. And then I have a steady flow of discussion that goes like this: Flat, flat, flat. I just keep saying that, and so it works.

What is the best and most fair weather to sail?

I like the breeze. I liked it all my life. And even at my age, now that it’s getting harder, I still like the breeze a lot. I just think that when you have a better feel of the boat and breeze, the boat talks to you a little bit more. So, I really enjoy that part of it. So I would say breeze. Breeze on.

If you get caught in a tight lane, and you don’t want to bail out of it and you really need to hold your position, any tricks on keeping your position?

That happens to me a lot because I’m not a great starter. So I’m usually in a position where I’m kind of in a tight lane, and what I try to do is make sure that before the race, I have what I call a high mode. I will announce it: “high mode,” and a high mode generally means we’re pulling in the sheets a little bit tighter. And then we’re being careful not to over trim the backstay because when you over trim the backstay you lose a little leech. For me, height is about how well that leech is working. So, I’ll say: “high mode, high mode, high mode, I need height,” and then we pretty much all do what we need to do. Steering has a lot to do with it. If you get caught too high, that’s bad, because then you start going sideways. So, you have to really balance it where you trim in, you keep your height, and you just live.

 When you’re racing and you feel slow, what’s the first thing you do to change?

What I try to do is ease. Generally, I’m a pincher, so when I’m going slow, the first thing I do is I try to ease the sails a little bit, and try to put the bow down and that always gives you a good feel for what you know for what you have to do next. So, I think to be disciplined about feeling slow, then you ease the sails out a little bit, and put the bow down a little bit and get flow. Because the biggest problem for pinchers is that you lose flow on the blades. And not just not only the blades in the water, but also on your foils above, the sails. It’s all about flow. It’s like flying.

What about going downwind?

I generally end up heading up because when I’m going slow I feel like I’m too low. And that’s generally what I try to do is try to keep a feel for what the angle should be, which is really hard in the Lightning. The legacy guys like Debbie Probst, Jody Starck, Ched Proctor, they know this stuff instinctively. So, for me, I’ve had to work on it, and it’s tough.

What is the first thing you think about when you have a poor start? If you have a post start other than a general recall. Other than hoping for a general recall?

I have had a lot of practice at this, so for me it begins before the actual start. I try to get to a place where, if I mess up the start, I’m going to have a good exit. Generally, that means you’re a little bit further up the line closer to a committee boat. But I don’t panic. I try not to panic, I do panic, actually. But I try not to panic. Because my tendency is to try to clear out from a bad start and I try to clear too fast. And sometimes I use the verbiage with my team: “We need to live here until it clears out.” And if you wait just 30, 45 seconds, and you’re in bad air, you’re hurting, you know, but you allow things to clear out a little bit behind you, then it gets a lot easier. It’s harder in the Lightning than in other classes because in a Lightning we sail tighter. There’s a lot of good people. And you end up having less of an opportunity to clear yourself.

We’re starting a U32 initiative to get more post collegiate sailors into the Lightning class; what’s your advice for encouraging more people to join the Lightning class?

I think you’ve got to invite them to get on the boat and go sailing. I think that will get a lot of people right off the bat. I think this issue of being able to go fast in a Lightning is very critical. I think you have to leverage the class stalwarts, like Ched, David Starck and Jodie and Tommy Stark, and really make it so that when people come into the class, they get accepted like I was. It’s hard because it takes time. It takes a commitment, but I think the class can do it. It’s not a problem, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. We’re doing that also very effectively in the Snipes, and it’s all about having fun. Our racing here in the Lightning is very similar to collegiate racing; it’s super tactical. And this is something that all these college kids come out of college from super tactical situations. When they start sailing J/70s or something like that, those are not tactical boats because you can’t tack a lot, and downwind you have to go to the corners. The secret to our class is the way we have a lot of fun and how tactical it is. In the end it’s fun. It’s like playing chess and lifting weights at the same time. 

What advice do you have for a team who is just starting out together just starting to sail together and maybe have not sailed together before?

Communication is key, and having a discussion before you get on the boat as to who’s doing what. I use a lot of mental visualization exercises. And I do that on the fly. I did that when I was in high school and I thought it was daydreaming. But it wasn’t daydreaming. I was actually practicing in my mind. But really, communication before you jump into the boat, I think is super important. I’ve gone as far as setting up in a living room, where you have two benches and simulate a cockpit and you walk through your maneuvers, because the Lightning is pretty tricky in terms of your maneuvers. So, that’s what I would recommend: doing a lot of communication and a lot of mental visualization prior to getting on the boat. And then of course sailing as much as you can together. That’s always key.

The post The Wisdom of Augie Diaz appeared first on Sailing World.