SOLO PRACTICE

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With Solo Practice you can work on a wide range of techniques without having to rely on anyone else except your own boat and crew.

Many sailors believe that racing is the best training, but there are plenty of skills that can be perfected alone.

The 3 main areas for solo practice are boat handling, boat speed and starting.

The following list of skills are some of the easiest to work on alone.

  • Tacking
  • Gybing
  • Heavy weather techniques
  • Angle of heel
  • Wind shift spotting
  • Starting
  • Mark rounding
  • Wave technique
  • Spinnaker hoists, drops, and gybes
  • Physical fitness
  • Skipper/crew coordination
  • Self-confidence

FREE CHAMPIONSHIP SAILING GLOVES

Things that are essential for an Effective Practice session.

Focus

Focus your practice on a few manageable areas to improve breaking down a skill into small parts and work to perfect each of the parts.

An example of this is when tacking, work on your footwork and getting to the other side in coordination with your teammates.

Progress on the small things things adds up to major improvement.

Variety

Mix up the sessions, don’t do the same thing every time you go out to practice. Next session come back to things you didn’t get perfect last time out.

Don’t always select days of perfect conditions and be prepared to train in sub 5 knots through to survival conditions.

Don’t practice too many different methods per session

Before heading out, decide what you are going to work on. Talk about what you want to get out of the session and experiment with different techniques.

Repetition once you get it right ensures that the skill becomes second nature and will be replicated automatically in pressure situations when racing.

Race like you practice.

Work on techniques in short bursts of intensity as you would when racing.

After carrying out the short intense manoeuvres, relax and discuss what went right or wrong and work out how to do them better.

Don’t be shy to compliment each other for a job well done and make sure that any criticism is constructive.

BOOK FOR YOUR SAILING BUDDY (and one for yourself)

Using Electronics to Improve Speed.

When you don’t have other boats to use as gauges for your speed improvement, electronics add value to solo practice.

Even if your class does not allow electronic equipment such as Velocitek, Sailmon or Vakaros instruments, these are extremely useful for solo practice.

Also looking at data and tracks created by these instruments is great for learning how you can improve basics such as tacking and gybing.

As an example, a tack has three parts – entry, turn, exit:
  • For the entry, you want to be on a close-hauled angle and the boat was at target speed going into the turn.
  • In the turn, you want the momentum to be carried into the wind with a consistent rate of turn. The rate of turn will vary with the conditions depending on the wind and sea state.
  • For the exit you want to see that the turn stops at a good acceleration or speed build angle, the boat is able to accelerate straight away and you are close to a close-hauled angle.
Use the speedo feature to improve speed related to sail and boat trim.
Sails and Rig

It’s amazing how much extra consistent speed some adjustments make.

Because a point or two of extra boatspeed is imperceptible to all but a few sailors, the use of an instrument while practising can teach us a lot.

Set your sails how you think is perfect for the prevailing conditions. Then make adjustments to Vang, Cunningham or shroud tensions to see what effect they have on speed.

If the changes are positive make notes, change marks and memorise for the next time you strike those conditions.

Boat Trim

Similarly, experiment with heel and fore and aft trim and note what is consistently faster in the conditions that you are experiencing.

All classes and types of boats respond differently to heel and trim changes so experiment to see which numbers work best for your boat.