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Sailing Tips To Improve

Brett Bowden
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Sailing Tips To Improve

Sailing Tips To Improve. When you want to kick your sailing performance up to the next level, many sailors think first of spending money – buying new sails, replacing gear, or even buying a new boat.

In most cases, a number of small and easy improvements in your technique can yield great results using the gear that you already have.

Over the next four weeks, I will give you some sailing tips to help improve your performance, this is by no means an exhaustive list but will give you some worthwhile things to work on.

Tip One: Practice Boat Handling

This does not need to involve hours of drills and practice. 15 minutes spent practicing your weakest manoeuvre before the start of each day’s racing will rapidly pay dividends.

Once this first manoeuvre is nailed, you need to find another weakness to work on.

Buy or borrow a GoPro camera in waterproof housing, this is an ideal self-coaching tool and will reveal both your strengths and weaknesses when played back after a race or training session.

Tip Two: Hoists, drops and gybes

Getting gybes right in a single-sail boat in all weather is an essential skill as is perfecting hoists and drops in a boat that carries a spinnaker. Practice done outside of race conditions will always give excellent returns.

The boats with polished crew work in this area always gain an advantage on their rivals. Especially in pressure cooker situations whatever the weather. Practice manoeuvres using a mark or some other point to replicate race pressure.

Tip Three: Mark all Settings and build up a tuning Guide

Your tuning guide will be a work in progress. It will be continually refined over the course of your racing life.

A great starting point is to get a guide for your class or type of boat from your sail maker and then refine it to suit yourself and your crew. This refinement will come from your own on-water experiences.

Everything should be marked – halyards, sheets, vang, outhaul, shroud tensions etc. Like the tuning guide, it’s the beginning of an ongoing process that sees both sail trim and boat handling improve as you gradually refine the markings.

Tip Four: Mark Roundings

You will be amazed at how much time is lost at mark roundings. One of the biggest mistakes is failing to follow the basic ‘wide in, narrow out’ principle. If you don’t do that you allow boats inside. Added to that, uncoordinated sail handling by not planning ahead or leaving it too late will cost you plenty.

Sometimes an early drop will set you up to pass the boats in front. The small amount of time you lose will be more than compensated for by an orderly rounding.

Planning ahead for your mark rounding will also pay dividends. Plan where you want to be in relation to the boats around you at least halfway down the leg.

Tip Five: Practice Starting

Getting away with clean air and runway below you at the start and on the first beat gives a valuable early advantage plus starting without being boxed in allows you to re-jig your plan if something changes immediately after the start.

Get a reliable transit and don’t be afraid of being half a length ahead of the boats around you as most hang back too far. Have a dedicated yacht race timer and know how to use it.

Do time on distance drills and get to know your boats head to wind, tacking and gybing manoeuvrability. Above all know the rules. 

Listen to Your Teammate(s)

Brett Bowden
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Listen to Your Teammate(s)

Published on FEB, 2018

2004 Olympian Carol Cronin reviews how the balance of ego and communication contributes to the functioning of a successful team. Listen to Your Teammate(s).

At a recent Snipe regatta, Kim Couranz and I counted up the number of lines we each control. Her total? Sixteen (eight on port tack, eight on starboard). My total? One.

Giving Kim all the controls except the mainsheet allows me to concentrate on steering and trimming, without the distraction of the many other adjustments required to keep the boat going fast as wind and waves increase or decrease. Of course, that means I trust her completely.

So why is it still so hard to listen to her excellent advice about what to do next on the race course? Listen to Your Teammate(s)

I’ve been dodging the answer for years because the truth is a dirty word: ego. Even as a former crew with attitude, I have trouble taking input from the front of the boat.

Taking over the tiller gave me the same irrational belief in my own abilities that every skipper I’ve ever sailed with has. And that can wreak havoc with my listening skills.

Read the balance of the article 

https://carolnewmancronin.com/listen-to-your-teammates/  

Changing Gears

Brett Bowden
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Changing Gears

Changing Gears. In sailboat racing, change is continuous, you have puffs, lulls, lifts, headers, bad air, waves, tacks and so on.

It’s rare that you can set the boat up and sail for too long without changing something. To go fast you must constantly adjust the trim of your boat and sails. We actually use many different settings to cover the full range of conditions in which we sail. To change from one gear to another, we usually have to make multiple adjustments. 

As an example, when you sail into a lull, you typically ease your mainsheet and bear off slightly. When the wind increases, you trim in and head up.

When you get a lull you don’t put a softer batten in the top pocket or change your mast rake. You might do these things when you set up on the beach but they aren’t normally considered when changing gears.

Keep Your Head Out Of The Boat

A mistake I see out on the course more often than I should is heads in the boat changing major settings. Few changes you make on a beat will make enough extra distance to compensate for the loss made whilst making the adjustment.

It is worth noting that in a race of 60 minutes, with 4 upwind legs you will only be on each upwind for about 8 -10 minutes. 

An exception to this is of course if there has been a major change in the weather.

In sailing it’s relatively easy to set your boat up so it will go fast in one particular condition. When the wind and waves remain constant, it’s easy to zero in on the sail shape and other variables.

The problem is that conditions almost never stay constant.

You may get your boat going fast in one condition, but if you don’t adjust things when conditions change, you will not be going as fast as possible, that’s why the ability to change gears is so important for boat speed.

The best sailors might be in the right gear for 90% of a race. The sailors at the other end of the fleet might be in the right gear only 50% of the time or less.

Clues for when to change gears – 

  • Trust your sense of feel. Indicators like helm pressure or angle of heel will tell you whether the boat needs more or less power
  • If your performance relative to the nearby competition is not great, there’s a good chance you are in the wrong gear.

  • Look for visual clues. Many changes that require a gear change are things you can see before they reach you (e.g. puffs, lulls, waves). Keep your eyes open.

Most racing sailors are good at “shifting up” when they get an increase in wind pressure. Puffs are generally easy to see and their effect on your boat is easy to feel.

The ability to change down is a different story, and this is where the best sailors make their biggest gains. It’s harder to detect decreases in the wind, so most sailors don’t downshift soon enough or far enough. The result is they compound the negative effects of sailing into a lull.

If you want to get better at changing gears and going faster for a greater percentage of the race, work hard on shifting down.

Try to shift sooner, more quickly and further when you encounter lulls, bad air, waves or any other situation where you might slow down.

Starting Strategy

Brett Bowden
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Starting Strategy

 

Starting Strategy

 

Starting Strategy. I have copied below, excerpts from an interview with Mike Holt, multiple 505 world champion who is renowned for getting awesome starts and having an uncanny knack of digging himself out if things go wrong during or just after a start.

  1. Describe your overall start strategy

For me, whether it is a line or gate start I am focused on ensuring having a runway to leeward and being at full speed when I start. I then want to be able to climb when I can and foot when I need to. Getting to the next shift in good shape and aiming to control my destiny.

  1. Tell me about your favourite tactical moves you use in the start sequence.

Generally, I will look to impose myself on the boat to windward. I will look for a boat that is a weaker link and use them as a buffer. Basically, invade their personal space.

  1. What are the most common ways competitors get into trouble on the start line?

By being bullied by another boat and ending up without any leeward space. And or being caught too close to the wind with no steerage.

  1. What is the crew’s role in the start sequence?

Feed information and make sure the boat can still move. Talk about a time, where there are gaps, who may invade your space and attempting to work out time on distance to the start.

  1. How do you hold your lane off the start line? Starting Strategy

The key to this is in making sure you can get to full speed at or before the start. Once racing in a crowded area you have to keep moving between height and speed, too much of one over the other will get you in trouble. Height, height, speed. Repeat until the space around you is acceptable to sail your own race.

  1. If you get baulked or get an ordinary start, what do you do to recover?

It’s important to recognize this quickly and then stop the bleeding. Tack, take sterns and look at your options. Unless you are utterly convinced that left is the way to go, in that case, suck it up and sail fast, Better to go slow the right way than fast the wrong way.

  1. Talk about risk-taking at a start, e.g balance that with the favoured end, clear air, and favoured side of the course.

I don’t like taking any risks.

  1. In general and not necessarily related to the start, what’s the single most important thing that a sailor looking to improve should concentrate on?

This is boat dependent and also individually related. For me and sailing performance boats, fitness and the ability to operate the boat at 100% for the entire race.

The ‘Doppler’ Windshift Effect

Brett Bowden
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The ‘Doppler’ Windshift Effect



On a beat, the speed at which you converge with shifts (and puffs) is roughly equal to the sum of the wind speed plus your VMG to windward. In this case, that’s 10 (windspeed) plus 5 (VMG), or 15 knots. But on a run, the convergence speed is the wind speed minus your VMG to leeward. Here it’s 4 knots (10 minus 6). So on a run the shifts are coming at you several times more slowly than on a beat, so you will experience that many fewer shifts.

The ‘Doppler’ Windshift Effect – We all know what happens when a train comes toward us at full speed with its horn blowing, at first the sound is very high pitched, but it drops quickly as the train passes by and becomes quite low-pitched while the train speeds away.

The Doppler Effect

The reason for this is what’s called the Doppler effect. The sound waves in front of the train are compressed very close together, which results in a higher pitch. Behind the train, the sound waves are much farther apart, resulting in a dramatically lower pitch.

The Doppler effect is a useful analogy for what happens on a windward-leeward course. When you sail upwind, it’s like being on the front of the train, since you are sailing toward the wind, you will get the shifts and puffs at a faster rate than if you were sitting in an anchored boat.

Conversely, on a run you are sailing away from the wind, so you get the shifts and puffs at a slower rate, that’s like what happens after the train passes the point where you are standing.

Though you won’t hear any changes in pitch when you go from beating to running, you may notice some subtle changes in the wind. To illustrate this, let’s consider an example, suppose you are sailing around on the starting line and you find that the wind is oscillating every five minutes.

As you sail up the first beat, will the shifts come at you at the same rate?

The answer is no. Since you are sailing towards the shifts, you will get them faster. Perhaps every three or four minutes.

How about when you round the windward mark and sail down the run? The ‘Doppler’ Windshift Effect 

Since you are sailing away from the shifts, you will get them less often, perhaps every 7 or 8 minutes!

The strategic implications of this phenomenon are significant. For example, if there are 8 minutes between shifts when you are sailing downwind, it is possible you will only see one shift on the run and if you get only one shift on the run, it means you should treat that as a persistent shift even though the overall wind pattern is oscillating.

The ‘Doppler’ wind shift effect also explains why better pressure is so critical downwind. Since you are sailing with the wind, you won’t see so many puffs. You can stay in one much longer than on the beats. Therefore, getting into the puff and using it fully is critical for optimum performance.

On a beat, the speed at which you converge with shifts (and puffs) is roughly equal to the sum of the wind speed plus your VMG to windward.

In this case, that’s 10 (windspeed) plus 5 (VMG), or 15 knots. But on a run, the convergence speed is the wind speed minus your VMG to leeward. Here it’s 4 knots (10 minus 6). So on a run, the shifts are coming at you several times more slowly than on a beat. Therefore you will experience that many fewer shifts.

Dave publishes the newsletter Speed & Smarts. For a subscription go to www.speedandsmarts.com 

Prepare to Race

Brett Bowden
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Prepare to Race – On the morning of the race, you will check the local forecast again to see how the predicted weather has changed or whether it is behaving as has been forecast.

Get Out On The Course Early

Get on the course 60 minutes before the start and sail as much of the first beat as possible.

Make mental notes of the wind patterns to establish which side of the course appears favoured. Work out whether the wind shifts are oscillating or persistent.

Compare what you are seeing with what has been predicted and start to make your plan for the first windward leg.

The main advantage of doing this is that if immediately after the start something changes, you will have the information to make a snap decision about whether to continue standing on or whether to tack.

Whilst sailing the first leg prior to the start you can establish whether your setting for the rig, sails and sheeting positions are correct.

These would have been set initially prior to leaving the beach based on information available at that time.

Check the current at different points on the racecourse matches with what you know about this venue. Find this out from previous regattas or local knowledge research.

Line Up Against Another Competitor

Even the best sailors benefit from lining up against another competitor prior to the start. Many of us have a tuning partner. If your regular mate isn’t there, find someone beneficial to work with. 

So many questions can be answered by positioning your boat two lengths from a competitor and speed testing.

These tests can and should be lined up in advance with a reliable competitor. Their speed and abilities are known and they will show up on time at the designated spot.

Almost always prioritize tactical and boatspeed research over boat-handling practice, you are not likely to solve bigger boat-handling issues in the short period of time that is available to you.

Finally, allow an 8 to 10-minute chill period before the start. During this time discuss the upcoming race in a low-stress manner.

This gives the team an opportunity to re-evaluate sail selection, and then to fuel up and hydrate.

You are now ready to tackle any eventuality after the gun goes. You can make an informed tactical decision when something that was not predicted occurs.

 

 

Left or Right?

Brett Bowden
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Left or Right?

Left or Right?

Left or Right? This is probably the most asked question in yacht racing. Going fast is important but it is no good being the fastest boat if you are going fast the wrong way.

That’s why, no matter how fast you are, you must consider whether you want to go left or right.

Strategy

When racing, we must employ strategy. Strategy is the plan you employ for getting to the next mark as quickly as possible.

Strategy is a plan that takes account of wind direction and strength, current, waves and the position of the next mark.

These factors are different every time you go out on the water and they change constantly while you are racing and often vary across the course as a result, the difference between going left and going right can be huge.

On the first beat, work hard to take advantage of changes in wind direction and velocity, current and the geometry of the course. The existence or absence of waves is another factor you should consider. 

Before you can actually plan a strategy, you must observe the racecourse. Collect a bunch of helpful information including data about wind and current. Do this before you leave the beach.

Weather

Look up weather forecasts and current charts and don’t forget to tap into the local knowledge of other sailors.

Get out to the course area early and start looking around and make observations about what is actually happening. It may not be exactly what was predicted.

After the race starts, don’t stop thinking about strategy, the wind and current are always changing. An added dimension is that now you have many other boats to help you see which side of the course is really favoured.

The best way to plan your strategy would be to view the racecourse from overhead. Since that is not possible while racing, you must keep your head “out of the boat”. Focus on the big picture.

Your strategic plan could be as simple as, “Hit the left side hard”.  It might be more detailed, like “Start 1/3 of the way down from the RC boat and play the oscillating shifts up the middle right  side.”

Don’t forget to keep re-thinking your strategy during the race. You will be constantly getting more information about the wind and other strategic factors. 

It is not always obvious which side of the course is favoured and there will be times when you’ll have no idea whether to go left or right and in fact, even the best sailors don’t have a strong feeling about which way to go on the first beat in as many as 50% of the races they sail.

When this happens, what should you do?

Unless you’re sure the right or left side is favoured,  stay near the middle of the fleet. Keep your eyes open. The beginning of the first beat is a great time for seeing what the wind is doing and which side is paying off.

Once you get some clues about which boats are gaining, head that way quickly. You will probably come out behind the boats that sailed to the favoured side but you took much less risk. Hopefully, you will still be in the top group at the first mark.

If you can do this every race, you’ll be successful. 

Sailing Specific Fitness

Brett Bowden
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Sailing Specific Fitness

Sailing Specific Fitness – I have summarised below some of the nuggets that I read in Michael Blackburn’s excellent book “Sail Fitter” and I highly recommend that if you are serious about getting faster on the race track your fitness is one of the major factors that will influence your results.

Michael’s book is full of excellent advice and training tips from a qualified person, not only qualified academically but with proven on-the-race-track achievements.

Be Adaptable – 

If you turn up to go sailing for a heavy air workout in your boat and the day turns out to be a drifter, cancel sailing and hit the gym.

When end up sailing, follow up with a hard gym session working on the muscle groups that would have copped a hammering if you had sailed in strong conditions.

If you have scheduled a gym session and you turn up in not-so-good condition such as lingering fatigue then you might reduce the volume and/or intensity of the session.

Recovery –

Use ice and cold water recovery practices and remember that you don’t get fitter from training until you get a chance to rest and let the body rebound.

You can recover faster for your next training session using recovery strategies like cold water immersion.

Develop Your Back –

The back is the part of the body that sees the most injuries for sailors. 

An important part of your fitness training is to include exercises for the lower back and deep abdominal muscles and you should try to do something with each of these muscle groups every day.

Shoulders –

These are the sailor’s next most problematic and injured body part and it is the sudden movements of the arms over a large range of motion that will affect your shoulder joints. 

If you have a weakness in this area or simply want to assist your body and to prevent injuries, sailors should include shoulder stabilisation exercises. Michaels’s book or YouTube are two great sources of these types of exercises.

Hip Flexors –

 Because of the way we sit in our boats, the hip flexors are in a shortened state. At the end of the sailing session, you need to engage in stretches. This helps the muscles recover, helps in reducing lower back issues and helps improve your posture.

Equipment – 

To assist with hiking, consider battened hiking pants, these will enhance your endurance. Grip on the boat with appropriate materials will enable you to move without slipping and sliding. The same goes for having good gloves, effective soles on your boots and a wetsuit with nonslip and kneepads.

A sometimes overlooked fact is that hot muscles are less efficient. Correct clothing for the prevailing conditions needs to ensure that muscles stay cool.

Be Scientific –  

Keep records of your fitness the aim being to find out by trial and error what works and what doesn’t. Body weight is something you should keep an eye on. Many classes have an optimum weight or weight range.

Keep a spreadsheet or notebook with exercises and food programs. It is sometimes helpful to look back over the years gone by to see what you have done by way of food and exercise to achieve different results.

Many elite sailors have records stretching back over 10 or more years.

Hiking Exercises – 

A Swiss Ball makes an excellent hiking bench to train your legs and work on your abdominals. This is a particularly useful exercise if you have had a number of light days. It keeps your muscles in peak condition for the next blow.

Better Technique –

Michael says that you are better off hiking at 90% rather than if hiking at 100% you end up fatigued. This affects your ability to steer, trim and decide tactics. 

What you lose in the righting moment you gain in these other areas.

 

Sailing Fast In Light Air

Brett Bowden
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Although light air sailing is far from most sailors’ favourite conditions, it does provide the greatest number of opportunities to make the biggest gains.

A well-sailed boat can develop a great speed advantage and at times it can go literally twice as fast as its competitors – so it is not unusual to see the largest race-winning leads developed in the lightest of conditions.

Boat preparation can also play a much more significant role in the improvement in position on the race track, things like removing any extraneous weight, cleaning and polishing the bottom.

Another light air must is taking unneeded purchases out of sheeting systems and using the lightest possible sheets to enable sails to set in the smallest puffs of breeze.

UPWIND

Good telltales are essential to enable you to set draught and twist plus an effective masthead wind indicator, wool tufts on the shrouds work well and I have even seen boats that have taped incense sticks to the shrouds, they burn very slowly and provide a smoke trail to show wind direction.

Light Air

In most cases in light air, a flatter sail performs best because it allows the airflow to remain attached to the sail. In the case of the mainsail, a firm outhaul will flatten the lower section of the main whilst allowing the leech to be more open.

Prebend the mast to flatten out the entry to the mainsail and the Cunningham and vang should be completely slack.

At no time should the leech of the main be angled farther to weather than parallel to the centreline. In drifting conditions, the technique of trimming the upper batten parallel to the boom is dropped. The upper batten is set parallel to the centreline.

Traveller

The traveller is sometimes pulled all the way to weather in super light conditions so that the slightest puff will allow the boom to lift easily, but as the breeze picks up, drop the traveller down again so the boom stays at or below the centreline while you are trimming the upper batten parallel to the boom. 

There isn’t anything slower in light air than having backwind at the luff of the main. With the main angled far off the centreline, the slot is in danger of being closed. To avoid this, flatten the mainsail. This lets you ease the main until the upper batten is parallel to the centreline without backwind. 

Light Air

In light conditions, the jib should become increasingly full in its forward sections. If you are sailing a one-design that uses the same jib in 0 to 30 knots of breeze, light air is the condition where the jib should be set up with the greatest amount of luff sag. 

A full entry is more powerful, and also helps widen out the “groove”. The boat is less critical to steer, mast prebend also contributes to luff sag.

DOWNWIND

Off the wind, the mainsail doesn’t require as much flow across it. A full shape will make it more forgiving. Ease the outhaul, and mast bend should be eliminated.

On a reach, if the spinnaker is drooping, it is quicker to sail with the jib and douse the kite.

With a symmetrical spinnaker adjust the pole height so that the clews are level and make sure that the sheet is light enough not to weigh the corner down and that the sheet is well eased.  

BOAT HANDLING

Crew movements must be slow and weight forward to lift the aft area of the boat to reduce drag. To make the boat head up, heel to leeward slightly, once turned to the heading you want, flatten the boat to its sailing lines.

Rudder movement acts as a brake so keep it to a minimum and use weight to turn the boat.

Avoid Pinching

Avoid pinching because the boat relies on forward movement to create flow over the foils. Once flow detaches from the foils the boat will start to slide sideways so foot off get the flow going. As you accelerate steer up slightly by moving your weight to leeward.

This is an ongoing procedure. In a lull, move weight to weather to steer down to accelerate and then repeat.

Keep the crew out of the slot and keep the boat flat unless using weight to steer.

If you have good boat speed, standard tactical situations should be approached aggressively in most conditions. Light-air tactics demand more conservatism and greater anticipation.

You can actually gain distance when you dip a starboard tacker because of the speed you generate when bearing off. Don’t be afraid to wave a port tacker across if it looks like they might tack on your lee bow. 

If a new wind comes in with more velocity, always sail to it as soon as possible. Even if this requires sailing a headed tack for a short period to get to it. Since maximum boat speed is extremely important, always aim to get in the position to increase speed through the water. 

A massive shift would be an exception if the shift were to last a substantial length of time.

Anticipation in Sailing Races

Brett Bowden
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Anticipation in Sailing Races – In every sailing race, to enhance your chance of success you must keep a constant watch ahead and around the course to see what’s coming and have a plan on how to deal with it before you get there.

Before You Leave The Beach

Before you leave the beach and before every race, you need to develop a plan to deal with the anticipated activity of the wind, waves, current, and other boats. Follow your game plan as closely as possible. Avoid spur-of-the-moment decisions that are made without regard for the big picture.

It’s hard to anticipate when you’re staring at the seaweed in the bilge. You have to keep your eyes looking up the course and all around for signs of things to come.

The helmsperson should concentrate on steering, so the crew really needs to be his eyes. Make sure one person on the boat has the responsibility for watching around the course and is watching for two things: changes in the wind or waves and the movement of other boats.

Crews Job

The crew watches for puffs, lulls, waves but to warn of approaching starboard tackers or boats on converging courses. To anticipate potential confrontations and to let the helmsman know of possible scenarios.



As an example the crew member who is assigned the task of looking up the course at the wind direction in relation to the marks needs to anticipate that when you come around the windward mark, will you want to do a normal bear away set, or a jibe-set and this needs to be communicated well ahead of time so you are set up at the mark to carry out that maneuver. 

Communication

So that the helmsman can be informed about situations before they arise, they should call out in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone aboard that there’s a puff coming, there is a crossing situation where you may need to duck or tack or the tactic needed at the next mark rounding and why.

In sailboat racing, things are always changing. It would be easy if we could plan ahead for every move on the race course but unfortunately, this is impossible because you can’t always predict what the wind will do or how the other boats are going to react.

What you can do is anticipate a  number of possibilities that might happen. Then make a plan for each one. 

By giving you time to consider decisions ahead of time, contingency plans help you stay in control of your race.

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