Strategy and tactics are the key ingredients of your plan to ensure success and fun for the day's sailing event.
What is Strategy?
A definition of strategy is having a plan for how you would like to sail a race if there were no other boats on the course.
Tactics are being able to adapt quickly to changing situations, that is,...
IMPROVE YOUR RACING SKILLS - Boatspeed requires a combination of sail trim, accurate helming, and good balance and trim. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
Settings for a particular wind speed in flat water won’t work in big waves, nor in light airs.
Just like riding a bike you need to be able to change gear to suit the conditions.
Acceleration gear is used when...
Whether it be a single race or a regatta, you need to develop a race day routine if you want to be successful. This is not only for those in Fantasy land at the back of the boat but everyone onboard needs to be included. This ensures that every crew member understands their position, duties and what is expected...
 Step 1. Work on your weaknesses. Steps to Winning a Regatta
 We all have different strengths and weaknesses, for some, it is light air and flat water, for others they are faster in a big breeze and boisterous seas.
It is fun to practice in your favourite conditions but you need to get out of your comfort zone and spend more...
To Improve - Get Back To Basics. The best sailors are those who understand the importance of solid boat handling skills as the foundation for performance.
What Can Improve Our Performance on The Water
A question that we should always ask ourselves is, what would make the biggest difference to improve our performance on the water?
The answers we give ourselves range...
Often too much significance is attributed to sailing tactics and tactics only become the most important factor if you are sailing at a very high level. Sailing Tactics Be Better Than The Competition
For most of us, it’s better to invest in training time, concentrating on sailing technique and boat tuning. As a word of caution though, you can't manage...
Racing in Big Fleets
With national championships and annual long-distance races fast approaching, we need to turn our minds to sailing in bigger fleets than we have been racing in all year.
Racing in big fleets requires a number of different disciplines to think about and master. In general, you can take more risks in a small fleet and if you...
Avoid Sailing Mistakes - An important ingredient to winning a yacht race is to make fewer mistakes than your fellow competitors.
Because of sailing's complexities, even the best sailors will make mistakes but it is the avoidance of the major ones that are the most telling, minor mistakes will make a difference but should not be sweated over.
I have...
Be Consistent in Big Fleets
Being consistent is especially important in big fleets where a small mistake can lose you plenty of places. With a large number of fast boats in an international championship, the chances of getting those places back is highly unlikely.
Great boat handling is particularly relevant and practice is an easy way to ensure that small but...
Knowing how to attack and defend is a skill that develops with time on the water.
When racing, it rarely pays to concentrate on beating one boat as you risk the rest of the fleet getting away.
Having said that, there are key areas of the race course or regatta when this could be necessary, so the ability to attack and...
