Transitioning from a club or national fleet to a big fleet can be very challenging to many sailors, sometimes it feels like all your previous knowledge and training is just not in line with the tactics and decision making of big fleets.
We have recently completed the national games in Taiwan with a huge success. Our team won 7 out of 8 gold medals and a total of 16 medals out of 21 in the entire event.
Sailing is a sport full of variables. Waves are one of these variables, and the term “wave” can include anything from small undulations in the water to giant walls of water moving across the surface of the sea
Anyone who has sailed against top sailors will know that many times you can be approaching half way up the first beat, and either in front of or in touch with some of the regatta favourites - often alongside them. A minute later the top sailor will have climbed on you, hit a gust of wind that you can’t reach, and gone from high mode to extremely fast forward compared to yourself, and from feeling great, being in touch or ahead of the good guys, you’re suddenly a hundred metres and forty boats behind them within around 90 seconds. This blog is about beginning to understand how they do that, so you can start to do it too!
As boat speeds increase, the wisdom of conventional tactics become far less relevant that they have ever been. For example, in a fast boat, covering one of the opposition can create an opening for 10 boats to get past you. Not what is needed…..
There is a considered observation that we either have high mode or low mode sailors at the top of any fleet. Sailing high or low mode has individual advantages in different conditions, so we have to look carefully at what we mean by high or low mode. The purpose of this blog is to discuss sailing styles and blow some setup myths apart.
We have all read copious amounts of wisdom about sailing being a matter of coaxing the boat through various conditions, listening to what she wants to do and then using some kind of gentle psychic powers to magically steam ahead of all the opposition and win. This blog is about the brutal truth. Understanding... Continue Reading →
Driven by the incredible developments of technology in hull and especially sail design over the past 30 years, the powers that be are examining closely whether we should have a more modern version of race track on which to exhibit our skills. Toplevel feel very strongly that the idea of a race is to complete circuits. Changing this in our opinion is the equivalent to a Formula One race being run on a hill climb, or a horse race being unable to view the start and finish. By definition a race track consists of laps, whereas different types of racing consist of other skills needed than in lapping, in any sport!
Top sailors spend a lot of time practicing and training on their own. This is against so many “words of wisdom” that the former ISAF give to emerging nations. In fact we can see that young sailors who spend a lot of time training alone are often successful.
In a previous blog we discussed peak performance from the psychological point of view. In this blog we discuss skills which are critical to a peak performance regatta, but must also be practiced, personalized and perfected at every other regatta to make maximum use of preparation to “sail like a local” and gain confidence in knowing the venue.
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