We have been consulting the Israeli 470 team of Gil Cohen since 2013. The challenges were mainly communicational with the variety of stakeholders. A part of our work was mental preparation and weather analysis during events which yielded a win at the 2021 mixed 470 worlds.
During the summer of 2019 we began working with the yacht club of Alexandria in Egypt. During 3 months of work in which we engaged in both coaching and coach training in preparation for the Egypt national games and the African championship. The optimist and laser squad dominated both events and have been carrying out... Continue Reading →
Firstly let us remind the main benefit of hiking flat out. IT IS FASTER, you might ask yourself how much faster, below you can see a graph of a boat hiking flat out periodically, the peaks are top speed while hiking flat out, the rest is regular hiking, the average speed difference can reach as much as 2 knots which accumulates to over 20% in boat speed. (This boat has been doing a 30 seconds flat out 30 seconds regular hiking)
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.
In sailboats racing, risk factor can make the difference between a very good race and a horrible one, We have been discussing risk management in many different forms, The fact is most successful sailors have a great ability to manage their risks in a heartbeat. Some would say it is a gift people are born with, we argue and claim risk management is an acquired skill.
Though we have been discussing much about downwind sailing and ways to go fast, based on our experience the big money in sailing is on the runs, so there is always room for more gains to be made.
When we go sailing, the boat may just push water out of the way (usually called displacement mode), ride on top of its own bow wave (planing) or foil. This week we look at how water resistance effects boatspeed, and what we can do to minimise this resistance.
the technical abilities to be fast on a reach and control your angle of sailing are still worth mastering as every small gain to be made is worth a while. It is incredible how many boats you can take on a reach if you are both fast and smart.
Reaching may be thought of as a dying art. However it is still extremely critical to results in many classes, and even in asymmetric classes sailing windward leeward courses, the same skills apply to an extent when you are in a group of boats that overstand the mark. This blog is about how to be smarter than the opposition on a reach, and deals with various scenarios that need thought, and a lot of practise that gives judgement through experience.
It is truly incredible the number of projects we have worked on where the sailors do not know how to recognise headers and lifts. When we ask them what happened to the wind during a training run, they can get it very wrong, and when we ask them what happened during a race, their impression is often at odds with reality, and completely wrong.
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