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.
The sailing world is going foiling mad. Time alone will tell whether it's a good thing or not, but what we can say is that it's fun and fast, and very different in feeling. What is the same for the sailor is that we need to understand a far greater range of sail settings in order to optimise the performances of these boats.
In competitive sailing we are looking for every advantage we may get if we want to win and going fast is a pretty important advantage to have - the gains from using the correct sails are more than just marginal!.
Racing is a process where you are looking for any advantage over the opposition. We tend to coach tactics by likening it to a walk down a corridor, and there are various doors in the wall. You know that one door will lead to a better corridor than another
How many times are you on a line, feeling like you’ve pulled the boss move, and with ten seconds to go, things turn pear shaped and the dream start vaporises? This simple and common situation gives us the first priority.
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.
Not too long ago in a lot of classes crews could be seen visibly relaxing as the kite went up, and the procession began. Happily now in all racing we understand how to make gains and use the downwind to our advantage.
In modern racing we are often demanded to become short term weather forecasters to help us predict changes within the next 10-20 minutes that will help us to get an advantage over our competitors and sail the course quicker than them.
Coaching has evolved a massive amount since 1990. Yes, there were coaching courses of sorts back than, but somehow you'd spend three days on a course and come away with one useful nugget of information that would improve your coaching skills. Now a days information is so readily accessible that you can gain enough information to be a good coach in a very short time. What you can't get is experience.
We recently finished a training camp leading to an important event for the team, After having worked on different racing skills and Psychological aspects we decided it’s time to test the sailors ability to put on their racing head on.
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