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.
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
The tuning of a boat involves gaining the optimum speed and height from a given rig on a given boat. If we change a hull, sail (main, jib, or kite) or mast we have to tune the sail to the mast and the rig to the boat, and often change our technique to optimise speed and height.
The movement of water over a course area is rarely uniform. Because of this factor the racing sailor has to have an understanding of where currents are at their maximum, how this helps or obstructs progress and where a current will take you sideways away from the mark, or sideways towards the mark. Where possible, using current in different areas to enhance the speed around the course can be much more rewarding than finding a lot of boat speed through increased wind speed.
Many top sailors complain about either their downwind speed or state that they don’t know how to sail downwind. In reality this is usually based on an emotion and mental challenges rather than what an observer may see, but there is can be a hint of truth in such statement as they might be slow in certain conditions. In this article we look at the real deal with both top sailors and amateurs falling into the same errors quite often.
The Centre of effort of a rig can be best described by stating that the entire force of wind power generated by a sail can be considered to act through one point - in the same way that the center of gravity of a body is the point around which that body balances. In this blog, we explain the dynamics of the Centre of effort, how you can change it and WHY it needs changing, which is because if the center of effort of the rig isn’t directly over the pivot point of the boat, you need corrective rudder which will slow the boat down through drag in the water.
Wind We have all encountered this question in the past “What is wind?”. As coaches we have also encountered many different answers to this, but usually the initial response is far from the very simple answer that wind is air movement from high pressure to low pressure. That would lead to a further question; how... Continue Reading →
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