Advanced sailing: It's all about the basics, and there are also the basics to consider

Advanced Sailing: It's all about the basics......... and there are also the basics to consider....

Getting Your Head Round What the Wind Tells You To Do

Okay, well melges 24 / 32 or other higher performance boats are  not in the "basics"-category for a dumpy old keel boat sailor, or single handed dinghy world champion for that matter. But as in all sailing, the core of the matter is doing the simple stuff right. Part of that is nothting to do With steering and sheeting but  about puting Your head out of the boat and getting the basics of information right.

Given a pre-requisite is that you can SAIL your boat round a course, near to the marks, bang on the lay lines when you need to be there, then the rest is actually about ensuring your boat is firstly  in the right condition -  rig setting and gear changes - and secoundly putting your boat in the right place.

The latter part is what is lacking With many skippers and their sheep like crews : there are some very basic information gathering steps to be done before, during and after the race that some boats just dont consider important. Any calculations from information you gather to how you will sail, are not advanced trigonometry but do need some quick reckoning and a brain which can flip 180' for the beat and the off wind leg.

Knowing the sequence of weather and confirming it

Given you have the weather forecast then ask yourself this: what is the sequence of weather, has this sequence come over on time ? Usually forecasters get the sequence spot on from a 24 hour forecast, but you should check that the timing is running right or not according to wind finder or your local web hourly predictions.

What are the signs in the heavens of the next part of the sequence ? Or are they showing that the forecast is wrong or subject to large local effects like solar modified gradient wind or a thunder storm ? If you know there is a big shift in direction then you stand to be up in the top few boats if you can spot the weather signs that show it is on the way, and put the boat on the correct side of the course for it. This is pretty basic for the most part, a change in the clouds or just being observant to far off smoke and flags etc.

This is where getting out a little early BUT knowing how the weather sequence is progressing, early, late, wrong, is what counts. You need time to prepare and you need to know what to expect.

Setting Gear and Rig for Expected Conditions

So this gives you a rig setting and sail choice. If in doubt you can hedge your bets and this means in my experience having a slightly softer rig but setting less sail and using the running Controls (kicker, Cunningham, backstay in particular) much harder on in the gusts or bigger Wind bands.

 On a Melges 24 though, you have no reef or no.2 jib so it means adjusting the rig to the max wind expected. In either case you can then add more depth to the sails or tighten the running ( adjustable ) rigging to achieve the reverse. It is by a rule easier to slip out than harden up when you are on the water, and even With qucik little spanners on the main Melges fittings, you are best to be loosening in easing weather, than trying to tighten in a lumpy sea.

Rig tension BTW is basic to be learned and considered a basic, must do. A loos gauge or just using halyards and line of sight is basic measuring. Some boats benefit from a medium rig tension in all but heavier winds, as said you then adjust the running rigging. Others especially with carbon fibre masts or silly sticks like the Star or X99, need to have their cap shrouds and inners adjusted to definable settings for a given wind range expected (for one design at least you should get loos measurements from sailmakers web sites or gurus)

 Remember on many boats like the Sigma 33 and Melges With a variable forestay, the forestay legnth is the first thing to determine for the day before shroud tension. On heavier boats it determines sag which Powers up the rig, and also once rig tension is tuned in With the cap shrouds, the rake and therefore weather helm is also set.


Sail choice is also basic of course...read wind stregnth on the wind logg or by knowing your beaufort tell-tale signs and get the sails done. If in doubt reef, strip down and beast on everything hard because it is a hell of a lot easier to put up more sail and slip out your "strings" if the wind dies than take a man off the rail when it blows up to top-of-five!!


Next is what the wind will do over the course: in the northern hemisphere for example as you sail off shore on a beat the wind will tend to veer ( depending on the water temperature vs air) Round a headland the wind will bend for several hundred meters. Between a valley or estuary the wind will funnel and be trained a new direction. Where do you aim for ?

Also if the weather sequence seems right or you keep looking for signs in the sky, what side of the course will be more upwind, or get more wind period?

Tide is usually simple or you can ask someone! It is a bit worth it's own blogg on the old 123-321 and it is faster in the deeper channel and so on, but sail with someone else in a bloody spring tide and find out what it does.

Let's summarise that major series of points about sailing conditions:

Okay I know I know I have started to throw in some more advanced metereology: but keep it simple stupid. Learn the basics of weather, the basics of tide and learn to read and remember the sequence of an hour by hour forecast and use your eyes and in fact other senses: is the wind colder, does it smell of sea or land or gauno from the nearest bird sanctuary ?

Go Out and Analyse By BASIC Measurement Principles Over the Course.

The next basic is what all the keen sailors do because it is text book and  without this approach you are for the first, stabbing in the dark and for the second, following other boat's strategies.

Good boats on a course with a usual distance to the weather mark, sail up to the weather mark from a presumed start line if it is not set. They tune the boat underway. They shoot the breeze ( ie come up head to wind ) to sample the wind directions and they start to maybe time the gusts or see if they tack before the gust if they get a double lift effect.

Tide- worth a blog and does actually get a little advanced: On the marks and any navigational bouys or stalks, they look to see what the tide is doing: here you can get into more complex trigonometry but with less than 2knts tide you can go with the wind and stay a little up tide side of the course if it is across the course. For more tide, stay in the shallower water against it and follow the deeper channels against. Easier for current in a river of course.

Once round the WM they can practice a hoist, and then on the run they can keep on looking at the gusts and sail into a wind bend, checking the compass.

These pre race measurements are super easy (  all but tidal induced headers,  ) the analysis is also NOT HARD STUFF - it is simple arithmetic, geometry and sense for where the boat is pointing and which is best VMG.

Geometry for 11 Year Olds Next.....

Now after the line is set and the lee mark, then you can do two things: get the W-L bearing and the line bearing. Are they at 90' ? Then get the True Wind Angle on the line: This tells you the bias of the line versus the weather mark, but also tells you the mid area bias TWA versus course "diamond" .

The concept the the top heavy diamond is very simple: the two 45' lay lines into the weather mark form the crown with a simple 90' angle ( most boats even if they point 39' will achieve roughly 42.5 to 45' to the wind due to leeway) , while the tail is the deeper lines  on the run, showing you how far out you can go before you sail too far and also showing you which side of the diamond gets you there quicker if it is skewed to the centre line ie bearing W-L.

The Cone of Silence in Your Confused Head:

Then you can also overlay a 60' cone from the W mark all the way down the course to where the 45' beat lines from the leeward mark come from. This gives you a zone to tack up in so that you do not get caught out on the edges. 

The arithmetic and compass useage of doing this is worth noting down on paper if you have time or a larger boat with a chart table and second helm or navigator. Otherwise the rule of thumb for this upwind 60' cone is that the  mark is always to your front shoulder but probably behind the shrouds, depending on the boat you sails set up. You can then sail into the next wind shift and tack, or avoid wind shadow by tacking or just sail until you want to cover or follow other boats who have tacked all the time with the WM between shrouds and your front shoulder.

Some dinghy racers do this religously without any calculation, they just learn the feel for it even! They even sail right up to the mark in the cone just to get the last wind shifts and the last tactical line in to the "death slot" which become inevitable when many sailors have "gone right" on a port rounding course and sailed  a wider diamond coming in from a longer distance on the lay line. There is actually a big, basic advantage of sailing in the tight "end cone" because as you reach the top third of the course you sail with fewer boats on top or infront of you if the usual crowd have "gone right" . Of course if everyone is a clever clogs and goes up the narrower cone, then you sail in even more disturbed air and you are better going right for clean air and the chance of a favourable windshift and many boat places to be had by charging in on starboard.

Rules of Thumb for Laylines,,,,er sorry Rule of Shoulders.....

You are on the lay line on a top pointing keel boat when the mark is just behind your leading shoulder as sat on the windward normal helming position. For light or very heavy winds, then it should be behind your back shoulder, so when you turn your head it is there. The crew will probably see the mark from the beam outwards angle and call you for it.


Okay so ignoring any slight complexity with gust pattern or wind bends or a big wind shift, if the whole WM-LW angle is skewed vs the wind then what ever the small shifts do to you, spend more time sailing on the side of the course which is more upwind on the beat and shortest / quickest for your spinnaker type on the run.

"We got some lovely lifts over on the left"

The principle that you went left and got a series of lovely lifts and a nice wind bend from a head land but your handicap meant you were last boat at the mark sucks: you spent too long on the wrong side so all those small effects were meaningless: the small headers and lack of bend on say the RHS of the course when the wind is more right, means that they got to the mark by sailing shorter - full stop!

Know a little about Spinnaker VMG sailing for the Run

On the run, choice of side  is made more complex by what type of spinnaker and conditions you have, but relative to other boats it pays to sail in more following tidal / river current  and on the shorter side of the diamond.

 In an assy' spinnaker boat you may get better speed with a higher angle going right from the Windward mark ie the slightly headed side of a RHS biased WM-LM course,  but if you keep to the LHS ( the new starboard side as you round! 180' is quite simple) a little more by falling off in the gusts or gybing on any lifts then you will sail a shorter distance.

A Simple Truth...The Committee Boat Lied to You About the Second Beat

Here is another point about all this, and I should add a couple of diagrams later. The start line in principle should either  sit roughly bisected by the WL course (Windward Mark to Leeward Mark)  or supposedly on a perpendicular extension of a bisection, but the line may have it's own bias which is not actually the main bias of the course. ie it is not perpendicular to the WM-LM.

Dope, "the start was great, we went the right way, but the second full beat LM-WM we went all wrong". Sound familiar??

This effect then of a bias on the line for the start but another WM-LM bias, will either exacerbate a start on a RHS bias course by being a starboard end bias, in which case you can even start late on port and beat half the fleet by being bang on the committee boat end, or the reverse where the line to windward mark is actually annulerating the general course biase with a pin end. Then you are in effect in a motor boat, motoring directly up wind on any parallel line from the line towards the mark line perpendicular to the wind. However on the next beat there is a heck of a bias when leaving the LM!!!

Winter  For Us Northerners...so get out some paper  and a pencil

Get a pencil and some chart paper our ( little squarey type paper) and start plotting this out.

Underway you should master the gear changes: this is basics. Know your boat, your crew weight, your style and your nerve and do not be a sheep: strip that number one to a two ! take that reef out!

Strategy is not a tactic.....

Finally, before the obvious get-out-of-jail on grounds of deminished responsibilities outlined below, another big basic is stick to your chosen strategy and use the tactical tacking and gybing to muck around with other boats, winning places that is, and most of all to keep your air a little clearer than the guys around you. Sorry persons sailing in boats.

Hire a Managment Consultant if All This Is Over Your Head

I touch on a few things which are beyond basic-simple-stupid, but if you personally can sail a boat on the helm as fast as the next guy but cannot understand at least 85% of the simple arithmetic, geometry and tactics described above then you should get a dinghy buddy crew who can, or on a bigger boat both a tactician and a navigator who knows the wind, tide and course as above.