Race Strategy - Summary of Previous Blogg

In sailing, when we talk racing on- the-day, strategy is always the plan in respect of conditions, abilities and ambitions. Tactics on the other hand, are the on the water reactions to opportunities, threats and wind oscillations.

Strategy informs tactics on the water- while actually what happens in tactical situations does also affect future strategy.

Here I concentrate on Race Strategy which does not include very much about prepartion of boat off the water.

Race strategy is built upon several perspectives:

Here is my Own Take on How To Build Strategy , 

a kind of Tool Box or Work Flow: 

1) Knowledge of the boat's and team's capabilities
2) Knowledge of the competition
3) Forecast of weather and your own observations
4) Tidal almanac and local knowledge tide over courses
5) Personal preference: making a stake as to what you will do.

This is actually in a sensible ranking for building strategy and is a cyclical tool:
Once you check off 1-4 you come to 5, what you would prefer to do or summise you will do based on 1-4, then you have to go to right back to 1 maybe to re consider what you CAN do with the team again. Also you could use it to adapt or radically change elements of your strategy on the water.

As part and parcel of this tool, there will be  the following components of the race to concentrate working strategy around:

Race Components

1) Pre Start Information Gathering- confirm or adjust your strategy
2) 1 minute from Start
3) Line up for Start Postion
4) Start
5) First tack - when ?
5) First Beat- shift decisions, direction
6) Layline to first mark
7) Way to go off wind
8) style and aggression down wind
9) Positioning for leeward mark
10) Drop and readying for leeward mark
11) 3 boat legnths
12) Rounding
13) Harden up , lane out onto 2nd beat or tack away?
14) 2nd Beat and run- strategy working ? Go the same way? Bias on course versus start to first mark last time.
15) Finish line - how is this in your strategic plan?



Your Other Main Tool Box on the Water Will Be the Classic RYA Teaching Memo Tool: 

1) Course to sail - objective: next mark, destination etc
2) Heading - where the boat is pointing
3) Sail Trim - sheeting and other settings
4) Boat Balance - lateral trim
5) Boat Trim - longditunal

Using the RYA 5 point tool constantly will help you achieve better boat speed and therefore you can go with your strategic decisions more easily or with greater success.

Forming Strategy 

Quantitative goals can be a bit counter productive until you really are serious and very competent in a fleet, because you can be disappointed and they can be misleading given poor boat speed or an unpredicted wind shift.

 A race- or series- strategy with qaulitative goals or just clear objectives in each component of the race.

Let Us Start at the Top of the List  I Choose as a Useful Methodology: 

1) Know Your Boat and Your Team

Know the stregnths and weaknesses of the human-boat system as a whole: yours personally, the crews and the physical aspects of the boat.
Be realistic and air on the side of caution rather than bravado in what you choose to do when you build a strategy (point 5- your comittment)
However, in building a race strategy you should include a deal of pushing your team, your boat and yourself.

2) Know Your Enemy

Learn how the competition behave, favourite starts, tactics and attitude to rule "bending" and being protested.
Experience informs strategy. Knowing what your enemy will do is important.... from how they behave on the start line and at mark roundings to what they do up the beat in their strategy.
Be prepared to protest and call on witnesses as part of your race strategy, and committment for the whole season!

3) Weather it be good or Weather it be bad

a) learn the key signs of weather - constant and the tell tale signs of new weather on the way, like sea breeze or a front. There are Macro weather signs, like fronts, isobaric- or sea- breeze; Micro Weather, like gust pattern and wind bands and then local modifications like wind bends,  or thunderstorms.

b) Learn how to understand all types of forecast available: from General Synopsis, to the "shipping forecast / Coastal Waters" on the radio to isobaric weather charts and probability projections.

c) Remember the sequence of the forecast and relate this to the weather signs you see and feel yourself. Usually the sequence of weather is right but the timing is often wrong.

c) Modifications to the forecast-sequence: Also there are some unpredictable elements in weather: actual cloud cover, actual isobaric changes.

d) keeping your eyes, ears and nose open to the sequence and any unpredicted weather signs. Also learn in advance about the venue and local weather effects or how weather passes over - where wind bends are created, where sea breeze developes.

4) Tide and Local Tidal Know How

Why is tide worth such a blurb and a single crew or navigator focused on it?   Well for most of us we are sailing a beat at well under 10 knts boat speed, so we get a 20% VMG disadvantage at least by sailing more of the time in the main tide stream
Either have good knowledge about the tide yourself, or better yet, allocate tidal information to someone on the rail: even if all they can cope with is high, low, slack times.
Remember the tide in an estuary can in particular be affected by wind which has blown a long time in one direction, or has been very strong.
For those who are more advanced : learn about how tide creates a tide wind, ie a relative wind effect .

5) Make Your Own Mind Up About What You will Bet On!

After you have information from 1-4, committ yourself to a race strategy which has sub elements which are all informed by your feedback in 1-4.
Not having done this type of analysis means you are on the back foot, always reactive and that means you can throw away a perfect start by not considering other elements over the course which favour some decisions and colour some tactics.
Any road will lead you there, if you don't know where you want to go......

Review your attitude to risk and most often, raise the bar here! : are you overly cautious due to worries of collisions or OCS? Are you not confident with the rules on the water? Right size your committments to strategy with your appraisal of what higher level of risk you are prepared to take. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
Given a choice of strategy is in line with your information gathering and what you can deduct from current knowledge, make that committment!

It is better to have a planned out strategy go wrong than have no strategy at all, because the elements you get wrong are now separated out from on course tactics and boat speed per se. You can learn from your mistakes if you have some idea of what you meant to do !
Having a strategy for the race (or series) helps you focus and make decisions in light of your plan. It overcomes hesitation. Also communicating key strategic elements or key decisions to the crew, with some reasoning given, will involve and motivate the team.

Sub Elements of Your Personal Choice

Preparation is obviously a big part of your own personal choice , but as I am focusing on Race Course Strategy let us begin at the beginning:

1) You choose to go out darn early and check that your strategic information is correct on the day!

2) Then you choose an area of the line to start on

3) as you line up, you judge if the fleet are early or late and which competitors are around you that you may have issues with based on past behaviour and bullying! You can then make a tactical decision to which lane you take for the start line, IN LIGHT of your strategy for the first beat.

4) You either get a good start or you get out of a bad one, in light of your strategy again.

5) You choose your side on a biased course due to tide, wind etc. Or you choose to bet on "tacking up the cone" on the windshifts, that is a 60' cone until you are within two tacks of the windward mark.

Risk and Strategy for Sailing a Series

For a series, appraise again your own teams stregnths and weaknesses.

A series should always be seen as both a big test of your sailing when you have to "step up" and also it should be a big lecture theatre for you to learn from, and take tutorials with the team afterwards at debreifs and talk to sailors you were close to in the race.

Gather information not only on the venue and course, but on competitor race behaviour and who the best boats are.

To summarise what the medal winning pundits say, and what results in many fleets show, generally speaking you should take less risk in a Series and try to sail consistently rather than taking big risks on the start in particular. Conservative. You may win a whole event with a series of 5th places!
You may need to tame down your local level of aggressiveness and risk taking, especially on starts and avoid "banging the corners".

 A contrasting alternative to this could be taking risks in the conditions you are most comforable with.

 Another alternative would be to take risks early on in a series when you can risk your discards away. Kind of playing your joker first, but remember you cannot strike a DSQ.

As good a strategy as any for a competent new comer is to follow the best boats: get near them on the start and keep an eagle eye on them.

So see there is a cyclical way of building and using race strategy, but there is a big element of personal will and you have to be honest with yourself and take that element one step at a time, without big expectations: be pleasantly surprised instead! Over a series you may have to dampen your own will to the flock and be more cautious.