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.
Strategy is the plan, tactics are reactions out there on the water.
A Race Strategy would then include "going left" for wind bend. It would include a knowledge of the tide and while out on the practice, a feel for the gust and shift pattern to assess whether the shifts are worth tacking on for example.
Boat strategy begins longer back- the pursuit of boat speed and crew choreography: but as I get bored with people who write endlessly about preparation, let's talk "on the water", or in the series at least.
On a classic situation... With your tactical hat on: you are close hauled on port towards the path of a stb boat, and you have a cracking chance to lee bow the guy: but with your strategy hat on, you want to go RHS of the course : a wise competitor would just tack away from your lee bow and they get an advantage of going on your strategy while you make two tacks unnecessarily when you go back right. A lee bow is a transient, tactical high, maybe you take one place: a good strategy wins you many boat places in results.
Race strategy is built upon several perspectives:
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.
Personally I think setting quantitative goals is a bit counter productive until you really are serious and very competent in a fleet. It is far better IMHO to build a strategy for the race or series with some qualitative goals or improvements, and focus on building the team and fixing up the boat, rather than coming with expectations on the results list. Then you can enjoy improved results and have a picture of how good your strategic thinking is, and how many places you actually loose to tactics and boat speed.
Let Us Start at the Top of the List I Choose as a Useful Methodology:
1) Know Your Boat and Your Team
This is something you can consider yourself if you are really honest and objective, otherwise you may need a "transom consultant" to come on board and shake you down a bit.
Your limitations are obviously in the picture: how high you point in the fleet, boat speed, maneuvres, heavy weather sailing, light weather finesse ... however you should also think of the next space the boat and team are maybe able to move into: with a bit of practice pre race or the weekend before maybe you can pull a rabbit out the hat and do for example, conduct a leeward rounding better, perhaps adjust and take the kite down earlier than usual at 6 to 10 boat legnths, concentrating there after on a good white sails rounding and hardening up to close hauled.
Being honest with yourself on where the limits or the unknown factors are means that maybe you take caution over dutch courage and right-size the ambition for the race (and its' sub elements like start, beat, roundings) in respect to your previous experience with the boat and what has or has not worked well. Maybe you need to learn to walk again before running ?
On the other hand you do always need to push yourself and your team, and take a degree of risk : the largest single improvement by risk taking is on the start line. Other than that you can break down the components of a race and focus on your weaknesses longer term, using training and experiment: but thinking strategically about races then is also about pushing yourself to learn, analyse and commit.
For example then of a race strategy based upon an appraisal of boat and team: there is a F6-7 forecast and you have never raced with the team in more than F5. In addition you know you have a couple of nervous crew. So you decide to go out pretty undercanvassed ie not smothered in the gusts, just a little over powered. No 3 and two reefs if it is going to be f7 in the gusts then say.
This then allows you to go for an agressive, fast start because you can most likely point and shoot at the line from long back, with good visibility under a no 3 and the crew all settled on the rail. Further, you choose no spinnaker- in that weight of wind, often a very blustery condition- you will likely pass several yachts who broach, and you can focus on boat trim and course rather than fighting the spinnaker and death roll!
2) Know Your Enemy
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.
You should be prepared to always protest aggressive boats as part of your strategy, and have other sailors in the class / club be in agreement to witness this: strong headed boats hate DSQ and need to feel the whip. So those boats who break rule 10 and 16 / 17 on the beat, you have to learn to protest and be prepared to go to the wee room.
Boats which are gentlemanly need only have a nod from the helm to assure you of a clear leeward mark rounding when they have no water: chancers need to be shouted at at 3 boat legnths and the door has to be shut on them with one hand on the protest flag. You should be prepared by identifying the possible witnesses to a breach of the rules around you.
In terms of boat handling, many boats in OD hold their number ones in far too much wind and then avoid tacking up the beat as they struggle in survival hiking mode: if you know your nearest rivals tend to do this, then have your number two up in a no 1 bag on deck and don't give the game away until they are committed to over canvass. Then you can tack on the shifts or point higher on the start line and gain a strategic advantage by knowing their usual behaviour.
Another strategy totally oriented around the competition completly- can be in say a club series to "match race" your closest opponent, or the boat you aspire to one day beat! Follow them or put a tight cover on them and learn from what they are doing right.
3) Weather it be good or Weather it be bad
Metereology is something I spend dark winter nights reading about, infront of a roaring radiator.
To summarise an immense subject into its strategic relevance to racing:
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. 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. For instance if there is less cloud in a "cold" sector during the summer in isobar gradient breeze, then the sun's effect may be far stronger pumping up the wind and making it go right most often. Or perhaps the barometric pressure drops harder and the isobars are therefore predicted wrongly forecast: what tells you there is a bag of wind ahead?
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. Sailors are already training in Brasil at the venue chosen for the 2016 olympics for example. Keeping a log and finding on-line data from a local weather station or having your own installed at the club can be used retrospectively to see how local weather patterns relate to a regional or national forecast: what happens to your race area? Does as with many northern zones, the wind in gradient breeze outside frontal areas, tend to die with the sun going low after 7:45pm ?
4) Tide and Local Tidal Know How
The tide is a key element in many coastal venues of course and I could lump it in with weather, but I like the idea of having one guy on the rail responsible for tide and current, them maybe not any other tactics or strategy to think about. Just a few key bits of information, a knowledge of the 123-321 flow and ebb, a knowledghe of the geography, a pair of eyes on every pilar and bouy, a glance at COG and SOG on the plotter....you see why I think it merits a person dedicated to this ?
I guess a huge proportion of racing round the globe is affected by tide and ocean currents, while also a proportion in that is Estuary sailing and by that nature also affected by rain and melt waters.
Tide is also affected by wind: In the Færder Distance Race out of Oslo one year, the tide should have been going out. But the wind had been blowing for days on end up the fjord and effectively damming the water up as the wind rose during the race. So there were some odd effects as the the water did manage to empty and eddy in some areas, making the tidal diagram completely useless.
Given you just take the principles of avoding the worst of the tide you have to stem, getting into the best tide with you and also understanding that tide is stronger over a shallow when all the water must over that, then you have enough to contribute to a few boat places on the beat by getting to the right places infront of those who have not been so observant with the tide tables and the charts.
There is some dog-gawn simplicity in tide and strategic elements of a race plan for addressing it: I sailed with a guy on a Hunter 707 who called winches "pooleys" and had no real finesse with boat handeling at all: but he knew the boat was shallow draft and could go out of the worst of the tide in the estuary we sailed in. Simple- he knew there was enough depth and he knew that sailing a little longer paid off due to the big 4 -5 knot tide and current out in mid channel
However tide does create complicated apparent wind effects too, and if you have to sail on a course with a lot of tide or eventually to a bouy out in the max tide then your tide man suddenly has to become a bit of a mathematician: a good start into this area is presented by Rodney Pattison in his book " Tactics, racing to win" where he actually talks about tidal strategy in Poole bay as a classic example of the apparent wind effects.
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. Also given a maximum tide, a tack over to one side of the course for a predictable wind bend as part of the race strategy can result in a big loss : remember in OD we are talking boat legnths and even a 10% poorer VMG can put you not only down 10% of the places but force you into a pack of stb boats on port for example.
5) Make Your Own Mind Up About What You will Bet On!
Particularly in a series of many races at the same venue, you need to set a stake in the ground as to what strategy you will take.
Any road will lead you there, if you don't know where you want to go......
There is a bit of management philosophy here: not having a strategy makes you always on the back foot in decision making: you have no foundation to base directions on and you may go off in many, everything is tactical. For Pond sailing with no tide and no wind bends, then you can just as well sail on the water without strategy. But none the less you want to analyse your sailing and aim to get better results, so some strategic thinking on preparation and learning goals come into play.
Take Apple Inc.- they have had a long term strategy of being best with graphics and user interface for personal computing, and were actually in tablets way back when with the Newton product. For a while PCs with Win 95 onwards had the lion's share of the market by spend on such items, and Apple became a bit of niche player in graphics, music and education again. However they moved into a stronger style, personal entertainment and branding element of the strategy. They were then in a good place to launch the premium priced iPhone and then the iPad phenomenon to really take back the personal computing spend from Windows based devices. They stuck to a core strategy of quality and added elements and new products to win eventually.
Setting a stake in the ground based on 1-4 will consolidate your thinking and focus the moral of the crew. A strategy is an objective decision making framework, so it helps as I say, separate out the macro factors from the boat speed and handeling problems: there fore the crew can be less critical on one side, and less complaceant on the other because there is a plan to work to overall, and improvements to be made in "house work". It gets a lot less personal helm vs crew.
You may or may not want to involve your crew in the whole strategy or indeed building it up, but you should keep them aware what you are going to do and breifly why in each element of the race. This involves them anyway and makes the scenario objective and not so personal "them and us"- the rail and the back of the boat which is a sickness I have seen develop in several otherwise well sailed boats.
Having the wrong strategy is actually a good thing! You set off with one set of information and one set of intentions and these prove to be wrong. If you can analyse correctly what went wrong, then you have the basis for a revised strategy for the conditions you actually encountered.
Perhaps in the last race, series or season you tried a poor strategy, or maybe just fell into a habit of doing something a little aimlessly, reactively, which did not work : you got conistently bad results. You can feed this into your decision making model, my five points above. And then you see it becomes cyclical with new elements also being considered as part of the overall strategy based on positive or negative experiences.
A strategy can be very simple for a given race course - a single element strategy based on tide or a wind bend for example. Given preparation in boat, technique, crew, personal psyche and learning you will have new elements of the strategy to be tested on the water. You then have a bit of strategy around knowing your competitors behaviour or choosing a type of solution to a tactical situation: " play safe", " always dip" " brake and keep a boat length separation at marks". An approach to tactics is going to be in one or more elements of the strategy.
I think it was against Australia - or maybe Scotland since I remember the discussion- but when Will Carling was captain of the English Rugby Team in the 1990s he relates that he decided to take the kick off going unconventionally left, to which Martin Johnson replied "we're England, we go right!!" ...twice in fact. Will had a strategy of upsetting the opposition by being unpredictable and to some extent disrupting play and the set pieces the Ausies or Scots had trained for, like the first reception of the ball and the maul or ruck and resulting scrum. He had a strategy based on knowledge of the competition, the rules and the psychology of international rugby union to prove out.
Strategy is based very much on the balance between on the one side your own level of skills as a team, your boat speed relative to the fleet and the information you have on the course versus challenging yourselves and making some presumptions and placing a stake in the ground as to how and where you are going to sail on the course, and how you expect the competition to behave and indeed react to you. So you have a knowledge bank and based on this, you make risk taking actions, as in any business.
Using this type of approach to build a strategy helps most of all to seperate out the problems you encounter tactically and with boat speed from the strategy you have adopted for the Race or Series. Identifying strategic factors in 1 to 5 and then planning elements of your strategy also help you check on the water if each element is working. As I say a well thought out course strategy also gives you somewhere or something to bet on if you persistently come off the start line mid fleet or buried by bigger handicap boats. It can overcome poor boat speed or a bit of nerves starting or at roundings.
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. That is a good strategy given there is no real bias or a tide eddy right out on the edge could leave you exposed to wind shadow or a big shift. I pulled out the only respectable top of mid fleet result in a classic OD fleet nationals, by tacking with the bouy on the front shoulder, going only about a third of the way across the race area in the first two tacks and tacking on 5 degree wind shifts or up towards blocks of breeze we saw coming down. The fleet had chosen right or left to the layline in maybe only three tacks the whole beat, where as I did about 8 tacks over 3/4 of a naut.mile after a mid line start following the "leftists" out and then tacking in over again. This was ten places better than our usual for the series! I just ignored the crews anguish about the extremists on each wing.
Manage Your Expectations from Strategy
In a tight local OD fleet a strategic result may be only two or three places on average over a season or in the series results spring and autumn. In an IRC fleet you may have a lot to gain as smallest boat, by sailing your own wind and tacking often- as a strategy. Given a little local knowledge at a nationals venue, you may know of a combination of wind bend and back eddy which could launch you up the results if you can get over to it.
Never build a huge expectation and be critical about your strategy under way - this is easier in OD because you know your boat speed and your other weaknesses so the strategic choices in the elements can be analysed in real time on the water relative to your previous performance or the fleet.
Depending on your crew you may prefer not to share much about strategy and keep it with "top management". Alternatively if you sail with the guys I do, then strategy has to be more democratic which can lead to no real strategy at all it has to be said! A good strategy is based upon self knowledge but as a helm on a boat with very experienced regatta sailors on the rail, then that is a sum of the whole.
You need information and feedback into strategy most of all, and delegating some strategic consideration and decision making on for example I say tide, or boat speed for instance can involve and motivate the crew. Making choices in a vacuum and employing "management consultants" on the transom before you ask your crew what is going wrong, is a recipe for mutiny and desertion. Just involving the crew in feedback can be enough for them to accept that you need outside advice on board, or a shuffeling of positions for example.
Risk Taking
The element of personal choice is the real element of risk taking: what level of risk are you prepared to take?
My own bug bear is starting which is worth a good few paragraphs as starting will undoubtedly be part of your strategy : In OD Class racing, starting is usually a very decisive part , and you should make a committment to actions based on strategy which will help calm nerves and focus the crew.
I am not great at starts: I am more confident now than I used to be, on getting a lane and pushing my nose in, but I still dread being OCS. As if the gun is going to shoot me in the head! I have a poor risk orientation - the actual risk is much lower than I perceive.
The gain on being on-time or nearest the line on the gun is so large in sailing that it is worth being OCS in races just to get the feel for timing and how boatss around you behave. I also used to sail with a Sigma 33 and occaisionally a Sigma 38 who were terrified of damaging their boats. However, in their fleets there were very, very few collisions on the start line or at marks and they were typified by gentlemanly conduct. Also the helmsmen just did not understand how close you need to be to the line to get over on time. They were five boat legnths DDW often with 30 seconds to go- that means at least 8-10 boat legnths to reach the line. They maybe should have practiced with a freindly boat or take fenders out as a strategic learning mechanism!
I don't know how many writers talk about "the best start" and "the mid line sag". Although these two feature in many OD races they are maybe not even near the average behaviour - the bunch on the Committee boat end can often make life so hard for each other that no one gets the perfect biased end start. Other boats down the line hit the first shift first or a purely able to tack over the "wolf pack" on port up the course. Given a good transit or a good bow man, line sag is often only a feature when there you are stemming the tide or there is a big lull at 30 seconds.
Given you like me are poor at starts, or the smallest boat in a handicap fleet, it can be a good idea to learn who is big and fast and usually starts up at the committee boat, or bang on the pin end in a big bias there. Sit out a race or on the committee boat (volunteer!) and see how that boat behaves - do they really have such good timing or are they bullying their way in? When do they choose a lane to go on? 1 minute, 30 seconds? Where are they and what are other boats doing at 20 , 15 and 10 seconds? How are they on the gun?
Another thing to do is to come out fast right behind the boat on the far right and either let them sail away from you if they are bigger or tack away once you lose speed in their wind wake. You then have no boats around you- make sure you tack on top of any port boats at this stage! You can then tack back on to starboard given an even course and see how the race is proceeding and how you have done relatively to the fleet. Be warned though, if there is a big RHS strategic advantage you will quite likely not be the only one to choose to start late!
Out On A Flyer Risks....
Going out to one extreme side of the course or into a potentially difficult headland or bay has big risks that need to be assessed in light of the days actual conditions. As I mention above, come out early on the sailing area and try to second guess the actual course that will be laid. Double check the racing instructions for that day correspond to the strategic elemetns of tide and wind over the course which you have identified as important. Maybe the course will be set too short to allow for a big RHS flyer due to light winds?
One element of strategy can be to reel in the excesses of "banging the corners". If for example it really pays to get over right asap and the boat-end bunch are going mid course, then you may be onto a flyer on the RHS. But if the main body or first pack of the fleet persist mid field and even tack back a little then you need to tack over to "put on a light cover" . Ie you have to cash some of your chips in early. If you have not yet come into the strategic effect, but it is clear it is there, then take the risk. and make sure you understand where you have to hit the bend, or how far into a header you need to sail to get a good lift out. Being half hearted and just covering the fleet will mean that you do not know if your strategic element was correct. Perhaps there were other options or an unfortunate wind shift mid course away from your position. On the other hand sailing too far into a header or too early into a wind bend can mean that you drop places or end up overstanding way out on a long lay line with the risk that there is a big shift between you and the windward mark.
"Tending Right" may be the best solution, tacking or carrying on the first wind shift and understanding the gust benefits to be had while keeping yourself between your strategic element and the fleet. If you are back on stb heading left in my "text book example", you can then go over right when you see boats in front or behind going right or when you are completely on the money for heading over there: hence you have hidden your hand a bit for boats which are even with you in mid course area.
Risks Against Perpetual Offenders : some racing sailors just grow horns and if they see a chance to cross a boat they know don't bother to protest or are less experienced in the rules, they mess with them, breaking the rules to gain advantage. Other boats are just club fisted bargers at starts and marks. Both types need kid gloves but also a wee red flag and a winter briefing on the rules.
One of the biggest risks you can take out on the course is " closing the door" at the leeward mark. This means you have rights to round, and you can go in wide to reach and harden up nicely at speed but there is a boat bearing down on your inside without rights. The only answer here is to call the boat repeatedly even before three boat legnths and achieve eye contact, and call " go wide of us on our outside". Alternatively in light airs, just go wide and close the door and then call no water and be ready to fend off and protest on both 18 and 14.
Risk Attitude to Tactics as a Strategy
You can decide to take more risk in tactical boat meets boat situations as a strategy for a race, series or season, with this meaning that you place yourself nearer to potential collisions than before. Like I say above in many incidents this means shouting but carrying on until rule 14 applies and you must be able to judge a call on a near miss and then protest. This could mean sailing a while in dinghies or small keel boats to hone up your skills and feeling for the situation.
There are other high risk situations: the winward mark, tacking on the "death slot" ahead of boats is risky because it takes perfect timing and enough of it! Also consider a favourite of the sigma 33 champion boat "Phoenix" who used the rules to the word, but created high risk and not just a little unpopular : they chose to gybe down wind like a bloody assymetric in light airs and take a go -left often with a gybe set in more wind. The killer tactic was actually to come into the leeward mark on starboard. Here you have both starboard rights before you gybe and overlap on the whole fleet by nature of the angles of the transoms. You are allowed to gybe as part of mark rounding so it is a killer little tactic given that you are not throwing away places by using more water and time to get into that position! HOWEVER, not everyone knows the how rule 10 and 18 interplay here and many people do not understand the overlap geometry. Also a few people will not see you, being covered in spinnakers and so on. So you really risk collision, you must have room infront of you before you finally bear away, and you must be good at your gybe and harden up to keep within rule 18 and not make an idiot of yourself.
Risk and Sailing a Series
Rodney Pattison and Lawrie Smith amongst others have written about the attitude to risk over a whole series, like a nationals or the olympics and their chapters are applicable just as much the two seasonal wednedsday night series and worth the read. Also strategy for a series a nice place to round off dear reader, because it it is a kind of meta strategy on top of concrete boat and team elements and the daily weather and tide strategy.
To build a series-strategy for improving your results over earlier performances, you really need to know about the strengths and weaknesses that are your own personal, the boat's and the team's and know how the competition behave. Then you have a premise for your attitude to risk taking as a strategy which informs your starts in particular, and mark roundings: This is then coloured by tide and wind elements in your strategy.
If you are fresh to the class or club, then you maybe need to ask someone who the best sailors are and note their sail numbers: Also who the worst are (seriously!) and who the most arrogant rule breaking idiots are. The latter to avoid or take a hand on the red flag once in a while, the former to exploit on starts and roll overs etc. Remember one protest throwing someone out on a clear rule break or making them do turns can push you up enough to be on stage at prize giving!
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. You have good boat speed then as a pre-requisite, and you can get off the start line, maybe exploiting a weak starter ( see Platu 25 world champions on youtube choosing a mid line start and reaching into a hole from behind a weak boat who is luffing too hard and created a gap- they knew fine well the game here!!) and then you can go the way you want or tack on the first shift to solidify your good start. You then go right a little early up towards the layline (port rounding) with maybe only one tack left and sail in over toward the mark judging your competition and forcing boats back you before your final double tack when you have space above you and the game is clear for the layline. Conservative. You may win a whole event with a series of 5th places!
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.
You may know as at Lake Garda, that you have to go right to get to the wind, but do you want to point your bow in the stramash at the boat end? Or try to Port tack the fleet from some start out LHS and a good lay line?
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. Then at least you have made a strategy to learn from others that year and mix it in the group following them. You have to be really confident with the rules in mixing in with the "wolf pack" near the start and on the first tack- and always remember rule 14 avoid collision- is what will be held against you and aggressive port tackers just after the start need to be called early, avoided and protested.
In a series personal preference no 5, may be a lesser element, because these other elements are much more prominent. So you may prefer a really ballsy start at club level, but with know you lack the finesse of boat handling at the right end of a line to tackle taking speed on against top level competition.
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. Then you can choose to adapt your series meta strategy if you feel it is a poor bet, or fit the conditions into your Race strategy if they are to reoccur through the week for instance.
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.
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