In the last blog I did some deconstruction of nice orderly OD starts. You know the ones where the fleet line up in a single nice row of boats and rag sails while gently jostling forward before they all decide to power on in a kind of local domino effect and go over the line. Well such is not life for your average Wednesday night or many an IRC or other HC system start ( PHRF; CYCA; PY; NOR; LYS you name it)
To get this one out the way first: disorderly OD starts are usually caused by inexperienced sailors with poor "line up" timing at 1 minute to go, and too much space on the line. A good example of this is the North Sails Dublin Bay Beneteau 31.7 weekend I highlighted in an earlier blog.
In Handicap you have a whole new ball game which often pans out: there is a large variety of boat speeds, acceleration maneuvering. Also in most average amateur starts, there are a good few boats who are either inexperienced cruiser would be racers, or hardened racers in old heavy HC boats who know they have to "point and shoot" from long back from the line and have pretty good timing for this too. Wind shadow is also a big factor as boats vary in sail area and mast height greatly.
Obviously at the top of IRC or ORC racing you get a pretty organised start, and in fact the boats will be seeded into classes which are close on speed. Even at the higher end of special IRC optimised one offs, the starts however can get messy as boats accelerate and decelerate differently, leading to an uneven prestart.
It just seems to be the nature of the beast - boats coming in under speed.
HC fleets can feel pretty chaotic on the start for various reasons pointed out, and a bit frightening. The main element of fear is that boats tend to be moving pretty randomly, with very few boats standing still or approaching cautiously. Often the bear away to start is more pronounced : this is because boats have accumulated near the start and cannot judge each others speed relative to the line, and have crept forward too far. Suddenly a leeward boat with space bears away to reach along the line and then all and sundry follow suite. The one minute flag is probably a very good thing in affirming people's count down clock time, all be that difficult to see. This situation occurs when a proportion of the fleet are early to the pre-line lane picking I blogged about in the last blog.
When the fleet is late, which can be caused by a lull in the wind, or adverse tide or just that the flock is bunched low, then the opposite happens sometimes and you get a pre-start line up at speed- as if the start line was 5 boat lengths back.
In HC , and disorderly OD starts, it is therefore important to judge if the pack of the fleet , the better boats at the correct biased end, are early, late or about on time.
Early Fleet Pack
If they are early and you spot this, then get to the RHS of them if possible or if you are down the line to get a pin end start, consider tacking up the line a bit to block their progress! Otherwise you may be rolled over completely despite all the shouting of "windward boat" you like. The stampede is underway, they are reaching down the line at high speed! If they do not stampede over your bow, then you also stand the risk of evenly matched boats having a far faster start than you at the expense of you holding back text book like on the biased end with 30 seconds to go, while they reach down near you and then harden up at speed.
Alternatively you may be able to get up to the right hand end and face fewer boats to tussle with in getting over the line and then tacking up to clear air on the RHS of the course when there are port roundings in place or right will pay.
You can let the pack fall off if you are near the top of them and then rag up towards the IDM , pinning out boats and forcing many to go behind you. You may not be very popular being the only boat ragging and luffing. It also depends on you having better than fleet average acceleration: Take a laser 28 versus the various IRC cruisers it may race against- fully possible to stick your nose up to above close hauled and hold out the late comers, while then bearing off and sheeting on to full speed in under 25 seconds. Also on this point, you can often just pause a little, hold up some people and then follow suite to the fleet, having the best RHS start of the pack, pinning them while you are on starboard and having some degree of choice to tack right onto port.
You also have the opportunity to get a right on the IDM start and tack off port immediately which I will return to.
The pack may choose to do the opposite: they may hunch up together at the IDM committee boat end and this is when the worst messes and collisions between rails and rigs happen in HC racing.
In the case that you can see that there are early boats holding position which will then corral the pack into a crammed, early position then you have to be weary and know your boat and teams strengths and weaknesses in the approach to the start. Otherwise, an early bunched up pack can be worth reaching round the back of, and coming out at the first gap to the left side of them at speed.
Late Fleet Pack
When the fleet are late and you are up at the RHS nearing the IDM, then you risk being a puck in an ice hockey match or being charged passed if you are a slower/ smaller boat in that fleet. However you can see if there is any space to be had more along the line, and reach down into it, rather than having a whole pile of boats coming in towards the IDM at full speed on the line.
A late fleet will generally come charging over the start line and each will have a lane, but some will inevitably try to luff others or some very high pointing boats will grind on and luff up into lower tracking boats. A late fleet who are lined up for the IDM can be almost as messy as an early fleet who are cramming up to the IDM.
Fleet On Time
An alternative I hint on above for an on time start when you are a small, fast accelerating boat in an HC fleet, or have one big boat competing who is always on the money at the IDM end is to follow them out. This can also apply when you are late in any race and there are no threats to you if you point on the stern of the guy with the start lane right at the IDM.
Here you sail on their line maybe just a little to windward of their half way line as near to their transom as you dare. Due to the boat ahead being so much larger, they will sail away quickly from you, possibly tacking off ahead of you. You come out in with no other boats to windward of you as you were dead on the IDM and you can then choose to tack off.
This tactic has been presented in several different texts and in aYachts and Yachting article about HC racing.
In a series weekend in the West Coast of Norway, we did just this in a successfully sailed Beneteau Platu 25. We were in a very wide handicap range due to a fairly low entry that year, and found ourselves amongst various boats including the then boat to have, the IMX 40, this one being " Lillefix". We followed this boat out a few times, a crack top racing amateur racing team with about 12 or more on board. The odds were pretty much against us beating the "long legs" of the IMX, but we managed to win one race based on this and some very good downwind speed and had a good overall result of third in class where otherwise we may have been buried in bad air the whole way up the first beat of each race.
This tactic is very counter intuitive but the bigger or faster boat will get away from you way quicker than a slightly bigger boat who starts to the right of you and sits on your wind while you plod out and can only tack away into many more boat legnths of disturbed air. I recommend doing this as a new beginner in any fleet, and indeed just specating from the right hand extension of the line, watching the fleet ( on port roundings) and tacking up out of their way up the lay line to see how the fleet gets on, tacking away higher if you start to run into folk. It may be best to motor in order not to give any false impression, or keep yourself behind all the fleet as you go up to the lay line!
Given any relevant line bias, it can be worth starting late at the favoured end no matter what if you do not get your nose in there or you are a smaller boat. Beware that other people will be there by design or by mistake of being late but wanting to use the bias. Once again, you may want to find the fastest boat in the top 5 near the IDM say or at the pin end and sail right on their transom. If that end is biased then you will either be able to tack if it is RHS quite soon or you will be able to sit on the line if it is LHS and let faster boats roll you because you will still be beating much of the rest of the fleet by going the right side in an HC race.
Appraisal Again on Experience
I struggle to think of any HC starts I have been in where there was a nice even line up with no one powering on at 30-45 seconds to go. They always seem to be like a pile of differently charged magnets being drawn up inexorably to the line. The boats tend to fan out a bit in a bizarre pattern near the lanes to get off the line on the far RHS. Often it has paid to just stick our nose in there, rolling over any slow cruisers and expecting boats ahead to either reach off, or start just a little further down. Boats early at the IDM can be ducked and a space found with good speed on. This was a steady tactic on the j109 I sailed on. The helm sailed dinghies and 2mR on the side so he had some knack and cheek to put his nose in, and we were never OCS.
The alternative approach that i have experienced is when good OD or dinghy sailors get hold of a light, rapid accelerating HC boat. The laser 28 I sailed on was a good example: they bucked the trend in the HC fleet by luffing, sitting in position at 1 minute and all that, coming just to a point of near collision shouting their heads off at any boats chundering down towards them from the windward side. Despite being rolled on a number of occaisions, they also caused enough chaos and heart attacks in the HC charging brigade that the fleet they sailed in learned to respect start lines more!
When I tried a couple of seasons as helm in small classic wooden meter boats, I was perpetually frustrated by the boats tediously slow acceleration and low pointing - you could do nowhere near the starts I was used to- you had to keep the bow down and keep the boat moving. The whole fleet knew the game and just took a lane with maybe 10 to 15 boat lengths to sail, and if they were early, why they all just bore off in a gentlemanly way. I got pretty fed up with sailing in slow-motion with this type of gentleman's agreement infront of ISAF rules!
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