To begin at the beginning, starts are the sprint in sailing and in one design in particular they will decide the top ten places at a nationals. Sometimes in a smaller fleet you can recover from a bad start, but a good start will always amplify your own boat speed or sharpen your attention to really keeping the gas on relative to other boats nose to nose with you. Essentially you need to be within 2 meters of the start line as the flag drops and the gun sounds, and you need to be at maximum possible boat speed at that point or as soon as you can after that point.
There is of course a big difference between a start at a nationals or within a well established local OD fleet and a wednesday night start with mixed abilities or on dare-I-say-it, HC racing. At a nationals keel boats tend to behave far more like dinghies, lining up with a space and ragging sails until the whole fleet starts to move or the boats around think it is time to power-on.
Let me think back and through this type of start then, given no line bias ...
Starting in an Orderly OD Fleet.
I am going to summarise having written the blurb below which may be of interest to OD cruiser-racer veterans and sports boats sailors alike:
The most important thing is to book a lane out of the start and defend this exit. Various writers talk about having space to leeward, but that often invites an attack given that the space is obvious. There are ways to hide the space though, either bearing the boat off into it or sitting low of the boat to windward, bow on their transom.
Second to this is of course to know the time you have and judge what the fleet are doing, but as important is to know where the wind is as before you commit to a lane. In a variable wind you will need a bigger lane or a lane which is at the right end of the line to take the shift. One tip is I often tie tell tales round the shrouds such that I can see I am on beat and not high of it as I come in, without having to gaze up to the birgee/windex but while looking at the windward boat.
Otherwise you can most often rely on the lane you pick opening up to be a tight reach to beat as the fleet gets moving, and you can choose to just plough forward, bow to bow with the boat "above" you as they start to move.
As I would like to say to one or two scared-y cat helms I sailed with before, remember that boats do obey rules and being up there with a lane booked at under 1.30 is actually a nice safe place to be- away from stray reachers and last minute port tackers.
"When Starts Go Bad" should be another blog of mine, but in an orderly OD fleet or a close matched HC fleet, there will be a lane booking time and boats will behave themselves.
What is important with this lane though is not to be up in a whole row of reaching boats: here the lane is low and fast and you risk being luffed or being over early. This more often happens in HC fleets where there is less obvious boat speed comparison to start time. Boats tend in fact to close reach in expecting that early boats will fall off making space.
The distance back from the line that lane-booking happens will vary but usually in a larger fleet at an NM it will be an establish rack of boats at 1 minute latest. So at 2 minutes you must have decided which end you start on, or just start looking for a lane and getting off port tack if you have come in from the LHS. At 1 30 you have to think about comitting to your lane, and start defending the space around it, often by coming up behind the boat you intend to take to leeward of: coming up to windward side is good because it forces him up to defend and makes more space, or indeed opens THE space for your lane as you then duck their stern and establish your lane.
A higher risk strategy is to hold back on the transom of the windward boat, just overlapping- this gives you a boat legnth to accelerate into given the lane is correct on the wind ie a beat or lower, not near head to wind at 45 seconds to go.
I remember being on the start line for the 1996 Sigma 33 national as bowman. On the one hand it was business as usual, but a bit cramped where we were while on the other hand, as soon as we came up on the line my jaw dropped at the sheer spectacle of 74 of the thirty three footers all powering on.
The first thing then is to not be awe struck by the number of boats. You will only actually be aware of half a dozen or so around you once you have put your nose " in the trough" as I have heard it said. That is, you come up on starboard with your bow pointing to the top of the lane you will now go over on.
At the Sig' nationals in 1996, we were very lucky to have a Finn coach on board who had been to Olympic qualifiers and was a really wise young guy, who decided on a destinct style of start which payed off all week.
We chose to start mid line with a good, safe transit on the east shore of Cork's estuary mouth. However there were so many boats that you had to lean out over the bow to see if you were still behind it! I actually think the committee set the line there because of the Silo and farm house transit! There were a couple of black flag starts but generally the fleet were a little late by maybe 3 to 5 meters mid line, and late to power on at the boat end. Mid line we were in good company with boats like Powder Monkey and our Clyde sparring partners Vendeval, Phoenix and St. Joan.
Our choice of lane was a hole which was just slightly bigger than the average hole at about 1 minute out. We then held back, just overlapping the boat to windward. The fleet were all up very early at say 1.30 to 1.10 so we were late to fall in line, but then the gap was a little bigger as boats started to squeeze each other by luffing up to stay behind the line. This position provided a natural block to others trying to squeeze in - to windward, no chance, to leeward you couldn't see the gap if you came in on Port and you wouldn't be able to come round our stern and get up into it.
It is worth noting that a smaller fleet with more space will often begin to reach along the line rather than luff. This is because they are afraid of luffing over, of having no boat speed and because there is space to do it it. This is the worst type of starting as it leads to collisions mid to pin end with boats with rights or port tackers crashing over to starboard. In a bigger, experienced fleet, boats are pinned up and the whole thing has a more orderly choreography, everyone dances at about the same time!
And this is the point, since we are thinking Ireland, you think of the tap waves in River Dance- there is a delay along the line as the yachts wait for the man or two above to sheet on. At the pin end, the boats often have a better transit so there tends to be a line sag. At the sigma nationals there was very little line sag pre-start, an even distance of about one and one half boat legnths to windward at 1 minute, but still there is a delay to get speed on.
Our position as explained above was both defensive, in securing the hole ( in dinghies you can weave about, back the rigg or lift the centreboard to close the gap and this is often a bad place to sit because dinghies accelerate so quickly) and also aggressive in that we could sheet on earlier or harder to sail up just "Cracked off" to gain speed - we then had the boat moving faster than the one immediately to windward while the gap was opening a little more with the boat to leeward getting speed on. Then we had suddenly a bit of space to bear off on , we are talking just a few meters, and we could control our speed while our bow was still being midships to the windward boat. We then also had more speed on than the boats either side of us, which is a risk but if you can judge the line on the transit and hope everyone else is on time then you can punch through on the gun with higher boat speed or fall off a little so as not to point your nose out as the gun goes. Vendeval and St. Joan also managed to punch out in front, but I did not see them hanging back. On one day from mid way along the long old line, we three came out and in the light airs we just amplified our start over the entire fleet and we were 1-2-3 round the windward mark, a fantastic feeling with over 70 boats behind you.
This speed tactic lead to a rib being sent out later in the week to spot OCS but this made no difference to our starts and we were never OCS apart from maybe on a general recall when the whole dance commenced 15 secounds early; We were able to use the other boats bows and movements on the clock to punch out and gain a boat legnth on the immediate 20 or so boats around us, despite the protests of one teenager for "miles over" to our side windward as their boat dogged it out.
Variation on this Orderly Fleet Start- Bias or Right Hand Preference
The variation on this is to just get a lane at 1: 30 near where you want to start at the boat end to get right on port roundings early and avoid many dips or tacks given you have pretty even boat speed with the fleet. The early ticket risks a later interloper, being OCS or being in bad air, ....or being blocked out by a rammy of boats who are to your LHS and sitting head-to-wind and messing everyones day up big time.
Another contra tactic to this is the late port roll over, where you come in on port which gives you the best vantage over spaces and how the fleet is on the line.
Commonality in this Type of Orderly Start
In all three of these approaches then, what is important is that you have a lane to exit on. If the start is really orderly and the boats all can get steerage on ie not head to wind, then this is actually not something to worry about. You just need to know where the wind is and that it is quite stable in direction and strength. In the latter, if you are really talking 20 seconds when you establish starboard close hauled from port interloping, then you are actually lined up and read to sail to the line, luffing the boat above you to avoid a roll over and open the last little bear off space available, or if they are luffing the next boat up, punching out at maximum speed as you hit the line.
The key thing here is to know where the wind is and know that other boats are not lying too high towards head-to-wind or too near the line. You need a lane which you can move into, but you need to take the risk that the boats to leeward will play ball and no last second chancers will crash in. The way to do this is to just buy the place and then at 1 minute move your bow up to level with the boat to windward, and even on a 22ft sporty, send a guy up for a peak up to the line and the most forward bows. You may find that you are actually "calling boat" when there is a very tight bunch at the boat end and the gap to leeward opens below you. Here you have the chance to do a really good spoiling start by not playing ball, and bearing off late in a sports boat in particular, when you are then the right hand end boat with the best speed on the gun. Left hand boats to you have to cross your starboard tack so a couple of boat lengths disadvantage still wins from them given they do not get a header first.
Reach Up - Start
An alternative start for sports boats in particular when the line is not biased, is to come off the line at super speed, maybe even above top VMG speed achievable on a beat by reaching in and hardening up to punch out on the gun. This takes of course, excellent timing to start within a couple of seconds of the gun, but also a willing fool- usually a single boat who is obstinately luffing a little pack of boats and a little behind the line. You treat his transom as a mark rounding, coming in broad and entering pretty close on a tight reach, working up to a beat on the line. This requires ample space to leeward from this boat as you do not maybe know the exact wind stregnth and how fast you are going to rocket through, so you need that space to maneuvre in or get the right angle to the wind to beat off the line. There is a very good Platu 25 video showing this, devilish good speed. However, it is applicable to any bigger boat too, where it may be used if you are a little late and find no decent space until you come upon a little log jam of boats with the last man sitting pretty much head to wind pinning the others up, or holding back on his bear away.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment