Sunmmary Points on Starts

Here are my own summary points which I hope are helpful for you too, after the long winded blogs : where I went through my own starts, dicsussions with other sailors and previous reading from classics like Rodney Pattison plus now of course YouTube, where North Sails come up trumps with the 31.7 weekend in dublin and the San Diego Ethcells pepp talk.


Key Learning for Myself and Practice to Do

This is on top of previous shooting the wind, reaching along the line and practice pre start on coming over plus going up the whole beat.


1) Practice with boat and crew in coming up to a line or start. Get used to this, just the feel, without regard to actual time first. Get used to different distances to start the final approach from, back  from the line and places near the line and then start timing.  Build this up with practice runs at the line each time you race, and treat some club races as "dare to go OCS" to get used to how being too close or too fast feels.  Then concentrate on "burn time" as below point 6



2) Define the lay lines to the ends of the line and to where you might want to start on the starboard approach: this is easy to do way out from the race if the wind is to be stable.  Also check the port lay lines the end you prefer to start on, as you may either want to beat up and fall over to starboard or get a port end flyer / late port start on the boat end.

3) a) Stop rushing around at 3 minutes. Depending on the type of boat of course. At 2 minutes you want to be no lower than where you expect to line up prestart for your runway (lane for close hauled), whether you come in on Stb or on Port.

b) Port is not as dangerous as it seems because starboard boats cannot hunt you by falling off, it actually locks them into going over you. Remember that this does mean ducking so you want to not loose sight of getting up to the line and avoid going low by a series of ducks taking you lower or by ragging early in a dinghy when you slip sideways.

4) Work out what the pack are doing and look out for any other clumps of boats and mark their angle and the time to the start.  Read the place you want to start- either a nice conservative lane where the boats are tidy or towards a gap you bet on opening.

5) More to point four, know your enemy- both in the early line up and those boats who are flying around just below you looking to maybe "hook" other boats and steel up into leeward gaps.

6) Get in Lane and define your "burn time" ie time before you begin your acceleration on the runway to hit the start on time. This needs an experienced bow man or someone on the rail / mid man to call it : it is built from sighting on the line direct up wind, and forward into the gap, and then knowing the power on time for the wind and boat lengths.

a) at the favoured end, you may want to hold back a bit to avoid creeping forward and being either dead on the line in a clump of boats, or OCS with the pack. Here you can "hook" the boat to windward just on his transom/ quarter. this pins him up while giving you space to bear off into, and also defending the gap ahead from late interlopers who come reaching in from either tack.  You then power on with a little less burn time now as you have to sail out of the windward boat's shadow. We used this to deadly effect in the 1996 Sigma 33 nationals, coming out in the top ten boats in about half the races out of 77 boats or so.

b) for a start elsewhere in a keel boat, you may want to actually start a little further back and sail close hauled on STB up towards your likely lane: this is a powerful approach because you are clear to power on, have a feel for the boat speed and you can burn time by luffing or ragging. This is best when you are aiming at a clear hole in the mid line, or a loosely populated rack on the line, or when you expect a gap to open because a clump of boats are early and will bear off or not stand into your lane. In these cases you have a powerful position to wait for the opening or choose a new lane while you are still 4 boat legnths behind the rack. This is a very irritating type of tactic if you are in the rack! Especially in HC sailing, getting rolled over by a long distance shooter!  This can also be the preferred tactic if you are going for an IDM boat end start because you can control and block out so many boats, while also controlling your own "burn" time