Great Start, Good First Beat, Lost it all on the Second Beat......

How many times have you heard around the club house bar, that very keen, slightly loud mouthed owner who says " We had a great start, and a really good first beat, but lost it all on the second beat. We went the wrong way" ?.,...usually taking some glory out of getting off the start line and up to the weather-mark in a respectable place.

Post race analysis at this point usually decends into the helm giving some light ear-time to all and sundries experience of the race, and the shifts in particular, while in fact the helm is just putting it down to serendipity and hope for a better result next time. Lady luck will shine her light upon the boat next time.

As in business, hope is not a strategy and serendipity is no motivator to better performance. Harder analysis is really what is needed for any boat who are serious about improving their results and being consistent in a series and a season.

It is my own standpoint that so much more of sailing success can be gained by simple arithmentic and geometry.  

Why Then Does The Second Beat Go Wrong ?? !!

1) Your boat speed is not all you thought it was.

The benefits of a good start most often amplify themselves on the first beat. Other boats further back in the "rack" are both giving each other bad wind and also restricting their ability to tack on shifts or get to the right hand side if that is favoured for tidal or wind bend reasons.

So if you actually don't have very good boat speed then the fleet has time to catch up on you, especially when it is more "filtered" by the result of the first beat, the off wind leg(s) and the all important leeward mark. By the second beat, the fleet is often spread out enough for the boats in the top half to be sailing far more in their own wind and being able to tack at will.

This steady loss applies equally to one design as it does those pesky corrections of time in Handicap racing. More insiduous with the latter of course as you see "slower" rated boats catch you up and the faster boats reach the second windward rounding long enough ahead now to be further up the results board.

Your rig may be set better or even optimally for the first beat, but with a change in wind strength, you are not going to have the best boat speed for the second round of punishment , "Up Hill" ....which brings us to :

2) Your Sail Settings for the Second Beat are Not As Good as Beat 1
This is actually a pretty common mistake and it is often made worse by a change in wind stregnth and quite possibly accompanying  sea state which most often means that you need to set up for larger or steeper waves, with either more or less wind- both very decisive in the choice of sail settings when you need to have more power and choose a lower groove.

Consistent sail settings though are easy to achieve given an even wind stregnth actually on a race. You can mark halyards, place tape bands on the spreaders, use a polar table log and the TWA dial ...so on and so on. Worth writing down in your own racing log for the day and marking on the halyards and jib cars.

The rig settings on a boat ( if as most boats now, you don't have running backstays)  are more difficult to adjust if the second beat exposes you to a new wind. However you have the luck of perhaps rounding the leeward mark in clean air, and in a rig sensitive one design like a Melges, it is extremely likely that the boats around you also have poor rig setting. Running rigging and sail settings can make up for quite a few evils: Backstay can be quite decisive in how the rig behaves even with the same shroud and forestay tension, allowing you to either stabilise the rig for chop while opening the top more when wanged on harder than the first beat. In the opposite situatuon where you have less wind,  if released completely then the backstay can often free up some luff sag in the jib which helps power the boat up. Sail settings in terms of depth and twist are mostly adjustable and go a long way in making up for too soft or hard a rig.  Sailing style can also be adapted: First decent regatta in a j109 I noted that the shrouds were very slack. It blew up 30 knots and I fought with the main all the way round, to a class wind, using the sheet to dump further than a 3/4 dumped traveller, and asking for the helm to feather up beyond this point to depower more.

3) Your Offwind Sailing Sucks!

"Kettle on, Out with the sandwiches, crack open a beer" .....in a typical regatta this is just the wrong attitude with boats just bumping DDW, guy locked off, sheet probably ill attended.

It is quite seldom that you can just sail DDW and keep your position: you have firstly boats will be piling in behind you and threatening to steal your wind. Secondly your boat may not be acheiving best VMG by sailing so deep. Thirdly, leading on from the last point,  what appears as DDW in terms of pointing the bow at the leeward mark, may vary with a bias or shift pattern so much that you sail.

The advent of the assymetric and the move to easier to lay, windward-leeward courses has in fact rendered the " run" leg to a far more tactical stage in the race than it was with the procession round the gybe mark on olympic-triangle courses,  and the inevitable, wasteful luffing matches which ensued.

Gybing on the lifts, looking for the favoured gybe, coming in on starboard to the leeward mark....all these things can add to your good position you made out of the start and on the first beat and stop those two or three boats slipping past you and giving you dirty wind on the second beat.

Backing up here a little on what I just said about sailing DDW being bad news, it can of course pay when the wind is strong and not biased, or there is tide with you,. Some boats are prone to gybing too often to try and keep free wind, and execute gybes rather badly. Other boats believe in luffing too much (as in days of more olympic triangles) in order to protect their wind and end up sailing too far, carving great bananas and having a counter productive effect as boats behind dig deeper VMG and eat into your lead.

4) Geometry, Chronology, Wind Shifts.....
Many boats in one design make all the right moves on the first beat, and maintain a good boat speed with good sail-settings the whole race, yet get binned on the second beat and lay it down to "we went the wrong way on the second beat".  Why does this occur ?

a) Line Geometry and Bias, Versus Course Geometry

On any given average wednesday night, the start line is likely to be incorrect in two ways. Firstly it's offset is quite far out to the (for purposes of our arguement) windward leeward course line bouy to bouy. If the wind is steady and the line is at 90' to the course, while the wind blows right down from windward to leeward mark in a "perfect" situation, then if the start line is even ten boat lengths out from the W_L centre line, if then set to the right had side,  then the pin end is vastly favoured as it is a shorter distance to sail to the windward mark. The same is also true of a line set across the W-L centre line if more of the line lies to one side. All this BEFORE you start taking any bias or windshifts into account.

b) The Key: Line Bias and Course Bias Are Different

Line bias is what all prestart sailors are looking for, and you can assert it without any numbers from the compass. The key concept here is that line bias may vary wildly from any course bias :

To explain like this: the first beat from a line which is laid bias, particularily if it is half way up the course, is it's own leg in terms of the shortest route to sail up to the windward mark. You need to also look at the bearing windward-leeward mark centre line and the true wind bearing on this NOT just the start line. Even if the line is set across the course, if there is a bias and it is not set at 90' to the WL centre line especially, then the first leg's information is not valid in terms of an overall bias you may experience on the second beat.

Hence you start on the favoured end of the line, get that amplified effect of free wind, port tack the fleet, round the winward and leeward marks, then presume that the line bias is also the correct side to go up the second beat.

Start lines are often badly laid: there are various reasons for this, worth a blog of their own, but true to say that they are very often not set at 90' to neither the course WL centre line, nor the true wind bearing.

If the wind is say blowing from 015' NNE while the bearing Windward Mark to Leeward mark are set at 005' then you have a ten degrees bias. This may have developed by a change in the wind after the marks were laid for example. Now they set the start line and they lay it at 122' SE taking into account the new wind and wishing to give some pin end bias so they can see early starters along the line. The line bias suggests that going right is favoured. LHS in this case is favoured on the second beat too. However if they set wrong by 10' the other way to the wind TWA On the line, making for a  boat end or RHS favoured start and beat, then you would be wrong in going right for a longer length of time on the second beat when you round the leeward mark into what is now a headed wind direction on the RHS.

If you now take into account that there is a shift pattern, or a permanent shift, or a wind bend downwind of the start line on the course, you can see that the actual point in time the start takes place can exacerbate an incorrect interpretation of what will pay on the second all important "consolidating" beat.

c) Failing to Capture the Shifts

A badly set up line and/or course geometry will be made more confusing if there are significant wind changes over time or over the course.

Patterns in the wind shifts are often hard to analyse but if you are out early and do a test beat, getting all the angles and bearings noted down, then you can see if there is a periodicity or a type of trend in wind direction during the gusts and lulls.

Some venues with an off shore breeze of upto 25 knts can show a very marked shift pattern with a pretty close periodicity. Coupled to this are the gusts which in the northern hemisphere invariably veer ie are clockwise and are favoured thus on starboard tack as the life the boat on this tack.

One common problem emanating from this  feature in the last paragraph, is the "lovely lifts on the left hand side" but nothing came of it. This was well illustrated in a Yachts and Yachting article, and probably is to be found in various good text books: You may get a lovely series of "scalloping" wind lifts while on starboard tack and holding left, while in fact the over all bias was to the right. Conversely you may find that the gusts always head you on port tack and you are fidgety about tacking off to stb rather than sailing the shorter route! If you see a gust and you are thinking of taking a bit of time on starboard, then you will get the best benefit of tacking before the gust to get into it and take a lift ( as long as you dont just sail away from it, that being a "block" of breeze or "cats-paw" )

The wind can of course be generally shifting it's average direction (generally backing or veering) as with the weather pattern - following the seabreeze-solar effect, or as the anticyclone tracks over.

Finally there can be a bend in the wind at another point of the course: either downwind of a mid set start line, or on the other side of the course, or which developes over the time span of the race.

With the case of a wind bend, this can be a headland /hill effect or a virtual and invisible effect where the tide or river current makes an apparent header/lift you have to be really clued up on to spot.

The overall effect though is that coming out of the leeward mark, you need to take into account a completely different " side of course" bias than from coming off the start line.

d) Tide II - just a quick further note on tide at an imaginary venue: the tide builds and ebbs 123-321, so it is running at max at many places or ebbing at max for a peak period twice as long as either side : If then the start goes at the 1 or 2 phase for a longer race, or on the cusp of the 3 stage, then you will be coming into a stronger tidal pattern during the race which is different from the start time. This has the effect to taking your the right/wrong direction as the "being transported in a giant bucket" truism, while also producing difffering wind vector effects depending on the angle to your boat on each tack.

Also the start line may be laid out in more adverse tide - such that on the first, shorter beat you may get more of advantage of going off the biased side of the line, or getting a great start than coming out of the adverse tide asap. On the next beat then, you may miss this.

Taking into account all the above about geometry, bias and shifts PLUS tide, a rising or ebbing tide in its mid phase or fastest, then you can see that you are exposed to more complex factoring than you first suspected.




In this last bitty I have tried to compress several chapters in books on wind strategy into a few lines, and those chapters in books by the likes of Rodney Pattison, are necessary reading for the serious racing helm or crew. 

However I illustrate a general point: the first beat from the start line is a different upwind race from the second beat from the leeward mark.

Final Mistake

5) Doing a Flyer onto One Side of the Great Diamond 

This is quite a common mistake - you gather useful information on the first beat, and may find a bias on the course as you sail up, or base your assesment of wind bias and correct side, mistakedly from the start line being poor. You then decide to go off on a flyer, sailing far out to either side of the course.

It looks like you are being cunning and consolidating a lead and your intelligence from round one: but you are in effect openening the barn door for the fleet to catch up on you if conditions change, or if you have misinterpreted the bias and favoured side, for any of the reasons outlined above.

Alternatively, you did a flyer on the first, shorter beat from the start line, banged off the layline and got a great position for your first rounding with minimal tacks. This was a combinatioin of sstarting skill and several strokes of luck most likely: windshift and traffic on the starboard layline being prominent. Second time round, you go long out to that side, but this time it doesn't pay. You loose places and perhaps come into a busier windward mark layline than last time!

Flyers can pay, but only when all else is lost ie a bad start. This article is written from the point of view that you have had a GOOD Start and a GOOD first beat relative to the fleet, but throw it away afterwards!

Avoid flyers unless you have overwhelming evidence !! Putting a loose cover on the fleet is never really a wrong thing to do because you are keeping yourself between them and the next windward mark or finish line. You can keep an eye on them and get a better feel for the windshifts often by seeing them tack to try and catch up. If one side is very favoured due to a very clear advantage, most often tide or a windbend, then you can make your cover a lot looser, and ensure you are hitting your defined advantage and well into it before you tack back to cover the fleet, yet returning into the advantage as soon as you think you are nearing its edge again. Carry on in this way until it is time to go up  nearer to the lay line, when you want to tighten up the cover on the fleet and perhaps sit a tight cover on a nearby competitor so they don't get head of you and interfere with your mark rounding. The principle here being that everyone has to take the pain or gain to get onto the layline and round the mark.

Epilogue:

In my "career" as crew on yachts and as a dinghy helm, I experienced these effects probably at their worst at the Tarbert based "Scottish Series" which seemed to always produce much hot air about which side of Loch Fyne was favoured, and how it all went down the swanny on lap 2. I write then from quite a lot of bitter experience, sailing my apprenticeship with a boat which had a helm who really didnt pay any attention to the compass and windshifts. Also from sailing on other boats who stuck with the belief that "flyers" were often a good strategy, or seeing how some unfortunate boats ahead or to the other side have parked up showing the wrong way to go. Finally too by going back to the textbook for many of my best race results, tacking up a 60' cone taking the shifts as they come.