Pushed Into Making Some Learning Curve Calls

Well a couple of blog readers have been in touch and I should really get comments field going if I can find the toggle after I switched it off due to spamming before=apologies!

Given even my summarising of my view points on the learning curve in sail sport, I have been cajoled into making some calls on what is really critical and why some sailors meet an impass they never seem to get through to better sailing and results. Or for the instructor, how do you try to get that eveness of skill and how do you identify weaknesses and then how do you prioritise teaching?

I blogged before about the biggest mistakes which mediocre back of fleet sailors make, or those pitfalls which sailors earlier in their career generally fall into. To turn this on its head a little to see these as challenges and where they fit in a total picture of sailing then?

In sail sport, racing then, to take this as the kind of output , the end point where ability is judged in results....

The big Bads are IMHO

1) Starts  ....read earlier blogs for reference why this is the no.1 bug bears or impasses which the racer encounters

2) Rig Tune

3) Wind Sense

4) Gear Shifts in Sail Setting and Rig

5) Manoevres with/without crew including helming technique

6) Rules > being comfortable with them and using them tactically

I would say that this is more or less the descending order of what  the challenges facing a racing sailor are.

Now taking a step back you can see that these belong in fact (apart from the last) to seamanship and learning the basic skills over and over again, each time getting a little better.

1) Start ->  well it relates very much to getting under way, sailing off from a standing start, and then moving around in some traffic obeying the first two or three simplest rules 10, 11, 12.....Therefore in an anlysis of bad starts or in training up for starts then this is the simple break down. Luffing up from a light hove-to ( basic-safe position) to fully close hauled, the opposite, positioning the boat and stopping up and sailing slowly.

You can carry on breaking it down as the skills level builds, but this I think illustrates the point for all the six pointers above, that you start 'broad brush' in not only what you teach, but how you evaluate a students progress. Have they understood the task and its major components?  Are they Able to put it into practice what has been explained? Which element is holding them back most?

2) Rig - teach it broad brush. This is really easy on most trainer dinghies and keel boats upto 25 feet. I mean just what you can do hand tight, and just what really shows in the flatness of the sails and the jib entry to start with.

3) wind Sense. Before compasses and even telltales, get people to understand where the wind is at all times, and how it is relative to their next objective. Get them to recognise tacking angles (forget gybe angles to begin with) by the 'over the shoulder' method, and to start to recognise favoured tacks along a coast line to a headland or to the nesxt bouy. You can set purposely skew courses or plan tours which introduce this and also some opportunity for wind bend. This is all best taught in dinghies imho, with nothing more complex than a birgee fitted.

Poor wind sense is easy to spot in beginners - they sail off in all directions, often seeming to hide away from the fleet and try their own thing. They often make very poor porgress to windward over the course of many tacks. These beginner faults are then deamplified with experience but of course exist at all levels of sailing as potential for improvement. For a beginner fleet a simple exercise is follow the leader, or sailing parallell and tacking only on command. Also skew set courses are very illustrative , as above, kind of eureka penny drops moments

4) Gear shifts - these are pretty easy to spot in any sail session where the wind stregnth alters. Overpowered boats or those left with too flat and powerless sails, stand out and their sail setting is failry easy to read from a RIB or being on board. The simplest gear shifts are simply sheeting in or out more while sailing the same course, before you need to go over to cunningham, kicker, outhaul, jib leads and halyards.....

Some keel boat classes are pretty bad at stripping down foresails in time and tend to have rather pristine No 2 sails showing that they strip One to Three , genoa to working jib. They have held their genoas way over design wind, just because everyone else is. Set a discipline to set less sail over the sail makers recommended max true, and even crack it down 10/20% if the wind is squally to keep the boat on its toes and show the team how much better the foils are working with less heel and weather helm.

5) Manoevres . Even in a laser or optimist you can see where a sailors little bug bears of manoevring are. It can be hardening up and throwing the main sheet over the transom, or not coordinating the tiller with the trimming. it can be body movements and balancing the boat correctly, such as the often pronounced heel to windward to get a single hander to fall off after the weather mark. The list is long, but you can spot the rough mistakes and then for experienced sailors see if they are 'de/amplified' ie still present but in a far smaller way.

6) Rules and tactics. The fundamental rule is to actually avoid collision and endangering others by forcing them out of the way. This is a guiding principle embodied in the international COLREGS at sea.  For racing this takes the 'lawyers' in ISAF about 4 rules to get right plus clauses and paragraphs in most others!! Right of way should be taught as starboard first and foremost coupled to avoiding contact by steering to starboard, passing to port. Windward boat should be introduced underway too. Overtaking boat and no rights in the tack come soon after because they will fit in to the gentlemanly&lady like principles. More advanced sailors tend to get caught out by 'several boats' situations, the complexities of rule 18, the subtleties of the weather mark crash tack and gaining starboard advantage approaching the finish line. They need to have the basics sorted before they can truly be competent in mark roundings and tactical situations like the finish line starboard-stealer!

Misunderstanding rules and not understanding simple orientations is a problem afflicting many sailors and when tired or stressed, I would say all sailors make bad calls and some are blatantly arrogant in intimidating less experience sailors or even lying and rule breaking on the water to gain advantage.  The rules are written in an orderr which is by no means unintented - as in law, there is an order of precedence especially in rules 10 to 20. The later ruiles modify when and how the earlier, fundamental rules ," when boats meet" 10.11.12.13, apply in particular situations or limit them to fair play and clear intentions to avoid collision.

Also for the sake of the sport, all beginner sailors and those on courses about rules, should absolutely be encouraged to protest and learn to do this so that the cheats and repeat offenders in the sport at all levels get to feel the whip of DSQ and learn to respect their less experienced or less gung hoe rivals. Protesting and the protest hearings should then be gone through and practiced, not just he usual identifying rule breakers with wee boats and overhead projectors. Protest committees are there for a reason, and given guilt  is pretty easily established, often even after a race an offender may choose to render a retiral rather than use an hour on the dispute. Losing a protest as the protestor usually incurs no penalty other than loss of face, but has the great benefit of being a learning experience and showing that you have the gaul to go to the 'wee room'.

In this blog I have just tried to further illustrate the approach to breaking down learning stages, setting some skilll- goals and overcoming challenges by relating observation to planning what corrective measures can be set in place, or how a learning goal may need to be broken down or simplified. Sailors can be making a lot of apparent mistakes, but looking for those rough ones within the main areas of sailing skills, or by knowing the most common racing mistakes and challenges, you can stand with a better approach to ensuring that sailing skills are learned across the key areas and mistakes are avoided or corrected.