Tackle It Now!

If you are the typical club average helm then you are middle aged in a mid sized, mid budget boat.

You are stuck also with that other law of averages, that your results may vary and be peppered with greatness,  but tend to fall back to a season average.

In terms of wanting to perform consistently and be one of the top of fleet, then this is not going to happen by just sailing for some more years. It requires a deconstruction of your sailing and better abilities in stress managemet on and off the water.

Firstly, let us get cash-to-splash out of the way. If the fleet is very dependent on cheque book racing and your budget is well short of the top boats, my best advice is either pay up or get out. Bluntly. You can look at financing a special couple of seasons, with a newer boat or just sails and deck gear, as a one off investment after which you cut your loses and liquidate the boat or return to mediocrity.

If you have a reasonable boat, sails and rigging then forget cheque book sailing. Yes you can add a good number of marginal gains this way, but their sum will be less than addressing your sailing skills and the sports psychology you have personally and as a team. Small investments in sail repairs, fairing the hull and foils and replacing dysfunctional deck gear are worth the effort, but the cost of say a new funky genoa for flat water is not going to give the same benefit as using half that money on some sailing tuition or coaching.

Some helms are just stressed little old erics, or powder kegs on the race course just waiting to go off at their crews or other boats. If you find yourself being overly stressed out while racing or even preparing for races,. or you suffer from an uncontrollable anger out there on the course, then address this now- it aint going away buddy and the latest  generally accepted science is that you are going to get worse because these responses are hot wired into subconsious biological mechanisms, including the now deadly stuff of much debate "cortisol" the stress hormone.

Good life hacks for addressing your stess or anger include breaking down the points at which you are negatively 'aroused] and being very objective about ways to improve these manoevres or tactics. Also using meditation and visualisation before and after races. And my favourite hacks, following the fleet round after starting late on the right hadn side of the line, or sailing with an accomplished and low stress team as crew.

The same is true of your skills. They are unlikely to get much better or make that quantum leap to top 10% of the fleet just by doing the same you have always done. You need to break down your weaknesses and get help to overome them. My favourite #SailHack is to go sail in a simple dinghy class like the snipe or tasar, or laser if you dont have a willing crew and get some instruction. Play dumb and act like an absolute beginner.

Just a short blogg, reiterating really Fred Rants from before.

Marginal Gains-Diminishing Returns and The Learning Curve in Sailing

Should we all be looking for marginal gains? Or is the average racing sailor clutching at straws when looking to make a series of small often unrelated improvements which some may say are just a case of diminishing returns ? So in other words - When does the learning curve become an exercise in diminishing returns, with only marginal gains to be had from minutae of tweaking?

I think we even have to step back a little here and think about what a sailing and racing learning curve is composed of and how it may appear:

What are the building blocks of our learning, and should we look to polish these all the time, each in their own case, or to deconstruct them and reassemble as a whole? 

What shape is the learning curve in sailing from junior oppi sailor to being Knighted Sir Ben Ainslee??

How is your own learning curve_?

Marginal Gains vs Diminishing Returns vs Clutching at Straws at the Impass

Well there is an odd little dilema there some sailors seem to have. They think that they are at a stage of 'marginal gains' and run around the boat tweaking things, and getting the crew to do small, sometimes odd changes to how things are trimmed and so on. A key characteristic of this type of often frustrated sailor, is that they most often resort to spending money on bits and pieces aka ' go faster gadgets'. 

Yes sailors with top results are in the realms of looking for small tweaks to get that extra tenth of a knot or half a boat legnth on a rounding or a quarter of a bow on the start line, but many mediocre sailors seem to hit a wall and give up on advancing their own skills or the crew dynamic and instead, tweak like hell, and often end up selling up and buying a handicap boat with supposedly a 'bandit rating'. They have missed something in their entire outlook or some major part of their learning curve.

Steep, Abrupt Steps on the Learning Curve

To my mind the learning curve has some steep sections followed by practicing at that level for a while, before you move on to learn something  new, and in doing so move onto another steep section. In fact you could say that there are some parallel learning curves for different skill sets,  which have to really run parallel and in the right sequence at each stage in order for you to master that little steep bit of the overall curve of performance and ability.

These are what I can summate as > 

1) boat preparation and rigging, 

2) sail set-boat-balance-trim-course-steering ( the classic six of learning to sail and remembering to check under way) 

3)  the key four key manoevres- luffing, bearing away, tacking and gybing

4)  tactics & rules, 

5) wind and tide strategy

6) .......and also you can choose to take as either its own entity or as something which goes across all these :team work and the dynamics of the team.

Each block outlined above has of course dozens of sub components. However it can be difficult for the eager new sailor or developer racer to see the 'wood for the trees' if they consider their abilities, problems and challenges at a lower level and start focusing on getting really clued up on a very small detail, or on a detail which on its own will not create the synergy they were looking for as part of the whole picture of 1 to 6 above.

To exemplify: take the case of a sailor who reads a lot about sail making theory and technology, and spends time, effort and money with a sailmaker in getting new sails made for the boat. However within this 'block' there is also rigging, and of course it relates to trimming the sails which in turn relates to team work. The gain may have been greater in learning if the existing sails were being utilised with correct rig settings, and the trimming was matched correspondingly and then the crew work around say tacks or sail changes was made better.

Passing Go to Move On

In the early stages of your learning curve then, you must really focus in each and all of these key areas in order to be able to progress in terms of ability and performance in racing. Later on as you start to be more competent at all of these, then you may want to look at singeling out one particular area for a focused improvement, and eventually as an expert sailor you will be looking for marginal gains - small ways to improve which are either summative or even synergistic as a combination of small incremental improvements across several areas.

Take at the early stage of sailing my first boat which was a TASAR,  and my under estimation of the importance of rig set up. The boat when carrying an optimal crew weight, has a design wind of 9 knts. This means it is fully powered up, and in more wind you will be depowering by flattening the sails after this wind. I went out one day with a new crew in and get loaded up very suddenly, as I found out sailing her in force 6 gusting 7 one day which is up to 35 knts!  For the boat in that wind we were seven times over design wind, and I had not set the rig up for any major depowering and did not really bother to flatten the main much on the kicker/cunningham and outhaul. I could sail the boat competently if not competitively in light to medium winds, but made an idiot of myself with a new crew by not thinking rig tune was important as the wind built through the morning.

To say it another way, you cannot make up for very much if any of a gap in your necessary combined set of learning steps in these different skill and knowledge areas by using small tweaks  here and there...............If you are missing or lacking skills in just one building block, then this becomes the weakest link in your sail-game! 

Further up the learning curve, it may be one of these areas which requires special focus in order for you to enjoy a good increment in performance. Take my own example : 

My Own Next Steep Bit

My own next step is actually to really start to master wind and tide strategy, which is something perhaps I should have learned more on in sailing school way back when in fact, just at a lower level. You learn a bit underway of course- at sailing school on longer 'tours' you learn that one tack is favoured for getting round a headland > if you race on wednesday nights in a prevailing wind direction and there is a wind bend feature, you learn quite quickly that the side it is on pays, and that boats go over for it in a decided 'motorway' route once they are up the course a bit. But some things are not so easy to gather or to use much intuition with. For example the tide-wind vectors which are quite complex to understand and although I have read a good many examples in books, I struggle to visualise or be able to calculate them for a given sailing area ,time point and course.

Also with wind shifts, apart from the gusts here in the northern hemisphere invariably being veered and thus favouring starboard tack, but only on an otherwise unbiased or right biased course!! I do not really spot any given interval or rythm in other shifts and minor variations in wind stregnth. Also getting to define potential wind bends when the wind alters course big time, or I am new to a venue.

Thinking About It All- Mastery Again and the Plateau

The key elements of sailing are then a bit like building blocks, but at some points along the learning curve you have to see them as joined-up-writing and be able to practice and race at the level you are competent to. This is then the plateau stage as the proponents of training long periods without apparent gain advocate.  What this means is mentally preparing yourself to not become frustrated with your current level of learning, your current technique level, your crew's ability and most of all for racers, your current level of results. 

With results as a top bench mark, you should be looking for consistency and not be frustrated by say mid fleet results, or if you are a bit better then only occaisional wins with a steady top 10 result. Being aware that you are on a plain is supposed to be a joy. You can drop your shoulders and lose some of that aggression and frustration on the race course and within the crew dynamic. 

Communicate to your crew that this is a time for practice and enjoying sailing at the level you are at, and just doing your best without trying to bust a gut so to speak. This "time" could be a whole season, a series over many weeks, or a championship week. You should feel that in the previous stage of the learning curve you have introduced some new knowledge and skills, and now it is the time to practice these before aquiring new skills such that we walk before we try to run. 

Dropping your shoulders and just sailing as well as you can does not mean that you are stagnating. Mentally you are getting used to being calm and making often more modest and sensible decisions, while you and your crew's motor functions (motor-neurone, balance, timing and coordination in the team) are all actually improving and being increasingly 'hard wired' as in other sports. This is why the plateau is important in martial arts for example. 

A bit like the belt system in Karate, ok, we are a pretty good yellow belt, we practice a while at yellow level, then we do some decisive, intense training to reach the green belt test. 

Further to this not being a time of stagnation, as we sail more and more by second nature, we have more time to have the 'head out of the boat'. This in itself can improve or consolidate results over a season. Also it means that we can start to note the areas which we would like to look at at the next phase of steeper learning, once we have mastered our current level. If we choose to look at one and all of these small items in a season, then we miss the point of plateauing. We break the mechanic of programming in a basic level of required competence. 

However it is clear that dropping our shoulders and being more objective IN THE BOAT is also a side effect of plateauing. So we are more likely to be able to spot mistakes which can be easily corrected without disrupting the plateau flow. Accepting our little lot in the world on this plateau, we also demand of ourselves that we do this level right more and more of the time. Practice makes perfect eventually, but also you can consider that repetition irons out mistakes for a base level, which then becomes the foundation or launch pad for taking the next, steep learning section of the curve.

For a team with inconsistent results, taking this mental approach also allows for this kind of failure mode analysis- what goes wrong, how often and perhaps why. It can be that the helm in particular, has been pushing too hard - taking manoevres too fast, being too gung-ho on the start line, not paying attention to positioning and right of way boats......then the helm needs to be jacked down a notch and realise that they should sail to what they can do and not reach for the area they can't.

Raising Your Game Means Opening Your Mind 

A plateau time may feel a little bland at points, but you get a lot out of it : the motor abilities and 'auto pilot' effect is very strong for the whole team in particular. But as mentioned you also get food for thought in what areas are weak. 

Further to this though, you need to be open to new learning and new input. As the season reaches an end, a wry sailor may mention buying new sails in the spring and ask for tips from a sail maker if they can sail with them an evening for example. Or there may be winter courses in warmer climes, or courses to look at into the coming year. As I blogged on before you may want to look at sailing dinghies, or crewing on another boat as a way of breaking your familiarity and opening you up to new learning experiences. You may want to do some quite different crew team building. 

Going back to the food-for-thought from your plateau time, it is really important to scrutinise these, group them under the main headings and prioritise or make a sequence of these.

Goal setting for the new steep bit of the curve then should comprise both analysis of your weaknesses from the season and any external input, and also some going out and looking at the blue sky - what is available. Much of all of this means above all one thing which boat owners can struggle with - swallowing your pride. It may take the owner of a 40 foot regatta machine to go back to sailing a wayfairer at a sailing school in order for them to make that next step up the curve in their ability and results.

Distillation of Teaching The Core of Sailing

Coming straight back to a running theme of mine in teaching sailing, I decided to distill out an absolute heart of the matter. I am talking about reducing sailing to two manoervres and then adding others to the repertoire after they are tackled. This being from of course absolute beginner level, but also at any level in sailing.

These two manoevres are not tacking and gybing. Rather more basic than that, to which these two 'multiple element' manoevres belong. In the distilled elements of what you do when you are not sailing in a 'straight line' or otherwise trying to hold a course in a sea, the two are as simple as the Harden Up (aka Luffing) and the Bear Away (aka falling off the wind)

You can then take that tacking is a sub set of the ultimate luff through head to wind followed by a short fall off, and gybing being the reverse. The latter made more prominent by the rise of the assymetric, making the whole angle swung through and the exacting movements more pronounced than old fashioned bell shaped kites.

At the one end of the sport, the new beginner should be taught the harden up as the very first element they learn such that they can trim in the sail, get off the beach on a reach and then luff the boat up to the "basic safe" position with sails flogging. Then falling off is the next in order to get out of self imposed fake irons, the basic-safe.  After these two are understood and repeatable on command, sailing to a course becomes more comprehensible - wind sense is tuned before the tack and later the gybe are introduced as the means of 'abrupt and substantial' corrections to current course to attain objective destination.

For sailors advancing to becoming top flight racers or just looking to stop loosing those places on a wednesday night, hardening up is pretty much the weakest manoevre I see executed out on the race course. Let us start there/ why and when it is a weak point

Start at the Start...The importance of hardening Up and Falling Off Uncer Perfect Control

Firstly prestart> in some boats which are dogs on the reach, hardening up inject a large acceleration, which means that suddenly a boat which had been wallowing around on a low course, pops up into the action at of course "a rate of knots".  The same is true of much better racers who decide to go for a harden up prestart and get into trouble by trimming the sails in hard and picking up speed and way to much momentum to actually hold a correct ' burn time ' distance from the line or choose which side of which stern to route into for a start lane.  Finally as the start comes , burn time up, go for it, I see myself and other boats committing cardinal sins - usually either oversheeting and doing that quickly, killing boat speed, or steering the boat too high up on the wind, or a combination where also the keel is not 'biting' and the "groove" is long from being acheived.  

The text book harden up on a start line in One Design is actually verry similar to a new beginner getting speed on from being in the 'basic safe'' position. A perfect basic safe is about 50 degrees off the wind, just low of an effective beat, with the sails flogging. The skipper can either sheet in on the man and go up and forward, or sheet in on the jib first and fall off to get speed on and sail a lower course. If you sit on a dead beat you will not get enough speed on usually to get the foils working and the boat in balance, while of course sitting in irons can be completely counter productive leading to a drifitng ddw and a panic to get underway.

In a text book start in OD, you are racked up at just about burn time back from the line distance which varies with wind and tide. Usually it will be forward of this at the biased end as folk jostle for position and back of the ideal point in the mid line, where the mid line sag often developes due to an obstructed view of the ends and loss of line 'feel'. At the point when you want to move forward, you need to have stopped luffing the boat to windward up and you need just enough space to bear the bow away into, and a cooperating lee side boat, or hopefully a slow-joe who is not up on the game and will fall into your lee quarter wind shadow. You can take the bow fairly low, but remember you still have to make it up to the line.

Depending on conditions and wind shadow around you, the time to get to the line at speed usually increases by at least 5 seconds in the real start versus the trial start you did alone to determine the time needed and therefore count down the burn time until you sheet in and go. Being over early, as everyone says, a few times is much better than being late a whole racing career and having to dig yourself out of wind shadow every race.

Back to technique though, you need to put the bow down and have the boat approaching keel 'fly' speed ( maybe 2.5 knots for a short cord, high aspect keel like a melges or M30, maybe 4 knots for a longer keel cruiser racer) before you then do the eventual harden up to cross the line beating. Ideally the start is hit at full target speed, on a beat, but in reality you will see nearly all teams in a good OD going for a bit of speed and then doing a final tune on the sails and helm once they are at full hull speed before being as hard as possible on the wind. These days with a big line sag, or a late or bunced fleet, and a very good gps readin for the line, you may be able to charge out and hit the line at full speed, full height.

In HC racing you may take a different approach depending on the strengths of your boat versus the boats around you, in order to achieve a lane which frees you up - this achieved by either stuffing or escaping the immediate boats to lee and windward of you. High and slow in OD can only really pay at the committee boat end when you are trying to get a high lane and squeeze out more later comers who are trying to nose in above and behind you. Otherwise luffing the boat to windward of you in OD is just a plain stupid mistake which costs you almost as much in the fleet as it will the windward boat.

Text books and dinghy sailors do say that you should sheet the jib in first in order to fall off at the start a little when burn time is T minus Zero, but really you need to get the slot working to give maximum acceleration. Also more of the main sail is higher and in more wind and less wind shadow, so right trim on the sheet for the right twist in this manoevre is vital. In a very blustery weather scenario, then I can see that you may want to get going away to the holy grail like 'lee space' you bought in the burn time ragging and luffing up to the windward boat, and thus trim on job first in order to avoid the mainsail broaching you up to windward when a gust hits unexpectadly.

Here then you have just combined the two distillations of my approach to teaching sailing, and BANG you are off the start.

Leeward Mark Hardening Up

Staying with hardening up in the order I present, we jump forward a little to that other bug bear of many a sailor, the leeward mark. Good racers recognise the leeward mark as a place to gain places while also an important part of maintaining position in the fleet by not messing up!

The main problems with hardening up here are usually nothing to do with the helm and crews ability to harden up in absence any mark or spinnaker. It is that they have a bad position going into the mark and this is usually caused by over ambuition in a) a late, or bungled spinnaker drop including the pole b) a wish to capitalise on any overlap or boats who have sailed too far outside the marks seamanlike turning circle. Some folk just do not understand the principle of wide in, tight out on this mark either and sail way too tight an angle into the mark.

Ok in some boats in some situations, where you have way-on and a short cord keel, you can hand brake round a leeward mark in a very tight manoevre in order to gain a lane height above boats sailing wide or coming out low from the mark, or in order to tack straight round to go left up the course again. Generally this sheds a lot of speed and you have to feel your way abruptly up onto a close hauled course in a series of small corrections which are also slow. If there is a car park of boats drifing 'south' of the mark that you can sail comfortably round while keeping clear (thus in this situation granting the dead ducks mark room because you did not further impeed their mistake) then 'hooking' round the leeward mark can be done, but it is not pretty and is to be avoided at other times.

One thing I learned a long time ago from an aerial photo of pro' yachties at a leeward mark was that you are a bit resigned to the slot you have, and you had better accept that and defend it. In OD fleets if you are clear ahead and have established your rights on boats whcih you have overlap on, then the best thing is to get the kite down early, and have actually done the " wee jobs" on the main in advance. Jib should be up and tensioned on the halyard early too. If you want to fly a little longer to defend overlap or clear ahead then practice a) flying (symmetrical) kite without the pole while  then also completely stowing the pole b) windward drop of the kite. Dont be tempted to come in too sharp on the bouy, rather heard the boats you have overlap on ahead out wide while calling the guys trailing clear astern not to poke their nose in. Remember wide in, tight out is the 'seamanlike' way of rounding and the rules corrall you only into not sailing too far 'south' of the mark now, and rightly so. A place for tomfoolery and professional fowls in years gone by.

A thing I am a bit obsessed with is sailing slowly to sail safely and to defend position while gathering your whits. The leeward mark position is like taking a queue number as soon as you are at three boat lengnths. If you are thrashing down into a pile of yachts or one slow one clear ahead at the 'zone' then you need to think of dropping early and even centering the main (as in aforementioned yachts and yachting aerial shot of a crew doing this( ) such that you brake the boat down. You have to go through at least 120' to get up on the wind. In a cheeky fleet then you may want to steer to a lane in this scenario, where you are running ddw on the bouy until you are very clearly in the zone. This squares your stern off to some itinerent starboard gybers who have otherwise a country mile of overlap on you, while also stating 'dont try to come in here' You can also use it as the line to gybe on to get to your final /correct side, and this also applies for assymetrics when you 'soak down' to the mark on the wrong gybe in order to book your ticket number for the rounding, while still needing one last gybe to get your gear on the right side for the rounding.

Dont be afraid of pushing boats wide when you have  rights on them, otherwise they may well squeeze round infront of you and then fall off at the last second.  Pushing other boats a little wide early as it becomes clear that the three zone overlap will apply, which can be a lot further back also helps them understand that there is going to be a nice orderly rounding and they need to communicated the call for this further along the 'food chain' to boats they have an overlap on. Remember you must sail your proper course, but this allows you good bit of room, at least a boat length perpendicular to the bouy leeward line to have a wide entry and round thus in a seaman like way.

If you have dropped early, stowed your spinnie gear, tweaked your white sail wee strings and halyards and are going on line, then the next problem is at the helm end, expecially in boats where the helm also does the main sail. In many boats you can start drawing in ont he main as you enter the three boat circle, but twitchy sports boats, or broaches old english ladies like the Sigma 33 can easily broach if the main is over sheeted as you round. on the latter old GRP Brigand even presheeting the genoa in can broach the bitch round and cause a mark or worse boat collision.

The team as a whole have to get the sails in, and get their weight out, which become very contracdictory functions at this mark in many boats. Ideally on a boat where the helm does the main, then they should either be completely comfy with this, or have a crew member stand on the windward deck and help take it in as far as just passed the bouy, then hopping down to hike out hard. The same is true of the tail trimmer, they have to be quick up onto the rail, while the lightest crew should do the winch in on the jib.

Back to basics here too. In 'powered up' and heavy airs you dont want to fight the mainsail here. So the helm needs to luff and the main follow as the pressure falls off it. The converse is true for light airs, where you should sheet first and let this steer the boat a bit, just helping with the rudder, or even just following the curve round on the helm.

The traveller is often a one/last/thing/we/forgot here as we harden up finally onto a close hauled course. It often slides down and kills the slot just as the pressure builds because someone forgot to cleat it, or because it  was not desired cleated off just in case you were overpowered. It is best to cleat it centred  to the traveller at three boat lengths out from  the bouy and then only slip it down if absolute need be.

Finally there is the tactical exit which now presents itself. This involves in fact two exagerrations of a normal harden up/ Firstly there is tacking away.

When to tack away?   most commonly when you are going to run into the stern or near bad wind of the guy in front b) when your strategy is to go left hand side c) when a following boat is likely to be able to roll over you ie usually a bigger keel boat

Tacking away can be planned for. If the boat ahead is less than two boat  lengths ahead and somewhere on the height of the 'out' layline from the bouy, then you must consider a tack. If you want to go left, consider how soon. Do you need to clear boats in a bunch of spinnakers who are on the last leg? Do you want to settle down in the abscence of dirty wind ahead, and check the wind angles and sail trim before making a tack? Or is it a case of a and b above and you must tack?

Wide in to the mark means you get to do a very seamen like harden up. You are eating up about 90' of that harden up to get onto the close line to sail passed the booy and then hardening up a further 30 to 45' to achieve close hauled. Tacking immediately then means that you ideally want to achieve close hauled such that you have speed on and clear the mark when you go through the wind. So  immediately is not on top of the mark unless you are avoiding collision ahead.

If you want to keep going 'right' or want to get onto a close hauled course but are going to run into dirty wind a stern of boats ahead, then the other killer tactic is the exageerated  luff, where you round at good speed and then luff hard up to almost head to wind, just as the start of a tack when the jib folds in on itself at the luff. In a dinghy with little way on (momentum) this is a single, very quick luff, which can be done several times once you have some speed on in fact in a  series of jerks. These all slow you down though! The aim is to book a lane slightly higher of the boats dirty wind ahead, into which you were going to sail anyway, or to get a higher lane than the following boats who will then be more in your wind shadow for longer because you are more upwind from them while a little less ahead.

In bigger keel boats you can often luff really far up and get a good boat lenght of pure windward distance before falling off onto the close hauled line.  You can also decide if you are going to clear the boat you were driving up into the stern of, or if you need to make the luff into a tack becasue that boat has been able to luff up. As mentioned a lot of boats struggle to even get the mainsail in, or the crew are messing about still with the spinnaker. You can often buy yourself a nice high lane to roll over a lower pointing boat, even in OD, by this tactic if you have a heavy, tonne derieved racer cruiser. However say in a Melges 24, such as I sail, you have very little momentum and the boat will stop sailing and drift backwards if you have been slowing down to avoid the boat ahead *as happende last wednesday* as you go through a 'crash tack' and you will likely not gain enough line to windward to get over a heavy boat ahead.

The Windward Mark and the Trip Mark

For better or for worse, the trip mark is a feature of many yacht races at nationals level or other larger fleets, so it is really there where the big bear away happens these days. This gives you time to get the spinnaker gear sorted and allows boats to settle into the procession for the run, without a stramash of boats on the beat coming in on you there.

The biggest mistakes happen when people forget the basics and  concentrate too much on their spinnaker hoist here. The main has to be set up right - in most all boats, the kicker should be released at the windward mark and eased further if needs be on the trip leg. A little out on the outhaul helps speed too on that little reach. The traveller should be centred and cleated on both sides to avoid uncontrolled slinging and people getting caught. The boat  should also be heeled  if possible to windward at the rounding to help it bear away. This helps on even some 40 foot keel boats, by moving crew weight, but an early over ease on the main can lay a boat nicely flat for the bear away no matter the size. Ready and early on the main are good here if you want to inspect spinnaker work from the back of the boat and not presume all is well.

Just as in a gybe, you may likely need to correct the bear away a little on the helm, either helping it go further or correcting the main sails wish to take you up to windward before the spinnaker fills.

The Gybe

As  i mentioned the gybe and the tack are just two means of exagerrating the in going luff or fall, while minimising the converse as you come out of the manoevre.

For a gybe this means that the bear away is total relative to the wind, and in decent blowy conidtions, the harden up is minimal as you try to sail as low a course as possible on the new gybe. Light winds and sailing an assy' of course pronounce the whole gybe, making it an avereage of over 120 '. In the traditional scenario you want to ease the boat down to dead down wind, get the pole across and then whip the mainsail over and ensure you come off DDW onto a safe, new course. On boats of under 35 feet, crew wight on the winward side helps the bear away to DDW as does completely sqauring the pole while keeping the kite flying. A key problem with the gybe is being too ambitious and wanting it all to happen in the blink of an eye. The pole needs to go off and over in good time such that the spinnaker is stablisised on the new course before the main fills. Th biggest mistake is gybing the main too early and leaving the crew struggleing to get the pole on and thus making the kite unstable and liable to help broach you.  The kite blows out to lee and heels you, while the main wants to broach you as the pressure eases off the belowwing kite. Whiley crew often get the pole off early, hiding the fact that it is loose at the mast by propping it between shoulder and mast eye. You do not want to trip the old guy side before you are on the new as a bowman, and you want to get the pole down in order to control the swing, a bit like a hanglider control, on boats which are of course maneagbvle to do this on * +40 footers usually do dip poling which is slow but safe*  I have end to ended a single sheet rigged First Class Europe in force 8, which was hairy, but not in much sea so it went ok, given that there were two of us on foredeck. It is best on any boat to have someone help you get the new guy inboard, although 'barener hailers can help.

Assy's should be a piece of cake to gybe, with some different tricks to employ in your armoury, but the same mistake with the crew weight and mainsail are made often. See other bloggs of mine for discussions of assy sport boat and j109 gybing.

The Tack

Tacking of course varies a lot less than gybing in terms of angles and what you do with the sails. In any weight of wind it is always an exagerrated harden up, followed by a minimised falling off.

Roll tacking in light winds is though both an exaggerated harden up and fall off and really a bit beyond the scope of this blog. Worth practicing though in any boat up to say 40 foot long and  then picking uyp some of the subtleties which can be included in tacks in heavier winds.

You want to let the boat induce the tack with a little more heel than usual followed up by a nice, controlled , firm-but-fair and other wise fully judicious use of the tiller to coax the boat up and round.  But also the mainsheet needs attention.

One key point from theory is that 'is there a point beyond close hauled when you are still sailing?' and the answer to that is yes.Many a sigma 33 or x99 sailor has reverted to using a polar table in order not to sail too high! Boats have close hauled when the top tell tale gives away all the compelx physics by simply breaking 30/50% of the time, but that can be a little high just the same for optimum VMG. For any boat what so ever though, this means that going through a tack, it pays to sheet in a little as you come up head to wind. This means that one, you gain a little forward drive which you would otherwise loose, and secondly there is less drag from the sail as you hit head to wind.

When falling off, you want to then not let the boat heel to far in a normal wind as the wind builds. The main should be eased to a known amount so that the helm can fall off to a point where the top tell tail stalls and the either slip the main out, or sail up a little depending on the weight of wind. This is a lot better than waiting for the jib, and of course particularly, genoa to be trimmed. many helms do this and end up pointing to high or low and being dependent on the last part of coming out of the tack to make it a good tack!

Boats like the Melges 24 and the Impala 28 I have sailed on, really need weight hiked out over the rail at above force 3 in order than the boat can find its groove and not sit unbalanced and pointing too high, with too little keel effect. On light displacement boats the lift of the keel is quite marked so much so that when it is way too high off vertical on the beat or in a broach, the effect of the top ballast is reduced. So this exacerbates a tack where the crew are slow over to the new rail. Fast choreograhpy is the route to scucess, but for an ordinary wendesday night or satruday memomiral race, you can just slow the tacks to the condition of the crew.

In wind of above say 7 knots true, you can then continue to roll any boat into the tack, follow this naturally hul driven luffing with the helm and the mainsheet trim in, and then get the boat through irons quickly, while concentrating on getting the right angle on the new tack and weight up on the rail. In many conditions, a bit like in a rally car, you can actually steer the boat a little off wind to induce heel and a little mini broach- the boat will often pick up speed as you bear off, heel and round up to the wind. You can choose to hard in on the sheet to help this, or use the helm more and follow it by the sheeting in.

The traveller is also a bug bear in tacks and ideally the helm or main man will go over and pull it up to centre on the old lee side before the tack is complete, to avoid shutting the slot as the boat falls off.

Basics, Back to them ASAP ......

Being able to coordinate helm, sheet and then heel are basic dinghy techniques all young sailors should learn and most old salts could learn from once again, informing their big boat sailing. Hardening up and falling off are the two most challenging elements for new beginners yet also a source of serious mistakes from very experienced racing sailors. Mastering these two elements off the race course in terms of just cruising will then help prepare a helm and crew for racing, or achieve improvement in a racing team who need to perform better. Racing is still  a test of sailing skills despite what ever technology is used or speeds achieved, and in breaking down our understanding of the bare elements of manoevres, we learn finesse from the race course.

Teaching Again....Getting the Principles of Sailing Across to All Ages

I return to a topic which always engages me and makes me think of my times in sailing schools, or sea scouts as a pupil and later as an instructor, course leader and team coach .....on a voluntary basis it has to be said.

There are many different styles of teaching the same curriculum. An old aquaintance of mine who was a sports psychologist, used to teach kids by pretending to just be an extra helper, and fooling around a bit asking what things like that stick there might do while out in a wayfarer with three or four kids under 10 years old. He would always include " the sail is all baggy, not much use that eh? What can we do about it? " which is a wonderful way of getting kids to pick up the obvious and learn by discovery, experiment and initiative.

You could cover all sorts of styles of teaching, from the tough megaphone from the rib on a wet day, to dressing up as pirates and going on a treasure hunt in boats for sweeties. However there are some principles of sailing which must be taught, it is just that I tend to stray a good deal from the traditinal sequence of skills, and I disagree with the way so much jargon is used, but also I abhore all the dumming it down too much. Everyone expects to learn some nautical terms and not be patronised.

Here is the kind of order then as a bit of thinking out loud exercise I would build any sailing course for any age, and in fact more or less any ability up to junior national champion level which I have coached to:

1.. Wind Sense

When ever I set out for a sail, in the car or walking down to the dock, I try and relax and empty my mind and look for signs of the wind and any weather shifts which may be literally on the horizon, or clues as to what may happen to the wind. Usually I will have been on the weather web sites and windfinder.com the day before, and I often like to leave it at that and use my own wind sense on the day to judge if the weather forecast is accurate and if so at what phase we are at in the sequence of the day.

Teaching wind sense need not be very technical, although for an adult or late teen course and especially winter evening work shops or lectures, meteorology is a worthy topic in some detail.

Wind sense starts then with plain and simply where the wind is blowing from and how hard it is blowing. We are lucky in the UK to use the beaufort scale because it is a very good graphic way of memorising wind states, if not the actual stregnths, from the what is visually apparent of course on the day. Also relating to the shipping forecast and inshore waters weather it then conjours up an instant mental image of conditions for the experienced sailor, and a resilting cascade of small decisions and further questions. Will it really blow up that hard in this estuary? We'll have a reef and a number three and see how it goes then. We will need extra clothes and some warm soup in a thermos to avoid trying to use the galley. We will need a really bent mast and shortened forestay in the dinghy championship tommorrow.....

For kids and adults it is just as fun to ask for hands out as to where the wind is blowing from, and for adults *n. hemisphere) turning your back on the wind and the left hand out is another visual explanation of the low pressure centre when sailing in anticyclonic conditions.  On days with force 3 or more, it is usually pretty apparent but maybe you can begin to ask how much it is varying in direction? Where would we sail with the wind behind us? Can we sail straight into the wind? Flags are handy, have at least a birgee up a mast before you start if not a nice club ensign up the on shore flags display. In light airs, it can  we worth asking where the wind is showing itself, and helping folk out with some rough pointers on the idea of signs on the water, or smoke and so on.

Wind sense is also about using our five senses, sight first, but also sound, sense of warm-cold and even smell. I remember many a wind shift was accompanied on its leading edge with either the smell of silage from farmland, or guano (gull crap) from rocks or navigation marks. So always get people to shut their eyes and feel the wind on their cheeks, through their hair, on the back of their hands or on a wetted finger ( which is not as good as the sense on the cheeks imho!!)

This is something we do on the land to begin with, but always come back to it when teaching out on the water. The fundamental for new beginners is that the helm should always sit on the windward side of the boat, explained as with the sails pushed out by the wind to the other side. Quite a lot of adults are bad at this actually, maybe they have come from boats with high booms and wheels. Make em sit out on the deck too, not on any inboard benches or the cockpit floor.

From just the first two minutes then of any course, we have engaged the pupils with the idea of Wind Sense, and we can embellish that with the age old quest to sail the seven seas, and the wind being our only source of powerr.

The next theme is straight on from this and is although it may sound basic, this is applicable at all leves of sailing.

2) Being Master of the Wind, Not Mastered By the Wind

Wind sense leads us right into how we are going to exploit the wind, and how we are going to master the conditions in order to make headway.

For new beginners in clement weather, this means explaining the points of sail. There are only three of them in essence, so dont dumb down just call them beating, reaching and running.

Beating and tacking up wind can be likened to zig zagging uphill which any troop of boy scouts who have been on a mountain path, or adults who have driven in the alps will understand. I still use the term "uphill leg" for a laugh when racing.  I also use 'downhill' and of assy's slalom ski course for running or sailing effectively DDW. The metaphor extending to " it can be easy going, but the unwary can stumble and have the nastiest of falls possible"

This is taken on land and very well illustrated with the use of a boat rigged up on a trolly and a smaller model boat set up on a kind of placat, you can DIY then, lots of fun, or actually having another instructor out in an oppie or whatever sailing off the quay or pontoon.

Usually for a first day out in the summer we can just help everyone rig with medium set tensions and outhauls etc, perhaps flattening more for the lightest of crews, and it is important to go round and help everyone just get it right for their weight without explaining it.

If there is either more or less wind than is ideal, then of course we can explain the concept of flatteing the sails to let either the heavy wind skuff over it, or to stop the light wind being killed dead in its tracks along the curve.

Very light days can find better use for swimming tests between pontoons, or towing the boats out in a string and letting them use the rudder without even a mast in sometimes. Basic Capsize drill can also be done without a rig, just get then to sit on the hull and then use the centreboard to right the boat. For wet suit clad children or adults, this will let them feel their bouyancy works, and by seeing lots of others happily jumping in and swimming, and truteling boats they will break down their natural fear of the water and more importantly of capsize.

It is also before you go out to discuss what might be a good plan for the sail. For example if you know the wind will die with the sun going under the yard arm, then ask them what usually happens of a summer eve here? Should they plan to not stray so far from the club in order to be able to come in if the wind dies? Or is there bags of wind forecast within the duration of the session?

Where could they best go for an A-B tour along the coast,  given reaching is the fastest point of sail?

How long might it take to tack up wind to reach the tip of the island ?

Finally for older students we can talk about combining all three points of sail in a route aka the course, of course. This takes a bit more abstract thought but introducing this early will pay dividends for the fastest learners in particular, who get the whole point and start to use Wind Sense very soon on, and become fleet leaders which is very inspiring (occaisionally irritating to others! they need to be reeled in sometimes) and rewarding to see as an instructor.

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I make a pause here for emphasis!!!

Wind Sense And the Principles of Mastering the Wind are very fundamental to all levels of sailing, and the more your pupils realise this for themselves, the better the sailors they will become.

Up to this point the course participants have maybe not set foot on a boat.

These two guiding principles form not only part of the days briefing but also the end of days learning lessons ie debreifing.

When coaching keel boats I try to have a debreifing and often it only works when I have not been on board and I can come on as a pain in the neck, but help catalyse thought on performance and how the 'cards the wind dealt' were played out for better or for worse on the course or with boat handling and tuning underway, or from how the rig was set up for the day which is often crucial in one design sailing or boats with carbon rigs in particular.

These two principles guide sailing from the absolutte beginner to Larry Elisson,  Russel Coutts, Julian Bethwaite and Ben Ainsley. Veritable fortunes are spent on enhancing wind sense and prediction, and how to squeeze performance in terms of mastery. In essence that is sailing as a physical sport and a design development process.

I note that some students are really good at boat handling, sheet-tiller coordination and footwork from quite early on, or if they have come from previous courses yet often seem very happy to go fast and do manoerves well, while not really seeming to get the point of where they should be going. But the ones who develop wind sense can run rings around them when it comes to racing towards the end of the course or season. They are the ones who stop following all the spinnaker boats into an impossible header to the next mark, drop the kite and tight reach around the whole fleet. They are the ones who tighten the kicker, outhaul and cunningham before the new bigger wind hits them. They are the ones who understand the Windward-Leeward course or the olympic triangle by second nature after a few seasons, and then can start to really understand the wind shifts and wind strategy.

These two principles are intertwined and inform most all of the rest of sailing in terms of technique, strategy, planning, and most of all safety which I usually take at the stage of having a boat rigged and paraded through the points of sail on a trolley on dry land/
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3) Safety

Safety is something which is under stressed by some schools, while completed taken to over kill by the helmet clad, litigation neurotic schools.

Health and Safety gets a bad name from some idiots in the press who never have worked anywhere near something more potentially dangerous than a walk down to Oxford Circus. The UK authorities seem though very glad on over interpreting HSE rules and European standards, such as banning conqor fights, and on having risk assessments for opening the box of cotton wool to wrap themselves in. The opposite is true here in Norway, where there are far too many assumptions about kids having nouse, or being used to being in and around the water. A happy balance must be struck, and documentation made available to inform schools and instructors and guide them in making risk assessments which are always best in the head of the instructor at the time the hazard presents itself. Risk assessments and involving third party emergency services are good for larger events, new schools,  new types of vulnerable or unruly pupils and so on. Some very good standard school, season, lesson and route risk assesments are often available from the club secretary or the national sailing body as either a generic fill in the blanks, or as a framework for building a very specific risk assessment and emergency action document.

In principle for sailing I have mentioned the two concepts here. Hazard and Risk.

There are two main hazards in sailing

1) Being hit by the boom in a gybe, head injury incurred
2) Being trapped under the boat or other object and drowning

These come from dozens of health and safety debreifs or fatal-accident-enquiries and are thus written in stone aas the two that really need to be thought about and tackled.

The other main hazard which may present itself is any health problems amongst the class,   or things like hypothermia in duration events or cooler weather.

Nuclear power is of course very hazardous, or indeed nuclear warheads are probably the biggest hazard on the planet. However the risks of there being a melt down or explosion have been thought about, tested by proxy and established form accidents over the years, such that risk assessment has guided risk reduction, even though the potential Hazard is large. There are very few nuclear accidents these days. The hazard is there, but the risk is mostly percieved amongst the public.

In sailing then there are these two over riding deadly hazards. These must be taken seriously in every stage of teaching and rescue preparativeness. The next stage, victim evacuation, safety for the rest of the fleet and medical assistance or hospitalisation have also to be thought about seriously. A new instructor or volunteer should simply ask the club for their risk assessment and emergency plan in relation to the sailing school. If they do not have one, then they should be kindly asked a good many questions to see if in fact there is any awareness of what can happen and how to get kids especially to medical attention quickly. The RYA and the NSF here in Norway are pretty good at helping out, and there is an accreditation scheme, plus insurers in the UK are more up front about expectations to secure liability cover for the club, events and sailing school courses.

Teaching Gybing and the Risk the Boom and the Risk of Involuntary Gybe  I was very lucky in that the first decent sailing school I went to refused to put tell tales on the sails, and quite often took birgees off the boats on purpose. They wanted to ram home the importance of wind sense on the water by using the roughest measures first ie the jib backing, letting the sails out until they luff a little, hardening up until the sails rag and so on. In terms of gybing, they taught to watch out for the lazy wandering jib in a two sailed boat, when it starts to play dead around the foredeck. They taught you how to just luff up a little, and sit on a very broad reach rather than a dead run when in a single hander as a beginner.

For more advanced sailors it is more about that YOU control the gybe, NOT letting the gybe CONTROL YOU ! (with the crew on the ball if not in a single hander)

Accidental gybes also relate to wind sense and keeping an eye over your back shoulder to see what is coming. I hear many people talk of a big wind shift and a nasty chinese gybe on the race course, but of those who claimed this who I actually saw during their accident, they were all running too deep for the shifty conditions anyway, and shoould have chosen the gust to gybe on rather than getting hit by a veering gust as they were setting up for the gybe.  There are some shifty harbours and weather phenomenom but a clued up sailor and more importantly, you as dear teacher, should know about these and take actions accordingly such as informing  people about it, or even avoiding running with the wind in the session.

A lot of modern boats with high aspect, long battened rigs or indeed old pigs like snipes and wayfairers dont like gybing and need a lot of coaxing anyway, but this is the point about teaching decisiveness and determination in a gybe, choose the moment, set up, and force the main sheet, kicker and boom over while ducking out the way and being ready to catch the harden up effect on the new heading when the sail catches.

I would go so far as to say that gybing should be taught before tacking but then I would contradict another basic ahead of us.

Avoiding gybing is then worth teaching BEFORE you teach tacking.

Being trapped under the boat/ quick comment. For single handed fleets, any boat which is turtle should be visited by the rescue boat if the crew cannot immediately be seen. Same for double handers or more, count the heads. Also for double handers, teach them to give a hailing wave as soon as they are not sure if the other crew member is ok or not ie they cannot see them or know they are maybe trapped.

One final comment about running safe courses, a big deal is actually defining and enforcing the sailing areas boundaries for the session or indeed entire school. In windier weather these should be made smaller, not larger  such that a whole fleet of capsized boats can at least have their crews all seen as safe within the two minute zone of death as it is called by many, ie all safe, okay or any issues deal with them first., In a sqaull situation with most of the fleet turtled then head count and signs of life first, stopping remaining boats sailing, and then getting the crews into the rescue boat are the priorities before actual capsize recovery takes place. Masts can be fixed or replaced, dead children can't.

4) Getting Started....and Getting Stopped

Literally getting started. How to sheet in and get going on a reach. But hold up here!!!! Teach them how to stop immediately!!!! This is so vital yet I cannot actually count the times at sailing schools I have taught at that kids go off on a reach and just keep going and then start get worried and so to hug both the tiller extension and the main sheet and thus fall off and capsize. I have not to this day seen that the RYA or NSF have really thought about this every day occurance.

Stopping up is so important in sailing, whether racing or cruising.

Here is why

1) Build confidence in the helm and amongst the crew that there is a high degree of control !
2) Is emminently useful in the following situations
a) coming up to moor, anchor or go alongside
b) Coming up early to a start line.
c) waiting for other boats to get out of the way and avoiding collision thus.
d) stopping up to then fix somethign in the boat or just take a breather

Getting started then means about getting out, going along on a reach and then luffing up and letting the sails rag in essence. You can joke a little on land by asking where the breaks are on a boat..always good for a laugh amongst absolute new beginners. 

I then teach the old RYA "basic safe" or simple heave to, where you position the boat just about as high as on a beat, and then let the sails rag (flutter sorry, ragging=slipping out sails until they just flutter in the wind) . This takes a bit of explanation, but generally is from reaching, a little luff and sheet in and then once on the move, sheet out and come to a hault. Sitting more or less head to wind is usually a net result of kids luffing too hard, so dont get annoyed with anyone, just go up to their starboard bow in your rib, talk to them, rotate their boat onto a tight reach while making sure they sheet out, and the making them sheet in and then out again until they see that they can start and stop at will on this type of course instead of being locked in irons.

Later on I still like to teach crash tacking to properly hove to, in order to hold a safe position usually while fixing something or checking the crew is not injured or the like.  This then also lends itself to teaching them to back the jib to come out of head to wind "in irons". Refer to single hander texts on rowing or raising the bow out of head to wind.

Starting I usually teach as with most any book with reaching away from the shore, stopping or at least slowing down by slipping the sails out and then turning the boat quickly through the wind ie a tack without calling it that, to then point the bow back to point A. Often best to let one boat go at a time for new beginners of all ages, while the others wait on the pontoon ie great to use just one boat to have a degree of control and teaching under way for everyone.

5) Luffing Up and Bearing Away

I teach then how to luff the boat up from a reach to a beat, and how to fall off.

One of my best ever teachers was Derrick at Tighnabruaich. He saw I was coming from keel boats back to dinghies, and was a bit of a bear on sheets. He instructed then on the hand cleating technique (they sawed off all the jam cleats from under the main blocks at the school!! ) from main sheet to hand on the tiller

" In light winds you need only the one finger on the main sheet to secure it.
As the wind builds you only need two, and in stronger winds and after reefing you only need three of the four fingers.
This is because you use the coordination of steering to release the load on the sheet and make the best progess"

Now in competition, some boats do need to be hanked on hard and the jamming cleat used as an aid to getting enough leech tension on, but in pricinple he is very right and this is borne out on the high performance nineer boats which sheet right from the boom without any cleat, just a ratchet block.

So luffing up is best taught as steer first, sheet in, steer some more, sheet in, and then get a sense for how high you can sail on the wind for the conditions and how much pressure there is on the sheet.

Down the line this also informs how much pressure there is on the rig for the sailors and then how the rig can be depowered before sailing and during the sail or race. Also in a subequent blog I will discuss finesse in sailing, which includes the opposite in light winds, sheet first, follow with the rudder to luff up.

To this day  I still like to avoid cleating the mainsail when I can in most any boat i sail!

Bearing away in dinghies or small keel /sports boats should always be taught with an emphasis on rolling the boat a little to windward, ie over your back, from day one, as the feeling for this and the security in doing something actually counter intuitive, will then be something which can be built upon later, not something which is alien and scary. I have seen some very promising Europe sailors who lacked confidence in rolling the boat to bear away, because they did not get this drill properly when they were in beginner's boats.

It pays to teach both luffing up and bearing away as a series of small manoerves with a pause eac time the sheet is let out or taken in respectively. In that way sheet control and coordination to helm is at first separated, helm sheet to luff sheet out helm down to bear away. In fact I myself need to go out next season and practice this way!!!! In essence a full harden up ie leeward mark, or bear away ie top mark, is  just a smooth roll of the different freeze frames, with sheeting and steering then seamlessly coordinated.

6) Break It Down

Back then to a more guiding principle for the rest of the manoerves in sailing.

Breaking down movements and making them repeititive is a big theme for me, as you can see above with starting and stopping, luffing and bearing away,  which I make dinghy sailors do a lot of in practice starts and follow the leader exercises.

The same is true for all subsequent manoevres. For tacking and gybing, the ground is so well covered in graphic text books and RYA on line video clips that I just do not want to waste time on them. Suffice to say that breaking it down into

1) Decision to manoevre
2) Anticpation of outcome of manoerve
3) Inform crew
4) All settings right to go
5) Entry
6) critical midpoints
7) exit
8) assertion of correct course and sail settings

As you see there is a subtle racing oriented foreplay here. You see you may want to manoevre, or need to. You then need to look at where you will end up on the new tack or gybe. Does this fit your strategy? Do you really need to tack, can you go behind to stay with strategy?  Wll this be a temporary repositioning, which will need to be corrected for with another one?

You can actually see that the road map above is equally applicable to cruising in fact as it is to sailing up to the windward mark in a fleet of 100 lasers.

Breaking things down also applies to two other areas of mental preparation

firstly the different phases of a race or route. Visualising what sub components there are and how these can be tackled, and what might influence your choice or determine the outcome of your choices.

Secondly breaking down what went wrong. It can be in a manoevre, you know you are slow out of tacks, break it all down again, perhaps you are slow in and slow through in fact!??

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In this little blogg I hope I have given you some ideas, pointers and even a little tool kit in approaching teaching a course. It may seem very new beginner oriented, but if you think carefully the same points above can be used at all levels of sailing.

One area whcih does not quite fit into my principles here, but was touched upon in luffing up without a main sheet jam cleat, is sailing with finesse. As in all sports I can think of, making motions smoother and making them flow into one another is tantamount to mastery. In martial arts and sailing, finesse actually becomes infantessimal and demands many hours of practice to remain consistent and many years of dedication to make gains in.

Finesse and Mastery will be the subjects then of a future blog on actually learning sailing, and maybe with only  small element of teaching sailing in order to learn, which has parallels once again to martial arts.