Riddled Tides and Fickle Winds - On Winners and Losers Again

Ah nowt as riddled as the tide, no mistress as fickle as the wind!

I have been lucky I feel to sail with three types of boats - winners, losers and those prepared to learn enough to become winners.

Dog boats have their day usually due to huge shifts in weather or carnage in the fleet, but by in large they talk a lot about 'lady luck' not being on their side that day. That really just throws away any notion of actually learning from your mistakes or listening as to why some boats put themselves in a favourable position when it comes most significantly to tide and wind across the race course or at decisive points in a passage (longer distance) race.

Winning boats are very clear about wind and tide. Tide is not just something you see in the middle of a race and ponder about while scratching your head, it is something you need to plan for in advance in coastal waters. Weather is something which is usually pretty well predicted too, but more in terms of the sequence and general type of weather you will get. Often that sequence can run through faster or slower, and in temperate areas of the world such as the UK and US northern seabord, the sun can modify a slight gradient breeze to produce more or less wind than forecast. Wind blowing over several days from the SW in the English Channel for example, will also affect tidal characteristics, enhancing a flood tides approach in speed and timing. In Oslo fjord with its' deep water the same effect with a southerly can completely negate the weaker sides of the tide because this 'top drift' effect is powerful enough to force the ebbing tide under it into deeper water.

So we know roughly what the wind is going to do, and pretty exactly what the tide will be doing from our forecast and almanac. We then check this locally and look for any local variation in tide, and time from the nearest datum point . By checking I mean we go down to the harbour wall and look at what is happening, like our old boy scout days looking at wet sea weed on the beech line and flotsam going in or out on the tide. We can also look on the water for wind against tide, likely to affect a beat of course, and once out we start to look at bouys and stationary objects in the channels or sounds which give away the direction and stregnth of the tide.

A lot of mid to back fleet boats do not set any price on finding out about the tide, seeing it as a minor disruption that all will have to put up with, and possibly following folk on close tacking up the shore once they do notice it being the only concession, in a kind of sheep like way. But remember a 2 knot tide is very significant. To compare to a car journey, it is like a car on a wide country road meeting a cross or head wind of force five relative to their 60mph progress! Even a 1 knt tide with or against you then is significant, especially in one design and even more so in light airs when it can constitute 50% of boat speed at times! An average cruiser racer beating at 6.5 knts had better pay good attention to the tide.

In a team of experienced acers, one man, and not the helm, should be allocated tidal strategy for the day. They should know exactly the local high water times for the day, not just the alamac as an index to somewhere nearby. With the Isle of Wight for example, the Inner solent experiences a 'double high water' effect as the tide rushes first up the west then round and from the eastern approach. The text book tide rises and falls with a velocity profile, or relative speed over time like this 123321, thus building to a max time of flood or ebb and then tailing off until high or low water is reached. However some places are more affected by funnelling effects so ask locals or folk who have done well at these venues or coastal passage races. As mentioned a steady top-drift direction driven by the wind for many days can alter the pattern, negating it completely even. In combination with low pressure this can lead to a far higher high tide at an earlier time than predicted. High pressure established for a long time suppresses flood tide and can render moderate springs to look more like neap tides, or delay high water time during that period.  A higher tide level means more volume of water in roughly the same time, or shorter when blown in too, so it can mean that a sailing mid channel is a real big amount of pain only to be taken when you most have to. The guy having coffee at the commodores table with an almanac may well not have seen that this is going to happen early and be a tougher tide to stem than you on the course!

Tidal vectors are then really worth making for the presumed windward marks or windward headlands of the day. Rodney Pattison gives some good introductions to these in his books, and there are more discussions on these in day skipper and yacht master material so I wont go into redrawing diagrams to avoid copyright, you can google  'sailing tidal-vectors- and look them up on youtube. As a rule of thumb when you really have to take the pain of stemming the tide at its worst, ie fastest point, then you want to do that on a tack which is bow right into the tide if is is running generally against you. Lee bowing with tide lifting your bow towards the weather mark on a beat or towards a mark you are reaching or running towards is often seen as a lovely situation. However when on a beat the effect is messing up your wind vector a bit and in those fickle wind conditions it can be better in fact sailing on the other tack  with the tide more on your sterrn or quarter. This is because the tide is pushing you into a header, so when you get a 'knock' from a relative wind stop up, it is experienced as far more catastrophic with the sails collapsing and making you feel that the wind has changed radically in direction instead of only having died for a few seconds. A tide on the stern will lift you 'geographically' as in being in a big bucket of water walked by a giant, just as much and will also increase the apparent wind which will help fill your sails during lulls in the day.

It can be very hard to work out the direction of the tide when you are helming or sitting on the rail, it is far better to look at the charts and take bearings mid channel, parallel to the shore as an indication to tidal direction on flood and ebb. When plumbed into your wind direction results from your practice beat to the weathermark (oh yes you will be doing this if you want to improve dear reader!!) you then have a pencilled set of tidal vectors to give the best of the worst so to speak, take the least pain the in the best way, and then capitalise most when going with the tide. At the simplest level this means just staying out of the channel and near the shore when the tide is against you, and the opposite when it is with you, but on a beat or reach a pencilled tidal vector on the chart or race instructions will help you get that extra little polished performance, most notably on the last tack to the weather mark or a reach to a headland.

A great deal of mythology is built around the riddled tide and especially on just how it is riddled up. This is all in fact a matter for science, or at least local knowledge. Usually it relates to the above phenomena with weather of the week to do, and weird stuff like the solent double high water, however the mythology most revered is that of the back eddy!  The many possibilities of a fastnet race against a flood tide to landsend and beyond, the passage to Tobermory with the bays and lochs toying with the tide and the infamous Lindesfarne cliff flyer back eddy whcih will put you a day ahead of other sailors me hearties a-harr! It is very true to say that some back eddies are very predictable and occur for the large part of the first half of a flood tide. They are mostly predictable in form from sea charts, being created by deep bays, islands and you may not know, invisible shallow banks and channels which we otherwise pay little attention to, bar a little oh, it's only 5m deep here way out from the coast! Some are very much bigger and this makes them more powerful because of the correolis effect from the earth's rotation. The best know of these is the Gulf Stream which is  a constant revolution of sea water in one direction which spews out warm water round the tip of Florida and this then is so powerful that it reaches Scotland and Norway. Another in Norway and Denmark is the anti clockwise tide of the Skagerrakk - the true tide only ever flows in along the Danish coast and out along the south Norwegain coast, at a peak in neaps of about 2.5knts.

Chasing back eddies is not just a matter of getting a few hundred meters of glorious advantage, that may be very short lived. If the end of the eddy places you in more tide or at a very poor tidal wind vector compared to the fleet then the gain may soon be destroyed. In a series of bays though with a tide against you, it pays then to go into the shallow and then come out at the next head land where the eddy will start rather than try and stem the tide on a shorter course out in the channel, sailing clear of the headlands. Vector  diagrams will help you decide this. To you make a chord across the bay and have better wind speed and apparent wind driving the sails than deeper in the bay to get to the next back eddy? Or do you go right in and then shoot out on the headland to get the eddy? Often you can persist in shallow water as near as you dare on a headland, on the Tobermory route in the sound of Mull there are several channels between rocks and shelves if you dare, which means you short cut the navigation of the headland and get lifted by the wheel of an ebb tide working in the next bay. On a beat with a tide against you it is very clear at headlands where the back eddy is in effect because there will be suddenly tide against wind, or even the odd standing wave - this is the good place to be! Now when beating you want to make the most progress to windward on the tack which positions the boat best to both use the eddy, and come out of it and scoot into the shallows again. Sometimes you may even end up maxing out your use of an eddy, falling off that ferris wheel, and scuttling on a reach over to shallow water as fast as you can!

A word of caution on the wonder of eddys- some eddy's only 'work' during a certain phase of the tide, most of the 123 first half, then being replaced by a general flood or ebb, while others are more preturbed by weather conditions such as a lot of top drift destroying their effect for yachts, or that they only work during spring tides or only during neap tides. Also the ideal point to exit them is either with their estimated circular / arch centre point abeam, or when if you have been able to tack with the very tip of the tongue. After this you may not just face tide ag'in you but also strange circular tides whcih in light winds on a thin chord keel racing boat, make a mockery of your best intentions to sail towards the beach!

Tidal vectors are useful in decision making on the run as well because you may expect to be making good speed out in the true wind, and with only 1.5knts of tide against you, is VMG not going to be better direct to mark? When planing in a Melges we rarely take any notice of the 2-3 knots tide against us here when we are planing under kite. We pay some attention when beating though. The tide-wind vector diagram will also show you pretty clearly just how bad a spinnaker header you are going to get when the tide is with you, and that in turn reduces the efficiency of the kite running DDW on what looks like a shortest course to the leeward mark. Conversley a tide against you on the nose will fill your spinnaker more and give you a better speed through water (boat speed)  which may feel all hunky dory, but boats which have reached off into shallow water or a nice back eddy sail further over the ground but come out far ahead.

Acetates (transparent sheets you can write on with a marker pen) are a really good means of plotting tide over the day for a given race course, or along a given route. Also they are useful to have for tidal wind vector diagrams if you have a proctractor on board or available. Using acetates means you can simply overlay them on the chart you have used as a template for them on certain refernce marks. If races are postponed, or slower than anticiapted, you can then update the next race with a later acetate showing the tidal flow by direction and stregnth. You don't have the luxury of that in dinghy racing really, but you can have some chinagraph notes onto laminates with you. Dinghies have the advantage of being able to sail in the shallowest of waters and often with other fleets around to show them where it is best ot eventually take that inevitable pain to get to the mark with the tide against you.

Allocate a crew to the job, sit with them the night before and discuss the tide for the day ahead in light of the wind forecast. The day on the water is then from the dock onwards a case of comparing reality to predicted and being confident in what is coming next, and where will be best to place your boat to avoid tide against and use tide with you, where you will want to take the necessary pain on which tack, and if there is a better pay off from more wind rather than more/or less tide respectively especially on a run.

On Building Winning Team Work (Notes on Part 3: Good Function, Strategy and Flexibility)

Good Function, Strategy and Flexibility are three key differences between teams which hover mid fleet with lady luck seldom on their side, and boats which are on the podium more often than not.

Good function is a bit of a cover all phrase I threw in while making a skeleton for the blogg, but in fact on revisiting this term I think it is exactly right- function here meaning that both equipment works and is right for the task at hand, while also that the crew use it properly. A kind of pre-requisite is that helm and crew are in synchrony, not out of step with each other. This applies equally to strategy and tactics, but here it means that in manoevres, the helm calls them clearly and keeps an eye on the safety and progress of his crew through say a gybe or on the start, such that he doesn't get ahead of them and act as if they were fsiliure proof automatons.

Coreography then has to be firmly in place with the back , and this comes either from many hours of sailing together and analising the faults, or from being jockeyed up for a Regatta with 'rock star ringers' - throwing together some highly competent sailors on a well equipped boat to go trophy hunting at that Regatta,  Series or Nationals. Either way winning boats do just this. Crew who don't hold the learning curve or don't turn up to train round the cans need to be ahem, upgraded - ditched or given a wee-chat-in-my-office. Many national champions have sailed as a fixed team for years, and it is a crying shame that the yachting press give crew so little attention.

Any functioning organisation has a management information system, and this is part of "function' way beyond chart plotters. It is a two way street with info and suggestions coming from the rail, and also back. It need not be democracy, but it must be a well informed dictator who brandishes the stick. Usually some one calls the wind shifts and weather signs someone calls the boat threats and opportunities and imho, someone else should be holding an eye on tide and the clock.

Flexibility- plain and simple getting out of bad situations and taking opportunities on the fly. Mistakes and minor mishaps are recovered from, and on board accidents or near misses are taken seriously. Also in the big picture, analysing your startegic plan against actual conditions or performance. Cutting your losses in old money - if you have gone right and left pays, get over quick. If you get the best start and find yourself leading, cover the fleet rather than going right as planned say.

Further to this, flexibility means being open minded to conditions and possibilities within a given strategy. Many a boats throws away a great start and good first beat by not noticing that the second beat is on a permanent shift, or the course from  the leeward mark is skewed compared to the start line half way up it. Sometimes strategy itself has flexibility at its' core - in varied conditions with a bullish fleet, avoiding trouble longer down the line and sailing up the mid cours, taking in the shifts or up the 60' cone until any side becomes clearly better, or the fleet impeeds you and you go early right to get nearer the layline to ramp up places by gunning later right goers down on starboard.

What flexibility doesn't mean is dabbeling and fiddeling about. It is not carte blanche for a helm to try something out because he doesn't like being midfleet off a start, or throwing a corner flyer based on minimal evidence. On the water strategy conversely is not set in stone. You do not preprogramme the route and sail by autopilot. The simplest strategy I ever came upon was from one of the most successful of clyde yachtsmen, who said " get off the start line and tack on the first shift". Given no tide or wind bends, this is as cored down as you can get and is eminently flexible within a simple strategic tool.

Strategy: it goes beyond a wind and tide based plan for the race infront of you.
It entails for winning boats, discussing a race or series with your crew, appointing responsibiltiy for strategic input, measuring progress on the course or indeed through the season. As important as making a plan tuned to the expected weather conditions and tide then, is planning to overcome weaknesses, gain learning experiences and implement multiple, often very small improvements- see marginal gains blogg. In a season you can probably make one major gain in competence, say starts, while a good set of achievable marginal gains can actually make such a difference to for instance, boat speed, that you find you are showing a clean pair of heels to previous peers.

The secret between the leaders of any fleet and the hoi palloi, as I have said many times, is being able to stretch your neck out into clean air and have more open water for your next move and good starts, good boat speed and consumate manoevres. Sailing at the head of the fleet is like having your head out the fog too, because a light cover is easier to carry out within a strategy than fightij your way far left or right, while you have only a few boats ahead and around you tonactuslly worry about and to start tripping up as the wind shifts and roundings pile. Strategy helps get you there over time - learning how to put one in place and whatnis a successful approach to race, series and season.