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.

Goal Setting Versus Practical Routes Towards Goals

Goal setting is such a big thing in sports pyschology and career /lifestyle coaching. Dream. Think big! Or else "any road will take you there, if you don't know where you are going". 

According to this school of thought, ve high goals should be set, as a challenge, as a comfort disrupter, as the best way to g high acheivement. However, how many high goals are never, ever realised and how many poeple just fall off the carousel, without even making any improvement? How many managers change lots without really acheiving anything? How many sports people train vaguely towards a massively distant goal only to blame mediocre performance on lady-luck?

The last point is far from mute in sailing. In reality, few champions have actually started out with the goal on outset of an Olympic medal or a world cup series win.

I will not mince my words here. Throw out lofty, precise goals, and bring in imprecise ambitions. Ambition is an emotional status rather than an actual arithmetic, qualitative goal. Ambitions can easily be right-sized, without the driving emotion being destroyed. Unachieavble goals, by being unrealistic or distant, serve only to frustrate and demotivate along the way to greatness!

Let us not throw the baby out with the bath water here by any means here, regarding goal setting. We need goals - we must have goals. Only that these goals are much, much smaller,  supremely precise and tenable in the next session out on the water, or in the gymn, or in the 'library'. We will cover this modest and incremental goal-achieve philosophy in depth later, and go back to the principles of 'marginal gains' in terms of goal-setting and box-ticking.

Be Ambitious !

Back to ambitions, and the emotional drive we have in sport. It should be a Yin & Yang thang actually. We should on the black side, hate losing and chastise ourselves for idle mistakes. On the white side we should love winning but also love improving. Delight in self- correcting. Dare in trial-and-error.

We come then to the learning curve. There is an initial sailing competently round the course, after getting off the line on time, and this is a steep first portion of the curve in any career.  We then maybe plateau a bit while we make small gains in use of rules and boat speed. Many, many sailors get stuck somewhere on the second steep bit where we start to eat our way up the fleet and need to learn boat length-by-boat length, how to beat the boat just ahead. On this ramp, we have to learn to be competant with all the rules, consumate in manoevres, polished in team coreography and commanding over boat prep' and rig tuning.

After this steep 'mid section', we may reach a portion of diminishing returns, where we have to put in much more effort to learn something from which we actually get a smaller positive effect. We need then to consider the removal of minor obstacles and unrequired stress on competitors and teams, and look at the net quantitative of small improvements ie the theory and practice of Marginal Gains.

Gains and Goals - Small is Beautiful

Each and every step though up that steep, amd often long, middle hill in racing includes definable, measurable and acheivable goals. They need to be really small, and you need to train away from the race nights or days in order to isloate the challenge and work to overcome it.

So for example, i needed to learn a great deal more finesse in dinghy helming. Firstly i was able to analyse the issues- i was too harsh on the tiller, and fumbled the sheet. Outside of racing, I booked some specific instruction, including as a bit of a challenge, roll tacks and gybes, in a Laser II at a sailing school. I also hired a Laser single hander to tootle around in myself, and focus on tiller control, sheet grasp, and my new found roll skills - which were a fortuity to have chosen at this point because in fact rolling and pitch are very key to smooth helming. My sailing leapt up the results board and I actually won the first yacht race that i had ever helmed from start to finish, by a country mile that year.

Now you see that it is a very low level break down for small goals which join to build achievement. Also the outset, the problems- to paraphrase, any road will take you there if you don't know where you're starting. "Challenges" is so hackneyed a euphenism....what are you crap at ? When and where do you fall behind other competitors?  These should be minor problems, components of a larger performance picture, which lead to low threshold goal setting, and even further breaking those goals down into sub elements which are simpler to focus on solving and then performing.

The  learning curve is steeper here not because it is per se harder to learn in the mid phase - the gains are higher than the same input earlier or later. You have a base learning which was often slow, fumbling and frustrating. You then have a base competance and you start to guilp down new skills and improvements at an often exhiliarating rate - on each start, each beat, each new wind/wave condition and each coaching session.

Meeting Ambition with Stepping Stones en Route

All the time along the curve, AMBITION is our fuel cell. Yet like climbing mount everest, we maybe live in fear and trepidation of the huge goal, but set out up the foothills to see how far we come and enjoy the way. The next small summit we can get to and hold that altitude, is a building block on the way to higher things.

Now going back to my clumsy dinghy helming, i used to own and race (badly) a Tasar which has a rectangular cockpit and broad gunwhale/decks. The tiller end should not need to go outside the inner edge of the deck, otherwise you are braking the boat with too much rudder angle. It was quite easy to fix- just concentrating , looking firstly, at keeping the tiller in, and then getting the feel for it "blind" : on- and off-wind, and during tacks and gybes. Combined with heel, pitch and sail balance sheeting I made a lot of progress that year from a small area of identifiable problem.

Starts arw often a bug- bear , fitness /strength can be a limiting factor, beat strategy can be a mystery, mark-rounding can be nervous, boat prep and rig setti gs need gto be learned.  If you sat a goal to be champion, and thougnt that x hours per week get you there, then you might not see that you have one of these issues.

Coaching and Sailing with Better Sailors

Getting perspectives from outside your own bubble is vital to the process of keeping your learning curve in an upwards direction. Otherwise you will be 'myopic' to two things-

i. which elements you are truly weakest in

ii. how little a threshold there is to improve markedly.

My own personal approach to getting coached and cajouled is as an adult, and never part of the whole youth sqaud and teen-yachty scene. So I use either sailing schools or sail with better racers. In the first, I either have just gone and done an RYA certificate ( 2 and 4 in the old system) or I have booked one to one sessions to examine specific weaknesses or techniques. This has paid huge dividends and kept my learning curve steep, rather than unproductive from my own Tasar sailing alone. Also it informed by yacht and sports-boat racing immensely, adding finesse and even courage.

Secondly I was invited to sail with really competitve sailors, by pure chance or by them becomijng friends through the scene. What I immediately noticed was that they do very little different in fact from mid fleet 'dog boats'. There was no quantum leap. I have blogged on this before, but to summarise :

a)  better boat prep, newer equipment and sails,  everything works on board
b) confidence and aplomb on start lines, usually avoiding the worst of possible 'stramashes' at the biased end, or being in an aggressive, controlling position up there.
c) Spotting mistakes and wind shifts early and making correction or preparation
d) better boat handling - fewer mistakes, good team work, equipment fully functional
e) good wind and tide strategy. A bit more knowledge about all this on the course, and being able to interpret the natural signs of changes and shifts.

'Challenges" Are Actually Problems to Be Eradicated

I prefer to think of eradicating problems rather than tackling challenges. The latter is too soft a language- in my opinion you want to stamp out mistakes and performance issues. Challenge should be something longer term, part of your ambition.

You see the challenge as say a 20% improvement in your placings over last season. The first identifiable issue is getting a good start. Nerves are the problem at the route of this. Pratice starts; not taking some races so seriously; letting someone better helm; understanding the 'burn time' approach - these are your tools to overcome the issue and core nervousness problem.

  Each problem, issue or gap in knowledge is then fixable,  and gives quantifiable results in terms of boat lengths and in turn, results lisiting. Here we come back to marginal gains, because at the top you are looking at less than single boat lengths to beat your oponent by, especially off the start and on the first beat and run.

Marginal Gains and Mistake-Reduction

As all the good texts written by the medalists write, this aim of getting it right and also then making marginal gains, begins off the water with boat prep'.  Small tweeks and improvements gain half or even qaurter boat legnths off the start line by superior boat speed, or the same margin of gain in ease and ergonomics for hoists or on-water gear changes. Add some more work in the gymn, some more hours on the water training, and you start to see that small improvements add together.

Sailing to win in a fleet is by in large a case of stretching your neck out ahead  of the pack. After this, the gains are almost exponential becasuse you sail in your own wind, with fewer boats to encounter or slow you down at mark roundings. Very many OD races i have seen are characterised by the end of the first round by there being one boat in a definiative lead with a second maybe five boat legnths back, a third a littke bavk again but with a posse of chasers right on her heels. Then there is often a little gap or sparse patch, followed by the masses. The fact is that there is no miracle that the first three have built clear air for themselves- yes undoubtedly they know what they are doing anhave good boat prep. But the combined marginal gains they have made over the rest of the top third of the fleet results in them stretching their neck out.

Back to my favourite Uffa Fox philosophy for the common situation of "feast or famine" with the leaders eating greedily at the table of fresh wind - the third boat has maybe made three small errors- sheeted on too late by a second or two at the start, maybe not got the jib leads quite right, have a poorly faired rudder....boat two has just made two errrors and that affords her second place, while lead boat has just made one minor error and is going to win if she gets the second beat right and covers her followers appropriately. Sometimes her lead is erroded because in fact the chasing team have better boat speed, but she has the luxury of free wind and either a leisurely light cover on boat 2,  or an aggressive, match-race-style tight cover dog fight.

As in many endeavours, identifying a problem and describing it is often more than half of the cure.

Experiment and Factor Isolation

Knowing your problem is one thing, but sometimes we are more left with a blank sheet of paper. We have to experiment in order to progress, or sometimes to solve a problem we have defined very well. This is very true in handicap racing, or when you live  a long distance from the main fleet's or indeed when you are st the top of your class and looking for more gains.

As in lab' science, good experimentation means testing one element under one set of conditions, such that the cause-effect relationship can be firmly established. This entails that the sailor looks to firstly measure current performance in a relevant wind and sea state. They then look at what they want to introduce or alter- just one element, separated to it's definable little package.

So for example, you may want to experiment to make a quicker gybe. The manoerve has many elements, so which one would you choose first ? Is it a light air gybe which is your weak point or area to look for gains in? Will it be the roll into the gybe first? Or will you look at the snap roll out of the gybe? Or will you try to ease the both sheet and guy out when the pole is off to get the kite filling more ahead of the bow ?

Measurability is important and the latest super accurate 64-bit GPS will help. Some things in sailing which are fast don't 'feel" so right, like being in the groove on a modern short chord foil boat- a neutral feeling after acceleration is finished feels slow, but is 'groovy'. As a different example You may want to compare active sailing in waves versus setting the boat up for low and fast. This could be tested very well boat-on-boat in say a wednesday regatta or a 2 boat tuning session, but GPS is a verry good tool for single boat experiment. Failing gopd gps, or in addition to it, there are various means of using bouys and transits with stop watches deacribes in High Performance Sailing.

Paychology and Ambition Again

As i mentioned Ambition is a great fuel to improve - while each improvement itself is taken at outset as very objective. Achieving each small goal gives more satisfaction and lets you drop your shoulders more and enjoy racing with your new found skills, and perspective on the learning curve.

Another motivator I used to have, and know many sailors harbour, is hating losing. It really is a double edged sword because hate often leads to anger which in turn clouds judgement. But on the other hand, it drives you to be better.

Older and much wiser, I find that poor results are something to learn from. These days I know  it is important to train often and I just dont, but I am pleased to get out racing and try new boats, like the 12mR not really caring about the results. I know there will be something to learn which will enrich my sailing later.

As a novice, I would recommend that before you even join a club, that you get out on an RYA dinghy course ( or your particular national association or private school) and set getting a couple of certificates underr your belt as a goal - the first of the foothills on the way up Mt.Everest.

Further up the curve, you do have to look at your budget and how to solve the issues around ving evrything in very good working order, and new sails as often as allowed. It may be the case that you want to consider right-aizing your boat to your budget and changing club even to get into a more economic fleet. Or alternatively findi g new sources of income, like sponsorship or investment from your crew.

High up the learning curve, you should be aware of the nature of the diminishing returns on effort, but also that these often hars won, small gains when put together make for a significant gain on the race course.

Dropping Your Shoulders....More Sports Psychology

I think the biggest change in my overall enjoyment of sailing as a sport was when I won the first race I ever helmed in a keel boat. There was a healthy tension and a great crew, with the owner tweaking the boat to get optimum speed. I felt both butterflies in my stomach, but I felt I could drop my shoulders and use my years of dinghy sailing experience and nouse as would-be-tactician over many years to do my best and cooperate with the crew. We won by a country mile. 

I am currently on an evening management course  on understanding and tackling stress - emotions, motivations and peri-conscious thought patterns which disturb our performance and ability to handle the challenges life and work present.

The course is a superb distillation of a large body of work done by pyschologists and clinicians over the last 60 years. ( I studied two years in Pyschology at University btw) . Towards the end of last night's course we were introduced to a concept of  "esteem and confidence silo's" which was kind of a Eureka moment for me when I thought back to my sailing career and those around me.

The Assymetry Between Confidence & Esteem 

I think we all know people who are very practical and able to get things done, often to the point where they are outright irritating and or even overbearing. The equation though is not that they have necessarily high self esteem.

The theory here states that self-esteem is something which feeds into self-confidence, but not really the reverse. There is a non reverse proportionate, or assymetric relationship. The gas filling you get in self confidence from feeling good in your 'soul' is largely a one way street.

Self confidence is closely linked to our ability to react and handle the world. Self esteem is a deeper premises from which we find the root to our opinions and starting point for how we then go on to experience the world and take the learning experiences which lead to self confidence. There is a slight feedback there though, some leak from Silo 2 to Silo 1. But the second silo of self confidence will not back-fill, and it can get pretty full - there is almost a one-way valve, we fill up but it does not go back out and as the pressure builds to act apparently 'assertively' we can appear increasingly arrogant and aggressive.

So appearing to be highly confident does not mean that a person has high self esteem, and can mean the exact reverse.....

Self Esteem then gives us our outset , our ego- articulated values, long lasting inner feelings about our selves, and unwritten life-rules  - not only how we steer our own lives but also of course how we interact with others. How fulfilling these encounters, relationships, overcoming-of-challenges and interactions with the world are depends mostly on our self esteem and not our self confidence per se.

Think Sailors!

Now sport and not least sailing is a very particular part of our lives. For many of us from 'Anglican' countries, sport is the only real outlet for adrenaline spun competitive spirit. We are stiff upper lip and to be honest, a little pussy-whipped in our offices and oh-so-safe work sites. In sport we often expose an underlying self esteem and display a different self confidence than in the very emotionally inhibited and temperament neutral careers we live with.

You can then think about your own sailing and those of your erstwhile helm or crew or competitors and start to recognise that many who exhibit self-confidence are actually quite abrasive and are not really fulfilling the spirit of sporting. I suggest further that they are not actually being very fulfilled emotionally, and that they need to have a series of little wins within races and grab wins and flout their glory when they can if they are good sailors. This is often the loud-mouth, bully and outrigh cheat and every club has at least one in their fleet.

An alternative type is the "frustrate". Someone who make bold desicions, often doing a course side flyer, trying to roll a better competitor on the run, or gybe setting and the like when they just can't carry it off. Worse they are intolerably bossy and often ill tempered with their own crews.

Eternal Orgasms of Unfulfillment

The same thing is true of shopaholics, these two types of helms are not being fulfilled by an inner sense of well being from the sport. They have a need for pushing and being arrogant is the symptom of that. They need small wins and the feeling of being in control to feed into their quite weak ego system. They need small ego boosts all the time to feed their mean-machine outset and under developed self esteem.

What is Positive, Sporting Self Esteem in Sailing ?

The best people to see positive self esteem in the context of our sport are actually eager  new beginners believe it or not. They can be a little irritating in the club house of course, always pointing out the obvious, asking 'stupid' questions and talking excitedly about their minor improvements and incidents on the race course as if they were in the Americas cup.

Back up here you cynics!!  These types of people often come into sailing as adults with a great deal of life experience and fulfillment, or a children with optimism and enthusiasm. They come with the attitude " I can learn this, I can master step by step, and I can enjoy this beautiful sport".

We as more experienced sailors need to learn to learn again, and come with a new set of inner feelings which maybe force us to jack down our self confidence, eat some humble pie and go back to admitting we are learning. We also need to question, as I often point out, if we are enjoying the sport and competition locally on  a weekly basis? What are we seeking through sailing and are we feeling fulfillment?

Driven and Fulfilled by Competing 

This does not mean you have to leave behind you those things which drive you - for me originally it was loving the experience of racing, and hating to lose. For others it can be the rush of the start, or coralling their crew or following the rules as if they were the letter of the law so to speak.

Think realistically about where our sporting self esteem lies and if the silo is actually much emptier than our self confidence. Consider further then that if we are over confident we need to seek values and goals which feed our self esteem and not try to find short cuts to 'quick wins' or pushing other people around.

High self well being and esteem with low self confidence is then a matter of learning experiences and seeking out mentors and sailing courses which can help you overcome the nerves, the mental blocks and the lack of eye-hand coordination you may have.

Sporting Spirit and Your Ego

I think personally that sporting spirit is then very closely linked to your self esteem, and that self confidence and ability on the race course is a following positive result from having a good set of values and feelings before you step foot in a boat.

Sporting spirit means respecting the rules, your competitors and most of all the crew around you. It means conceding small battles in order to win wars. It means congratulating people who beat you in the last tack to the finish line, or get water on you at the last rounding. It means dusting off your failures and accepting them as learning lessons and defining these then as challenges to overcome by learning and experience. It means dropping your shoulders and enjoying your sport.

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This concept of the two Silos lies a little deeper in the 'soul' than the concepts of assertiveness on the racecourse but are a better start point. I think I have blogged on assertiveness on the race course a couple of years ago, will see and republish or update that.

Mistakes and Opportunism.....

I have often quoted the late, great master Uffa Fox on his observation that a mere three mistakes in a race will afford  you third place , two ... a second, while just a single, small mistake will grant you first place. This is a real focus on how to assess your sailing and polish your performance by working on the weaknesses that lead to mistakes. However how can you take advantage of OPM - other people's mistakes??

You will see a rookie making mistakes at every point, while a middle fleet racer making a catalogue of errors - many of which are made before they even hoist sails due to poor preparation- and then you can see the top echelons damning their mistakes and doing their best to fix their problem and get into a new positioning to attack and grab places.....and that is the flip side....you are waiting for someone else to make a mistake, or coercing them into it....

...here is what gave me this inspiration for writing about something  which we actually do by second nature as we become seasoned racers confident with tactics and able to interpret what other racers are doing...
http://www.sailingworld.com/how-to/tactics-how-to-claw-back

So what are the common mistakes a competitor may make which you can capitalise on ?

Ignoring boat and rig set up prior to the race, on the water.....

1) starts....there are numerous mistakes possible in those five minutes....but thinking of a single boat you want to find and exploit within a minute of the start-

a) the early reacher. Tis is the guy who wants to keep his speed on, or is just a bit over excited, and comes in early towards the line and then starts reaching off aloing the line or parrallel to it. If he is a lone maverick then let him go over you, but if there is a little fleet of follow the leaders developing then it's game on...if you are lying 'left' of him and a little low that is. Squeeze him up to a stall being vocal and dont let him sail over you . Pin him there and his hand braking will stack the pile of boats above him too, some may bail out and go round your sterns but they ae unlikely to be able to threaten your leeward side if you are in thw last 30 secs. You should be able to command a large space to leeward to bear off into at 20 seconds depending where the line is at that time. There is an inevitable time lag for the boats stacked above you and bad wind, which may affect you but you can reach a little away and punch out with better speed than anyone else in that rack.

B) using the pinner inner boat ! in a) you are the pinner and it is in the last 30 seconds. People who have read the standard texts onn'starts' will often try to pin a rack up, but as far out as 2 minutes. The smarter ones will wait until the fleet is committesd into racking up and ragging for a typical one design or closely banded HC race. The platu 25 world champions a few years ago showed how byou can tease this pinner even more and make him and his rack-to-the-right luff even more in order to close the door on you. Dont give the game away, keep your bow high but clear of all sterns just behind the rack, as if you are probing for a space. Then with say 30 secs left ( depending on boat and conditions and how muc attention the 'pinner' is paying you) you reach off and harden up into the space thwe 'pinner' thought they had to themselves. Killer bit of chess or poker.
Essentially you treat the pinning boat as if it was a mark or the committee boat and you are in pole position to reach in and harden up to sail past it and start.

C) Bias Versus favoured side and the port tack flyer.

Quite often race committees will set a bias to the pin (port) end in championships as it makes spotting early charlie chancers much easier as the committee looking up the line of boats, thus avoiding usually not drenched in boat end starters in an unbiased or RHS biased start.

Whichever end is biased, that bias may not reflect the actual best side of the course to sail on. It is then a judgement call based on good knowledge of the beat, and preferably a practice beat to affirm the side which will pay - it can be tidal, a wind bend, convergent wind along the shore or flatter water. It can be a new wind is about to fill from one side, or there is a river mouth giving a monster lift or hit.

Biased start lines usually result in an early qeue developing because people want to buy a ticket for front row seats. It is very much the case that most often in a biased end 'stramash' there is only one boat which gets a perfect start there,  being able to stretch her bow into clean wind immediately. The bunch are locking each other in, and the boats furthest right will be bunched and have difficulty in tacking off, or will want to roll over the boats to their port side. Typically there is a big old gang with only one or two boats leading out at full speed, and the rest continuing for at least 15 seconds post start while they establish their speed or if they can tack off.

So the start can often be a slow affair at that portioin of the line, and given that the bias is actually less than 10 degrees from true wind angle to perpendicular line angle, it can be worth avoiding - a kind of gain verus risk pay off. Starting further out towards opposite end,  at high speed and thus being able to get to the side you want to be on in clear air with minimum tacks and 'ducks', can put you in the top ten and past most of the biased end mashers. Yes the 'best' starters from the bias end will be ahead of you

Given a RHS course favour in addition to a notable RHS line bias,  it can be worth starting on port tack if the fleet is early and you can stand the IDM and committee boat, with a space opening at the start from the line to the idm for you to punch out through.
WARNING! Port starts "go bad' in a messy fleet with a great ruck at the IDM which will result in other boats tacking over to port immediately thus killing your tactic, or boats charging in late on of course stb, blocking your route. Also you can give your own game away too early and someone spoils your fun by bearing down on you on stb, or tacking over to port and taking your nicely planned lane away from under your feet!!!

However port starting can be killer because they always save you one tack and usually many, many dips versus having to work over the fleet from a stb start, say half way down thenline at the gun.  What you need is an orderly, early racked up fleet wit no huge boat end bias, such that a gap will most likely open up either before the start or as the fleet moves first to gather speed and then to get  over then line. A very biased line will result in people holding onto their hand of cards and creeping out rather than falling off to get start speed because the gain in places from the bias is worth holding onto, and all and sundry will have spotted the bias and be around that end .
Port tack starts are effective for a number of reasons - Remember you are saving a tack when compared to the rest of the fleet and if lucky, into clean air immediately you clear the last stern and making up towards the layline wuthout having to duck a single boat ! Soon into the race, you are then at an apposing tacking sequence to the fleet- they are falling over onto port tack to get up to the layline juat when you want to get a bit of starboard in- thus you force many boats to duck you or tack, and then you get the luxury of choosing exacrtly when you will go over to port again.

An alternative to reaching in on port when there are too many messy boats around the committee boat and further out to the RHS, to pull it off is to start in a second row on STB after the leaders, but as near to the the boat/idm as you can, squeezing later boats to your right out and behind you. Yoou then tack to port as soon as you have enough speed and will clear the committee boat and its anchor line. Even if a couple of the early first rack of boats tack over ontop of you, you will be going to your chosen side and avoiding so many dips, and have that starboard attacking advantage when you choose to get out from a wind shadow /cover one of these boats has on you. If someone tacks immediately infront of you on this lane, then you are in no worse a position as at the leeward mark when there is a procession of boats, and you are going the right way.

Tacking sequence, line bias and favoured side of the course are all just arithmetic measures which give you enough advantage in placings to be justify the pains described. Tacking sequence with the starbord attack advantage will also play in finish line tactics.

The Beat

There are a whole load of mistakes and indeed major weaknesses in boats and theirnteams. We sail against a pretty geriatric bunch in our melges fleet, who incklude a former whitbread guy, so they can beat us usyually on strategi and boat speed. However we know they are slow in tacking duals, and we can make up many boat lenghts on them by sweating them and eventually get an ' out of sequence' effect and pin them behind or to lee of us. In HC fleets some boats are heavy and favour few tacks so forcing them into a tacking dual as the smaller, quicker accelerating boat can make them stay behind you or knock enough off their time to give you the edge.

Some boats are perpetual layline flyers....theynbare worth keeping an eye on to see if that side is paying, while very often just tacking up a text book 60  degree cone in outset keeps your optiins open, and with no tidal bias, the shifts you get right may make up for any course bias. Also you can often pin a lhs flyer out as he makes his long approach on port if you stay a little beligerantly on stb.

Other boats go onto port at the wrong time, with too many stb boats to duck . if you are going over to the rhs on port and you see oine below you it can be worth tacking into what would give them bad wind if they chose to tack to avoid a stb boat who is only a partuial threat to you.

The Windward Mark and trip mark

I include also the bear-away, gybe set in this.

The most commin mistakes are over standing and the opposite, not  'fetching the mark'. After that there is coming in on the death slot into a line of nicely paraded lay line experts with no space.

If you qre in the top echelon then often the mark is quite spaceous with the chasing bunch being a few boat lenghts back. Here a port death slot can pay, espscially if lhs pays more on the beat, or that side has kwept you in clwaner air with fewer tacks and ducks. Alternatively if you can see you are going to hit the pack then tack over with a couple of hundreds meters of layline to go. In a dinghy or sports boat this may affors you the benefit of covering the fleet whilwe beung able to tck in windshifts which the layline loibby won't be interested in. You get a feel thenif tere will be space for a later port tack entry to the layline, or if you have to go over to the layline asap to minimise damage and hope for over standers or that the 'layline lobby' are all sailing low of the mark and a nice gap is about to open due to tjhis mistake. You tack once less often and it nis likely that many will over stand so you can be cheekier by tacking ino  their bow as long as they do not have to sail too high to avoid you when you are newlyclkose hauled. Risky, but a good sailor will call it and overstanding is a very commoin, large error made by midfleet racers.

A trip mark affords you rule 18 and the chance to squeeze in on a boat sailing too high and not noticing your dive to their leeward and oveelap.

Bearing away has two mistakes you can make on- a) the wind is lifting noin the last stb tack on the layline, so a gybe set is favoured. b) folk bear away but end up reacvhing to defend their wind or try to get boat speed up.

The Reach/Run

Common mistakes are poor trim and henxce boat speed and as above, over defending air and sailing a banana curve with much extra distance to the mark, and a deep slow angle evwntually to get down to it. Abother is doing a two gybe only leeward leg. This exposes the lazy boat to both missing windshifts and also being vulnerable to starboard ' ambushes' near the leeward mark, forcing them into a poor position on the mark AND letting another boat close to them through into the clear ahead at the zone. A pretty good tactic then is to keep the boat in free air by gybing away in stead of luffing oponenets, sailin tjhe best vmg in the cleanest air thereafter, and gybin on the favourablwe wind shifts or to stay in anblock or band of wind. Coming in on starboard near thwe 3 boat zone is a biut of a killer tactic-you have the basic rule 10 right and are rule 18 overlapped on the entire fleet, with the right to gybe at any point in the zone until you are 'at the mark'. However it relies on very comeptent gybing, a consumate drop and a well executed harden up to be worth doing.

Another rally common mistake at the leeward mark is people charging in too fast right up the sterns of a pile of boats. In light or even medium airs this can be a veritable car park, worth sailing round the entire outside of. In more windnit meams you will be on the stern of a boat, potentiually going slower than you and potentially tacking right on top of you if you are forced to tack off his stern line. Better to slow te boat dowmn at the 3 boat zone, ealry drop , and even xcentre the main, and keep a nice rounding which you can either do a good tack at speed to clear your wind from the procession on port ahead of you, or take a big pinching luff wit your tight entry and try to sail then on a higher lane than the procession.

Gear Changes

An extremely common mistake at venues prone to unstable conditions or a rising sea breeze, is that many boats fail to make the gear changes in sail setting early enough.

This can even happen before the start, especially in yachts which carry several different genoas and jibs on board. Stick to your sail makers recommendations for max speed, and your own experience of what you hold given your crew wieght for that wind. If everyone is mashing around with No.1s up while it is really No.2 weather, then quietly get your No.2 out, but dont raise it until a minute or a bit more to go to the gun. Also while on the beat, you can look to force overpowered boats with big genoas to tack away from you on STB, and loose time in their inevitably sub optimal tacks.

The second beat

I blogged before about line to windward mark bias versus couirse, windward mark to leeward mark side bias. Also you may be in a new wind by the tåsecond beat or there may be a new area of bend or convergence up the course which were to leeward of a mid set start. It is important to react to conditions and what paid last time may not pay this time.

A big mistake even some good boats make is påclean getting lazy and complacent on beat #2. Being awake and determined can get you ahead of many boats. "We're no.2, we try harder".

Subsequent Mark Roindings

If you have worked your way into the top third of the fleet by a good start or ysing all these advantage-McInroe steals, then te marks will be less busy and you cam be more daring in terms of your approaches

However port starting can be killer because they always save you one tack and usyually many, many dips versus having to work over the fleet from a stb start, say half way down thenline at the gun.  What you need is an orderly, early racked up fleet wit no huge boat end bias, such that a gap will most likely open up either before the start or as the fleet moves over then line. Remember you are saving a tack and if lucky, into clean air immediately you clear the last stern and making up towards the layline wuthout having to duck a single boat ! Soon into this, you are then at an apposing sequence to the fleet- tey are falling over onto port taxck to get up to the layline juat when you want to get a bit of starboard in- thus you force many boats to duck you or tack, and then you get the luxury of choosing exacrtly when you will go over to port again.

Finish Line Tactics

For some odd reason, especially on wednesday night amateur set ups, the finish line often has an enormous bias which is maybe three or four boat legnths to one side or the other, ddw, which means in simple trigonometry, you have to sail a country mile further to even go over mid line, let alone if you go to the wrong end. It can be difficult to spot from  a distance if the line is outside the usual race course, but the skill in spotting the favoured end is worth the difference between accepting your fate with the boats around you coming in infront, or grabbing a grins all round couple of places in a coup d'etat at the last second!

Tacking sequence with other boats near you is then the key on a bias finish line, and can make up a few places on an unbiased line. The trick is to force other boats to sail behind you in port/stb duels, and to make less tacks to complete the finish sequence of tacks (when it is a beat of course! But the same is true of gybing to a leeward finish line, where a last minute starboard approach on something construable as 'proper course' )

On a left hand bias windward finish, usually the 'pin' , then it is important not to overstand and to hold starboard from as far out as possible. It does not matter if you understand a little bit because you have control until the last second and given there is no boat immediately to your rhs, you can tack to port to cross the line right on the bouy.

For a boat end bias, then you can do the same, with a long tack in on STB towards the layline on that end. However you have more to play with and you want to actively psych out the competition by getting onto starboard to attack them, shouting starboard early as you approach them....  or while on STB, either breaking a cover or tacking off the stern to someone when you are a well back from the line,  to make them feel you have seen an advantage and getting them to tack also to port. You then can attack on starboard again. Given your tacks are better and they are a little more tired out than you, this can draw them into a fruitless tacking duel where they loose boat speed and distance to the line as against you and you make up the boat lengths which you need to beat them.

Protesting

Finally one good way of penalising people for their mistakes and sometimes arrogance, is to protest them in the race and take it to the room if you have a good case if they do not take turns out on the course. This can be a mark touching, a port stb infringement or a more subtle rule 13-rule 17 infringement. Many boats wont bother to read the protest notice board, and turning up alone with a good case and preferably a witness boat can earn a nice DSQ to the chagrin of the offender

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.