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

Sailing in Waves ....Again

I come back to this topic again having read a very good summary for the theme on Zim's Sailing Blog on Sailing In Waves http://zimsailing.blogspot.no/2013/04/tracking-upwind-in-waves.html about upwind sailing in the bumpier stuff.

I have read up on the topic, entered into much discussion on forums about it and blogged on my experiences and acrued knowledge, yet still there seemed to be some doubts in my mind.

Zim in their blog focus  on tracking up wind, and combine the two schools of thought if you like- active movement through the waves and tracking under power.

The two have often been discussed as even a little mutually exlusive. On the one side you want to have the boat set up for height in order to actively sail up onto the wave crest, and you want the jib draught well forward in order to see/saw your pointy end down and up without stalliing the jib. The other perspective is to progressively power the boat up and sail lower and faster to punch through the wave train and maintain tracking.

When does each method pay, and can you engage both?

Firstly let us set a bit of a scope here, we are talking about normal boats in displacement mode upwind, not higher performance craft. Within then this lies probably over three-quuarters of all sailing hours upwind full stop! However breaking it down into different boats is now important. Also when to engage active sailing versus the more passive, powered up tracking is an important.

We can start where ZIM takes issue with the problem - you want to avoid slamming down into the furrow from the top of the wave and killing the boat speed. In the US this is called hobby horsing apparently, and that is a good description because you are rocking without getting anywhere! So the first most important factor is wave size compared to boat size put that simply>

There comes a point when the wave height relative to the boat length means that sailing on a close hauled course will result in slamming. In an Optimist this will be pretty modest, 50 cm waves perhaps. At the same time a Super Maxi will be just gliding through such a relatively small chop, fully close hauled.   Wave legnth is also of note here, because a long, swell wavelength you would experience offshore will take a different methodology to tackle than short, inshore chop of the same nominal height. Wind against tide will soon build steeper waves in the course of a race even, and necessitate a different sailing style to avoid banging up and down, losing speed as the bow slams into the trough and gets stalled more by the next wave.

There is then a significant wave height, steepness, frequency (speed of wave train) and length which necessitates firstly falling off, powered up tracking and then eventually for all boats, as the sea gets big, active steering takes over.

The next consideration after size,  is type of boat and especially two factors - power to weight ratio and keel design.

A heavier boat will need more power to get over waves in the first place, although it will 'hold its way' to an extent that the momentum will punch through waves better than a light boat which may be stopped in its tracks. The trade off in a heavy boat is then that you can sail powered up, with more twist, on a slightly lower course most likely, will tolerating a good angle to the waves. VMG is optimised, in that the boat sails high enough to hold a constant speed  the waves are not slamming you at this angle, you are cutting them. Hence active sailing is dropped in favour of tracking lower and faster and responding to the wind shifts on the helm rather than the wave-train per se.

Also a boat with a longer keel will respond to being driven low and fast such that the attached flow on the keel is maintained and it functions well to help lift the boat to windward. Rapid, active steering manoerves in a wave train will shake this flow off the keel, especially if the keel becomes exposed to air as you ride the waves. The same is true of a boat where the big old spade rudder helps the boat lift to windward. Steering will unload this.

The converse then is true of a light sports boat or modern racing yacht, with a high power to weight ratio and short chord lengths on boat keel and rudder. The Platu Beneteau 25 responded very well to being see/sawed with an active helm  in waves above about a meter. The keel flies at a lower boat speed, so as you slow down it keeps flying, or if it does stall momentarilly on the face of the wave, then it can reattach flow as soon as the bow is borrne away off the crest. The rudder is pretty neutral and therefore balanced and can be used actively, with some prudence, to steer the boat up and down with each significant wave.

Is  here a synthesis between the two styles? well you just have to ask any serious laser sailor and they will tell you that the two styles are not mutually exclusive and that you may use both modii upwind or change between them at some point. The key factor here being that not all waves are equal - the old seventh wave, and the new rogue-wave theories hold true. A critical wave height for actively steering up and down the wave may come only on those more infrequent waves, otherwise you want to churn on.

Another factor of the wave-train comes into play here. Most often the wave-train does not follow the current DDW wind bearing. It is skew, for reasons a bit beyond the scope of this entry. In other words, if you sail at 45' close hauled to the wind, you will experience going  nose into the waves more on one tack, and the waves more on the beam on the other tack. So you need to be able to track fast on the gentler tack, while probably using active steering on the other tack.

Boat set up then needs more power relative for the wind, which usually means more twist and depth in the sails. For active sailing you will also need more 'knuckle' in the jib - the draught being further forward and allowing for a more varied angle to the wind while still powering.  Given though say the common scenario above , a skew wave train, then you are still free to make adjustments to the running rigging on each tack. Alternatively you may enter a tidal channel and suddenly meet critical wave height for active sailing.

On the softer tack you can then point a little higher and flatten your jib in to give a finer entry and more power. The sails can be less twisted and the slot is then a little narrower and more powered up. The jib entry is easily adjusted by slackening the halyard and tightening the sheet, less twist by moving the jib car forward and of course the main sail will be more easy to reduce twist on for a higher pointing modus, with better VMG. Backstay will then be a function of how tight the forestay and shrouds are, it must firstly make the rig stable enough to sail in what are still very oscillating conditions, and then take up the forestay sag enough for the wind strenght. Generally on most boats these happen long before it bends the topp of the mast and opens the leech of the main up.

In the course of a race then, you can indeed employ a combination of low/fast sail settings and active sailing, and change between the modes as the angle or critical size varies for the day. A lot can be done with the running rigging to shift gears, or rather make for one modus being chosen, even for very short time spans or even just luffing over a single seventh or rogue wave for the day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) Your Offwind Sailing Sucks!

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

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

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

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

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

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

a) Line Geometry and Bias, Versus Course Geometry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

c) Failing to Capture the Shifts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

Final Mistake

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue:

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

Race Strategy - Summary of Previous Blogg

In sailing, when we talk racing on- the-day, strategy is always the plan in respect of conditions, abilities and ambitions. Tactics on the other hand, are the on the water reactions to opportunities, threats and wind oscillations.

Strategy informs tactics on the water- while actually what happens in tactical situations does also affect future strategy.

Here I concentrate on Race Strategy which does not include very much about prepartion of boat off the water.

Race strategy is built upon several perspectives:

Here is my Own Take on How To Build Strategy , 

a kind of Tool Box or Work Flow: 

1) Knowledge of the boat's and team's capabilities
2) Knowledge of the competition
3) Forecast of weather and your own observations
4) Tidal almanac and local knowledge tide over courses
5) Personal preference: making a stake as to what you will do.

This is actually in a sensible ranking for building strategy and is a cyclical tool:
Once you check off 1-4 you come to 5, what you would prefer to do or summise you will do based on 1-4, then you have to go to right back to 1 maybe to re consider what you CAN do with the team again. Also you could use it to adapt or radically change elements of your strategy on the water.

As part and parcel of this tool, there will be  the following components of the race to concentrate working strategy around:

Race Components

1) Pre Start Information Gathering- confirm or adjust your strategy
2) 1 minute from Start
3) Line up for Start Postion
4) Start
5) First tack - when ?
5) First Beat- shift decisions, direction
6) Layline to first mark
7) Way to go off wind
8) style and aggression down wind
9) Positioning for leeward mark
10) Drop and readying for leeward mark
11) 3 boat legnths
12) Rounding
13) Harden up , lane out onto 2nd beat or tack away?
14) 2nd Beat and run- strategy working ? Go the same way? Bias on course versus start to first mark last time.
15) Finish line - how is this in your strategic plan?



Your Other Main Tool Box on the Water Will Be the Classic RYA Teaching Memo Tool: 

1) Course to sail - objective: next mark, destination etc
2) Heading - where the boat is pointing
3) Sail Trim - sheeting and other settings
4) Boat Balance - lateral trim
5) Boat Trim - longditunal

Using the RYA 5 point tool constantly will help you achieve better boat speed and therefore you can go with your strategic decisions more easily or with greater success.

Forming Strategy 

Quantitative goals can be a bit counter productive until you really are serious and very competent in a fleet, because you can be disappointed and they can be misleading given poor boat speed or an unpredicted wind shift.

 A race- or series- strategy with qaulitative goals or just clear objectives in each component of the race.

Let Us Start at the Top of the List  I Choose as a Useful Methodology: 

1) Know Your Boat and Your Team

Know the stregnths and weaknesses of the human-boat system as a whole: yours personally, the crews and the physical aspects of the boat.
Be realistic and air on the side of caution rather than bravado in what you choose to do when you build a strategy (point 5- your comittment)
However, in building a race strategy you should include a deal of pushing your team, your boat and yourself.

2) Know Your Enemy

Learn how the competition behave, favourite starts, tactics and attitude to rule "bending" and being protested.
Experience informs strategy. Knowing what your enemy will do is important.... from how they behave on the start line and at mark roundings to what they do up the beat in their strategy.
Be prepared to protest and call on witnesses as part of your race strategy, and committment for the whole season!

3) Weather it be good or Weather it be bad

a) learn the key signs of weather - constant and the tell tale signs of new weather on the way, like sea breeze or a front. There are Macro weather signs, like fronts, isobaric- or sea- breeze; Micro Weather, like gust pattern and wind bands and then local modifications like wind bends,  or thunderstorms.

b) Learn how to understand all types of forecast available: from General Synopsis, to the "shipping forecast / Coastal Waters" on the radio to isobaric weather charts and probability projections.

c) Remember the sequence of the forecast and relate this to the weather signs you see and feel yourself. Usually the sequence of weather is right but the timing is often wrong.

c) Modifications to the forecast-sequence: Also there are some unpredictable elements in weather: actual cloud cover, actual isobaric changes.

d) keeping your eyes, ears and nose open to the sequence and any unpredicted weather signs. Also learn in advance about the venue and local weather effects or how weather passes over - where wind bends are created, where sea breeze developes.

4) Tide and Local Tidal Know How

Why is tide worth such a blurb and a single crew or navigator focused on it?   Well for most of us we are sailing a beat at well under 10 knts boat speed, so we get a 20% VMG disadvantage at least by sailing more of the time in the main tide stream
Either have good knowledge about the tide yourself, or better yet, allocate tidal information to someone on the rail: even if all they can cope with is high, low, slack times.
Remember the tide in an estuary can in particular be affected by wind which has blown a long time in one direction, or has been very strong.
For those who are more advanced : learn about how tide creates a tide wind, ie a relative wind effect .

5) Make Your Own Mind Up About What You will Bet On!

After you have information from 1-4, committ yourself to a race strategy which has sub elements which are all informed by your feedback in 1-4.
Not having done this type of analysis means you are on the back foot, always reactive and that means you can throw away a perfect start by not considering other elements over the course which favour some decisions and colour some tactics.
Any road will lead you there, if you don't know where you want to go......

Review your attitude to risk and most often, raise the bar here! : are you overly cautious due to worries of collisions or OCS? Are you not confident with the rules on the water? Right size your committments to strategy with your appraisal of what higher level of risk you are prepared to take. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
Given a choice of strategy is in line with your information gathering and what you can deduct from current knowledge, make that committment!

It is better to have a planned out strategy go wrong than have no strategy at all, because the elements you get wrong are now separated out from on course tactics and boat speed per se. You can learn from your mistakes if you have some idea of what you meant to do !
Having a strategy for the race (or series) helps you focus and make decisions in light of your plan. It overcomes hesitation. Also communicating key strategic elements or key decisions to the crew, with some reasoning given, will involve and motivate the team.

Sub Elements of Your Personal Choice

Preparation is obviously a big part of your own personal choice , but as I am focusing on Race Course Strategy let us begin at the beginning:

1) You choose to go out darn early and check that your strategic information is correct on the day!

2) Then you choose an area of the line to start on

3) as you line up, you judge if the fleet are early or late and which competitors are around you that you may have issues with based on past behaviour and bullying! You can then make a tactical decision to which lane you take for the start line, IN LIGHT of your strategy for the first beat.

4) You either get a good start or you get out of a bad one, in light of your strategy again.

5) You choose your side on a biased course due to tide, wind etc. Or you choose to bet on "tacking up the cone" on the windshifts, that is a 60' cone until you are within two tacks of the windward mark.

Risk and Strategy for Sailing a Series

For a series, appraise again your own teams stregnths and weaknesses.

A series should always be seen as both a big test of your sailing when you have to "step up" and also it should be a big lecture theatre for you to learn from, and take tutorials with the team afterwards at debreifs and talk to sailors you were close to in the race.

Gather information not only on the venue and course, but on competitor race behaviour and who the best boats are.

To summarise what the medal winning pundits say, and what results in many fleets show, generally speaking you should take less risk in a Series and try to sail consistently rather than taking big risks on the start in particular. Conservative. You may win a whole event with a series of 5th places!
You may need to tame down your local level of aggressiveness and risk taking, especially on starts and avoid "banging the corners".

 A contrasting alternative to this could be taking risks in the conditions you are most comforable with.

 Another alternative would be to take risks early on in a series when you can risk your discards away. Kind of playing your joker first, but remember you cannot strike a DSQ.

As good a strategy as any for a competent new comer is to follow the best boats: get near them on the start and keep an eagle eye on them.

So see there is a cyclical way of building and using race strategy, but there is a big element of personal will and you have to be honest with yourself and take that element one step at a time, without big expectations: be pleasantly surprised instead! Over a series you may have to dampen your own will to the flock and be more cautious.

Race Strategy vs Tactics....Misnomer and Oxymoron.

I am a bit of a semantics nazi when it comes to talking strategy versus those actions which are tactical.

In sailing, when we talk racing on- the-day, strategy is always the plan in respect of conditions, abilities and ambitions. Tactics on the other hand, are the on the water reactions to opportunities, threats and wind oscillations.  Strategy informs tactics on the water- while actually what happens in tactical situations does also affect future strategy.

Strategy is the plan, tactics are reactions out there on the water.

A Race Strategy would then include "going left" for wind bend. It would include a knowledge of the tide and while out on the practice, a feel for the gust and shift pattern to assess whether the shifts are worth tacking on for example.

Boat strategy begins longer back- the pursuit of boat speed and crew choreography:  but as I get bored with people who write endlessly about preparation, let's talk  "on the water", or in the series at least.

On a classic situation... With your tactical hat on: you are close hauled on port towards the path of a stb boat, and you have a cracking chance to lee bow the guy: but with your strategy hat on, you want to go RHS of the course : a wise competitor would just tack away from your lee bow and they get an advantage of going on your strategy while you make two tacks unnecessarily when you go back right. A lee bow is a transient, tactical high, maybe you take one place: a good strategy wins you many boat places in results.

Race strategy is built upon several perspectives:

1) Knowledge of the boat's and team's capabilities
2) Knowledge of the competition
3) Forecast of weather and your own observations
4) Tidal almanac and local knowledge tide over courses
5) Personal preference: making a stake as to what you will do.

This is actually in a sensible ranking for building strategy and is a cyclical tool: once you check off 1-4 you come to 5, what you would prefer to do or summise you will do based on 1-4, then you have to go to right back to 1 maybe to re consider what you CAN do with the team again.

Personally I think setting quantitative goals is a bit counter productive until you really are serious and very competent in a fleet. It is far better IMHO to build a strategy for the race or series with some qualitative goals or improvements, and focus on building the team and fixing up the boat, rather than coming with expectations on the results list. Then you can enjoy improved results and have a picture of how good your strategic thinking is, and how many places you actually loose to tactics and boat speed.


Let Us Start at the Top of the List  I Choose as a Useful Methodology: 

1) Know Your Boat and Your Team

This is something you can consider yourself if you are really honest and objective, otherwise you may need a "transom consultant" to come on board and shake you down a bit.

Your limitations are obviously in the picture: how high you point in the fleet, boat speed, maneuvres, heavy weather sailing, light weather finesse ... however you should also think of the next space the boat and team are maybe able to move into: with a bit of practice pre race or the weekend before maybe you can pull a rabbit out the hat and do for example, conduct a leeward rounding better, perhaps adjust and take the kite down earlier than usual at 6 to 10 boat legnths, concentrating there after on a good white sails rounding and hardening up to close hauled.

Being honest with yourself on where the limits or the unknown factors are means that maybe you take caution over dutch courage and right-size the ambition for the race (and its' sub elements like start, beat, roundings)  in respect to your previous experience with the boat and what has or has not worked well. Maybe you need to learn to walk again before running ?

On the other hand you do always need to push yourself and your team, and take a degree of risk : the largest single improvement by risk taking is on the start line. Other than that you can break down the components of a race and focus on your weaknesses longer term, using training and experiment: but thinking strategically about races then is also about pushing yourself to learn, analyse and commit.

For example then of a race strategy based upon an appraisal of boat and team: there is a F6-7 forecast and you have never raced with the team in more than F5. In addition you know you have a couple of nervous crew. So you decide to go out pretty undercanvassed ie not smothered in the gusts, just a little over powered. No 3 and two reefs if it is going to be f7 in the gusts then say. 

This then allows you to go for an agressive, fast start because you can most likely point and shoot at the line from long back, with good visibility under a no 3 and the crew all settled on the rail. Further, you choose no spinnaker- in that weight of wind, often a very blustery condition- you will likely pass several yachts who broach, and you can focus on boat trim and course rather than fighting the spinnaker and death roll!

2) Know Your Enemy

Experience informs strategy. Knowing what your enemy will do is important.... from how they behave on the start line and at mark roundings to what they do up the beat in their strategy.

You should be prepared to always protest aggressive boats as part of your strategy, and have other sailors in the class / club be in agreement to witness this: strong headed boats hate DSQ and need to feel the whip. So those boats who break rule 10 and 16 / 17 on the beat, you have to learn to protest and be prepared to go to the wee room.

Boats which are gentlemanly need only have a nod from the helm to assure you of a clear leeward mark rounding when they have no water: chancers need to be shouted at at 3 boat legnths and the door has to be shut on them with one hand on the protest flag. You should be prepared by identifying the possible witnesses to a breach of the rules around you.


In terms of boat handling, many boats in OD hold their number ones in far too much wind and then avoid tacking up the beat as they struggle in survival hiking mode: if you know your nearest rivals tend to do this, then have your number two up in a no 1 bag on deck and don't give the game away until they are committed to over canvass. Then you can tack on the shifts or point higher on the start line and gain a strategic advantage by knowing their usual behaviour.

Another strategy totally oriented around the competition completly- can be in say a club series to "match race" your closest opponent, or the boat you aspire to one day beat! Follow them or put a tight cover on them and learn from what they are doing right.

3) Weather it be good or Weather it be bad

Metereology is something I spend dark winter nights reading about,  infront of a roaring radiator.

To summarise an immense subject into its strategic relevance to racing:

a) learn the key signs of weather - constant and the tell tale signs of new weather on the way, like sea breeze or a front. There are Macro weather signs, like fronts, isobaric- or sea- breeze; Micro Weather, like gust pattern and wind bands and then local modifications like wind bends,  or thunderstorms.

b) Learn how to understand all types of forecast available: from General Synopsis, to the "shipping forecast / Coastal Waters" on the radio to isobaric weather charts and probability projections. remember the sequence of the forecast and relate this to the weather signs you see and feel yourself. Usually the sequence of weather is right but the timing is often wrong.

c) Modifications to the forecast-sequence: Also there are some unpredictable elements in weather: actual cloud cover, actual isobaric changes. For instance if there is less cloud in a "cold" sector during the summer in isobar gradient breeze, then the sun's effect may be far stronger pumping up the wind and making it go right most often. Or perhaps the barometric pressure drops harder and the isobars are therefore predicted wrongly forecast: what tells you there is a bag of wind ahead?

d) keeping your eyes, ears and nose open to the sequence and any unpredicted weather signs. Also learn in advance about the venue and local weather effects or how weather passes over - where wind bends are created, where sea breeze developes. Sailors are already training in Brasil at the venue chosen for the 2016 olympics for example. Keeping a log and finding on-line data from a local weather station or having your own installed at the club can be used retrospectively to see how local weather patterns relate to a regional or national forecast: what happens to your race area? Does as with many northern zones, the wind in gradient breeze outside frontal areas, tend to die with the sun going low after 7:45pm ?

4) Tide and Local Tidal Know How

The tide is a key element in many coastal venues of course and I could lump it in with weather, but I like the idea of having one guy on the rail responsible for  tide and current, them maybe not any other tactics or strategy to think about. Just a few key bits of information, a knowledge of the 123-321 flow and ebb, a knowledghe of the geography, a pair of eyes on every pilar and bouy, a glance at COG and SOG on the plotter....you see why I think it merits a person dedicated to this ?

 I guess a huge proportion of racing round the globe is affected by tide and ocean currents, while also a proportion in that is Estuary sailing and by that nature also affected by rain and melt waters.

Tide is also affected by wind: In the Færder Distance Race out of Oslo one year, the tide should have been going out. But the wind had been blowing for days on end up the fjord and effectively damming the water up as the wind rose during the race. So there were some odd effects as the the water did manage to empty and eddy in some areas, making the tidal diagram completely useless.

Given you just take the principles of avoding the worst of the tide you have to stem, getting into the best tide with you and also understanding that tide is stronger over a shallow when all the water must over that, then you have enough to contribute to a few boat places on the beat by getting to the right places infront of those who have not been so observant with the tide tables and the charts.

There is some dog-gawn simplicity in tide and strategic elements of a race plan for addressing it: I sailed with a guy on a Hunter 707 who called winches "pooleys" and had no real finesse with boat handeling at all: but he knew the boat was shallow draft and could go out of the worst of the tide in the estuary we sailed in. Simple- he knew there was enough depth and he knew that sailing a little longer paid off due to the big 4 -5 knot tide and current out in mid channel 

However tide does create complicated apparent wind effects too, and if you have to sail on a course with a lot of tide or eventually to a bouy out in the max tide then your tide man suddenly has to become a bit of a mathematician: a good start into this area is presented by Rodney Pattison in his book " Tactics, racing to win" where he actually talks about tidal strategy in Poole bay as a classic example of the apparent wind effects.

Why is tide worth such a blurb and a single crew or navigator focused on it?   Well for most of us we are sailing a beat at well under 10 knts boat speed, so we get a 20% VMG disadvantage at least by sailing more of the time in the main tide stream. Also given a maximum tide, a tack over to one side of the course for a predictable wind bend as part of the race strategy can result in a big loss : remember in OD we are talking boat legnths and even a 10% poorer VMG can put you not only down 10% of the places but force you into a pack of stb boats on port for example.

5) Make Your Own Mind Up About What You will Bet On!

Particularly in a series of many races at the same venue, you need to set a stake in the ground as to what strategy you will take.

Any road will lead you there, if you don't know where you want to go......

There is a bit of management philosophy here: not having a strategy makes you always on the back foot in decision making: you have no foundation to base directions on and you may go off in many, everything is tactical. For Pond sailing with no tide and no wind bends, then you can just as well sail on the water without strategy. But none the less you want to analyse your sailing and aim to get better results, so some strategic thinking on preparation and learning goals come into play.

Take Apple Inc.- they have had a long term strategy of being best with graphics and user interface for personal computing, and were actually in tablets way back when with the Newton product. For a while PCs with Win 95 onwards had the lion's share of the market by spend on such items, and Apple became a bit of niche player in graphics, music and education again. However they moved into a stronger style, personal entertainment and branding element of the strategy. They were then in a good place to launch the premium priced iPhone and then the iPad phenomenon to really take back the personal computing spend from Windows based devices. They stuck to a core strategy of quality and added elements and new products to win eventually.

Setting a stake in the ground based on 1-4 will consolidate your thinking and focus the moral of the crew. A strategy is an objective decision making framework, so it helps as I say, separate out the macro factors from the boat speed and handeling problems: there fore the crew can be less critical on one side, and less complaceant on the other because there is a plan to work to overall, and improvements to be made in "house work". It gets a lot less personal helm vs crew.

You may or may not want to involve your crew in the whole strategy or indeed building it up, but you should keep them aware what you are going to do and breifly why in each element of the race. This involves them anyway and makes the scenario objective and not so personal "them and us"- the rail and the back of the boat which is a sickness I have seen develop in several otherwise well sailed boats.


Having the wrong strategy is actually a good thing! You set off with one set of information and one set of intentions and these prove to be wrong. If you can analyse correctly what went wrong, then you have the basis for a revised strategy for the conditions you actually encountered.

Perhaps in the last race, series or season you tried a poor strategy, or maybe just fell into a habit of doing something a little aimlessly, reactively, which did not work : you got conistently bad results. You can feed this into your decision making model, my five points above. And then you see it becomes cyclical with new elements also being considered as part of the overall strategy based on positive or negative experiences.

A strategy can be very simple for a given race course - a single element strategy based on tide or a wind bend for example. Given preparation in boat, technique, crew, personal psyche and learning you will have new elements of the strategy to be tested on the water.  You then have a bit of strategy around knowing your competitors behaviour or choosing a type of solution to a tactical situation: " play safe", " always dip" " brake and keep a boat length separation at marks". An approach to tactics is going to be in one or more elements of the strategy.

I think it was against Australia - or maybe Scotland since I remember  the discussion-  but when Will Carling was captain of the English Rugby Team in the 1990s he relates that he decided to take the kick off going unconventionally left, to which Martin Johnson replied "we're England, we go right!!" ...twice in fact. Will had a strategy of upsetting the opposition by being unpredictable and to some extent disrupting play and the set pieces the Ausies or Scots had trained for, like the first reception of the ball and the maul or ruck and resulting scrum. He had a strategy based on knowledge of the competition, the rules and the psychology of international rugby union to prove out.

Strategy is based very much on the balance between on the one side your own level of skills as a team, your boat speed relative to the fleet and the information you have on the course versus challenging yourselves and making some presumptions and placing a stake in the ground as to how and where you are going to sail on the course, and how you expect the competition to behave and indeed react to you. So you have a knowledge bank and  based on this, you make risk taking actions, as in any business.


Using this type of approach to build a strategy helps most of all to seperate out the problems you encounter tactically and with boat speed from the strategy you have adopted for the Race or Series. Identifying strategic factors in 1 to 5 and then planning elements of your strategy also help you check on the water if each element is working. As I say a well thought out course strategy also gives you somewhere or something to bet on if you persistently come off the start line mid fleet or buried by bigger handicap boats. It can overcome poor boat speed or a bit of nerves starting or at roundings.

Sub Elements of Your Personal Choice

Preparation is obviously a big part of your own personal choice , but as I am focusing on Race Course Strategy let us begin at the beginning:

1) You choose to go out darn early and check that your strategic information is correct on the day!

2) Then you choose an area of the line to start on

3) as you line up, you judge if the fleet are early or late and which competitors are around you that you may have issues with based on past behaviour and bullying! You can then make a tactical decision to which lane you take for the start line, IN LIGHT of your strategy for the first beat.

4) You either get a good start or you get out of a bad one, in light of your strategy again.

5) You choose your side on a biased course due to tide, wind etc. Or you choose to bet on "tacking up the cone" on the windshifts, that is a 60' cone until you are within two tacks of the windward mark. That is a good strategy given there is no real bias or a tide eddy right out on the edge could leave you exposed to wind shadow or a big shift. I pulled out the only respectable top of mid fleet result in a classic OD fleet nationals,  by tacking with the bouy on the front shoulder, going only about a third of the way across the race area in the first two tacks and tacking on 5 degree wind shifts or up towards blocks of breeze we saw coming down. The fleet had chosen right or left to the layline in maybe only three tacks the whole beat, where as I did about 8 tacks over 3/4 of a naut.mile after a mid line start following the "leftists" out and then tacking in over again. This was ten places better than our usual for the series! I just ignored the crews anguish about the extremists on each wing.

Manage Your Expectations from Strategy

 In a tight local OD fleet a strategic result may be only two or three places on average over a season or in the series results spring and autumn.  In an IRC fleet you may have a lot to gain as smallest boat, by sailing your own wind and tacking often- as a strategy. Given a little local knowledge at a nationals venue,  you may know of a combination of wind bend and back eddy which could launch you up the results if you can get over to it. 

Never build a huge expectation and be critical about your strategy under way - this is easier in OD because you know your boat speed and your other weaknesses so the strategic choices in the elements can be analysed in real time on the water relative to your previous performance or the fleet.

Depending on your crew you may prefer not to share much about strategy and keep it with "top management". Alternatively if you sail with the guys I do, then strategy has to be more democratic which can lead to no real strategy at all it has to be said! A good strategy is based upon self knowledge but as a helm on a boat with very experienced regatta sailors on the rail, then that is a sum of the whole.

You need information and feedback into strategy most of all, and delegating  some strategic consideration and decision making on for example I say tide, or boat speed for instance can involve and motivate the crew. Making choices in a vacuum and employing "management consultants" on the transom before you ask your crew what is going wrong, is a recipe for mutiny and desertion. Just involving the crew in feedback can be enough for them to accept that you need outside advice on board, or a shuffeling of positions for example.

Risk Taking 

The element of personal choice is the real element of risk taking: what level of risk are you prepared to take?

My own bug bear is starting which is worth a good few paragraphs as starting will undoubtedly be part of your strategy : In OD Class racing, starting is usually a very decisive part , and you should make a committment to actions based on strategy which will help calm nerves and focus the crew.

I am not great at starts: I am more confident now than I used to be, on getting a lane and pushing my nose in, but I still dread being OCS. As if the gun is going to shoot me in the head!  I have a poor risk orientation - the actual risk is much lower than I perceive.

The gain on being on-time or nearest the line on the gun is so large in sailing that it is worth being OCS in races just to get the feel for timing and how boatss around you behave. I also used to sail with a Sigma 33 and occaisionally a Sigma 38 who were terrified of damaging their boats. However, in their fleets there were very, very few collisions on the start line or at marks and they were typified by gentlemanly conduct. Also the helmsmen just did not understand how close you need to be to the line to get over on time. They were five boat legnths DDW often with 30 seconds to go- that means at least 8-10 boat legnths to reach the line. They maybe should have practiced with a freindly boat or take fenders out as a strategic learning mechanism!

I don't know how many writers talk about "the best start" and "the mid line sag". Although these two feature in many OD races they are maybe not even near the average behaviour - the bunch on the Committee boat end can often make life so hard for each other that no one gets the perfect biased end start. Other boats down the line hit the first shift first or a purely able to tack over the "wolf pack"  on port up the course. Given a good transit or a good bow man, line sag is often only a feature when there you are stemming the tide or there is a big lull at 30 seconds.

Given you like me are poor at starts, or the smallest boat in a handicap fleet, it can be a good idea to learn who is big and fast and usually starts up at the committee boat, or bang on the pin end in a big bias there. Sit out a race or on the committee boat (volunteer!) and see how that boat behaves - do they really have such good timing or are they bullying their way in? When do they choose a lane to go on? 1 minute, 30 seconds? Where are they and what are other boats doing at 20 , 15 and 10 seconds? How are they on the gun?

 Another thing to do is to come out fast right behind the boat on the far right and either let them sail away from you if they are bigger or tack away once you lose speed in their wind wake. You then have no boats around you- make sure you tack on top of any port boats at this stage! You can then tack back on to starboard given an even course and see how the race is proceeding and how you have done relatively to the fleet. Be warned though, if there is a big RHS strategic advantage you will quite likely not be the only one to choose to start late! 

Out On A Flyer Risks....

 Going out to one extreme side of the course or into a potentially difficult headland or bay has big risks that need to be assessed in light of the days actual conditions. As I mention above, come out early on the sailing area and try to second guess the actual course that will be laid. Double check the racing instructions for that day correspond to the strategic elemetns of tide and wind over the course which you have identified as important. Maybe the course will be set too short to allow for a big RHS flyer due to light winds?

One element of strategy can be to reel in the excesses of "banging the corners". If for example it really pays to get over right asap and the boat-end bunch are going mid course, then you may be onto a flyer on the RHS. But if the main body or first pack of the fleet persist mid field and even tack back a little then you need to tack over to "put on a light cover" . Ie you have to cash some of your chips in early. If you have not yet come into the strategic effect, but it is clear it is there, then take the risk. and make sure you understand where you have to hit the bend, or how far into a header you need to sail to get a good lift out. Being half hearted and just covering the fleet will mean that you do not know if your strategic element was correct. Perhaps there were other options or an unfortunate wind shift mid course away from your position. On the other hand sailing too far into a header or too early into a wind bend can mean that you drop places or end up overstanding way out on a long lay line with the risk that there is a big shift between you and the windward mark.

"Tending Right" may be the best solution, tacking or carrying on the first wind shift and understanding the gust benefits to be had while keeping yourself between your strategic element and the fleet. If you are back on stb heading left in my "text book example", you can then go over right when you see boats in front or behind going right or when you are completely on the money for heading over there: hence you have hidden your hand a bit for boats which are even with you in mid course area.

Risks Against Perpetual Offenders : some racing sailors just grow horns and if they see a chance to cross a boat they know don't bother to protest or are less experienced in the rules, they mess with them, breaking the rules to gain advantage. Other boats are just club fisted bargers at starts and marks. Both types need kid gloves but also a wee red flag and a winter briefing on the rules.

One of the biggest risks you can take out on the course is " closing the door" at the leeward mark. This means you have rights to round, and you can go in wide to reach and harden up nicely at speed but there is a boat bearing down on your inside without rights. The only answer here is to call the boat repeatedly even before three boat legnths and achieve eye contact, and call " go wide of us on our outside". Alternatively in light airs, just go wide and close the door and then call no water and be ready to fend off and protest on both 18 and 14.

Risk Attitude to Tactics as a Strategy 

You can decide to take more risk in tactical boat meets boat situations as a strategy for a race, series or season, with this meaning that you place yourself nearer to potential collisions than before. Like I say above in many incidents this means shouting but carrying on until rule 14 applies and you must be able to judge a call on a near miss and then protest. This could mean sailing a while in dinghies or small keel boats to hone up your skills and feeling for the situation.

There are other high risk situations: the winward mark, tacking on the "death slot" ahead of boats is risky because it takes perfect timing and enough of it! Also consider a favourite of the sigma 33 champion boat "Phoenix" who used the rules to the word, but created high risk and not just a little unpopular : they chose to gybe down wind like a bloody assymetric in light airs and take a go -left often with a gybe set in more wind. The killer tactic was actually to come into the leeward mark on starboard. Here you have both starboard rights before you gybe and overlap on the whole fleet by nature of the angles of the transoms. You are allowed to gybe as part of mark rounding so it is a killer little tactic given that you are not throwing away places by using more water and time to get into that position! HOWEVER, not everyone knows the how rule 10 and 18 interplay here and many people do not understand the overlap geometry. Also a few people will not see you, being covered in spinnakers and so on. So you really risk collision, you must have room infront of you before you finally bear away, and you must be good at your gybe and harden up to keep within rule 18 and not make an idiot of yourself.

Risk and Sailing a Series

Rodney Pattison and Lawrie Smith amongst others have written about the attitude to risk over a whole series, like a nationals or the olympics and their chapters are applicable  just as much the two seasonal wednedsday night series and worth the read. Also strategy for a series a nice place to round off dear reader, because it it is a kind of meta strategy on top of concrete boat and team elements and the daily weather and tide strategy.

To build a series-strategy for improving your results over earlier performances,  you really need to know about the strengths and weaknesses that are your own personal,  the boat's and the team's  and know how the competition behave. Then you have a premise for your attitude to risk taking as a strategy which informs your starts in particular, and mark roundings: This is then coloured by tide and wind elements in your strategy.

If you are fresh to the class or club, then you maybe need to ask someone who the best sailors are and note their sail numbers: Also who the worst are (seriously!) and who the most arrogant rule breaking idiots are. The latter to avoid or take a hand on the red flag once in a while, the former to exploit on starts and roll overs etc. Remember one protest throwing someone out on a clear rule break or making them do turns can push you up enough to be on stage at prize giving!

To summarise what the medal winning pundits say, and what results in many fleets show, generally speaking you should take less risk in a Series and try to sail consistently rather than taking big risks on the start in particular. You have good boat speed then as a pre-requisite, and you can get off the start line, maybe exploiting a weak starter ( see Platu 25 world champions on youtube choosing a mid line start and reaching into a hole from behind a weak boat who is luffing too hard and created a gap- they knew fine well the game here!!) and then you can go the way you want or tack on the first shift to solidify your good start. You then go right a little early up towards the layline (port rounding)  with maybe only one tack left and sail in over toward the mark  judging your competition and forcing boats back you before your final double tack when you have space above you and the game is clear for the layline.  Conservative. You may win a whole event with a series of 5th places!

 A contrasting alternative to this could be taking risks in the conditions you are most comforable with. Another alternative would be to take risks early on in a series when you can risk your discards away. Kind of playing your joker first, but remember you cannot strike a DSQ.


You may know as at Lake Garda, that you have to go right to get to the wind, but do you want to point your bow in the stramash at the boat end? Or try to Port tack the fleet from some start out LHS and a good lay line? 

As good a strategy as any for a competent new comer is to follow the best boats: get near them on the start and keep an eagle eye on them. Then at least you have made a strategy to learn from others that year and mix it in the group following them. You have to be really confident with the rules in mixing in with the "wolf pack" near the start and on the first tack- and always remember rule 14 avoid collision- is what will be held against you and aggressive port tackers just after the start need to be called early, avoided and protested.

In a series personal preference no 5, may be a lesser element, because these other elements are much more prominent. So you may prefer a really ballsy start at club level, but with know you lack the finesse of boat handling at the right end of a line to tackle taking speed on against top level competition.

A series should always be seen as both a big test of your sailing when you have to "step up" and also it should be a big lecture theatre for you to learn from, and take tutorials with the team afterwards at debreifs and talk to sailors you were close to in the race. Then you can choose to adapt your series meta strategy if you feel it is a poor bet, or fit the conditions into your Race strategy if they are to reoccur through the week for instance.

So see there is a cyclical way of building and using race strategy, but there is a big element of personal will and you have to be honest with yourself and take that element one step at a time, without big expectations: be pleasantly surprised instead! Over a series you may have to dampen your own will to the flock and be more cautious.