The average height was 6’1/2” and the average weight was 180.4 pounds. One thing that I noticed was that the sailors who weren’t 6 foot or taller were generally the ones who weighed more, while the ones who were 6 foot and over generally weighed less. Most of the heights were pretty close, but the range in weight was actually 35 lbs. Interestingly both the lightest and the heaviest sailor in this group finished near the bottom of the top 25% and the closer you got to the top of the group the closer the sailors came to the average.
Hmmm. Well there's an incentive to get my weight down to something in a more competitive range.
While I didn't sail much with the Newport Laser frostbite fleet last winter, I was on their email list and avidly scanned the occasional 'Words of Wisdom' from the daily winners. Here are some thoughts on fitness from Steve Kirkpatrick...
While I have always been a bit of a workout junkie, bike riding is really good for sailing. My brother forced me to go out for a couple of long rides last week around the Thanksgiving holiday when we were in Long Island. It is amazing how much bike riding increases your ability to concentrate for extended periods of time (cars, potholes, etc. really focus your attention) and also improves your general sense of well being. If you are afraid of road biking (which I was for a long time) swimming, running and rowing are all good alternatives, though less muscle specific for hiking in a Laser. It is important to add exercises that will strengthen your core like sit-ups, as this will reduce the risk of back injury. Remember to stretch out afterwards and drink plenty of water. Working out hard a couple of days a week will pay big dividends in your mental game and will help your stamina when the breeze comes up.
And finally here are more words of wisdom on fitness from Blake Marriner in his Winner's Chalk Talk after winning the day in the Cedar Point Laser frostbite fleet last winter...
I’ve found that working on avoiding getting tired during that last hour in hiking breeze pays big dividends for those last 2 or 3 races. It’s not just the effect of tired legs that don’t hike as hard, it’s also the effect on the mind and your ability to think clearly and make the right decisions. To that end, I try to get in 3-4 sessions a week of aerobic work usually on a bike, riding for at least 50% longer then the normal race (if the race is 30 mins long, I’ll ride for 45 mins). Along with 5-10 minutes of core work, I’ve found that helps keep my results somewhat consistent from the first race to the last.
I have been known to show a measure of disrespect on this blog to the sailors of other popular singlehanders such as the Sunfish and the Force 5. But I've always had a sneaking regard for the big guys who sail the Finn.
And this week I'm actually green with envy at those Finn dudes. Almost 300 Finn sailors from 24 nations, and ranging in age from 40 to 86, are currently sailing in the Finn Masters Worlds in Maubuisson in south-west France. Yesterday they were racing in blazing sunshine and winds of 15 knots gusting to 20.
Mmmmm. French wine and cheeses. 300 crazy old single-handed sailor dudes. Sunshine. Breeze on. What's not to like? Sounds almost as good as a Laser Masters Worlds.
I wrote about doing a headstand on the Laser foredeck in Eleven Crazy Things You Can Do on a Laser. I could never master that trick, even though I'm relatively familiar with balancing on a Laser so that the big stick thing points at the sky and the big shiny bit points down. I only tried sculling once... and I capsized! So I have the utmost admiration for the dude in the video, even if he is French.
On Saturday my son and I took our Lasers over to Upper Narragansett Bay. The wind was a shifty, puffy westerly in the 8-15 knot range and I took the opportunity to practice one of the tips I picked up at the Kurt Taulbee Sailfit seminar back in March.
At the seminar one day, while I was sailing upwind in a moderate breeze on relatively flat water, Kurt told me that my outhaul was too loose.
Being an arrogant bastard and stubborn with it too, I chose to argue with Kurt in spite of the fact that he is one of the top Laser coaches in the world and I am one of the slowest Laser master sailors in the world. Or I suppose you could look at it more charitably and say that I asked my coach some follow-up questions so that I could better understand his teaching.
"But I'm a big guy and I feel like I need a lot of power in the sail. Surely I need to power up the sail so that I can hike aa hard as possible while still sailing flat. That must be the fastest way to sail... isn't it?"
"Not necessarily. You have to consider drag as well. Tighten your outhaul and you will have less drag."
"But then I wouldn't need to hike so much."
"Try it. You might find you have to hike harder."
So I tried tightening the outhaul and sure enough I had less power and I wasn't hiking hard and I was going slower.
"Put the bow down. Sail slightly more off the wind."
I footed off slightly and the boat accelerated. I did have to hike harder. It felt fast. It felt totally different to the way I had sailed the boat for the last 25 years. Aaah. So that's how it's supposed to feel.
So I tried Kurt's advice when I was sailing with my son on Saturday. He set up just to windward of me and we headed off in the general direction of Barrington on a long port tack beat. He was sailing with a loose foot to his sail and I had much less draft in my sail and I was sailing a few degrees lower as per the advice from Mr. Taulbee. Sure enough every time I glanced over my shoulder my son was gaining distance to windward on me. Hmmm. This doesn't seem to be working.
But once I had settled into the groove sailing in this unfamiliar way I also started to gain distance ahead of him as the gap between our tracks widened. It was hard to tell whether in my position ahead and to leeward I was actually gaining on him. Would I cross him if I tacked? But then we sailed into a nice juicy header, I tacked, and crossed him by a good margin.
So what does that prove? It certainly doesn't prove that I was making better VMG upwind than him, but I guess it does validate the conventional wisdom that in an oscillating breeze you should foot to the next header. Ahead and leeward is the place to be to take advantage of those shifts.
We headed downwind and, after he had showed off his death roll recovery technique a couple of times, we headed back upwind but on starboard tack this time. Same experiment. Same result.
So I have learned a new way to sail upwind in hiking conditions. Thanks Kurt. Something to practice and try out in races until I have it perfect.
And I discovered in my random ramblings around the Interwebs that two other Laser sailors have gone through the same learning process this year...
Mike Matan from Cedar Point YC spent a couple of weekends this spring training with Kurt in Clearwater, and promptly went back to the CPYC frostbite fleet and won the day. In his Winner's Chalk Talk he told the fleet how he did it. It's all to do with that tighter outhaul and putting the bow down. As Mike said, "You may think, as I did, that you already do this but I guarantee you’ll find at the clinic you don’t do it anywhere near enough."
Then a few weeks ago Stuart Streuli wrote a review in Sailing World of the Velocitek Speedpuck a neat little GPS speedo and compass for small boats. He tested out the Speedpuck sailing a Laser with the Newport frostbite fleet. He soon discovered that there's not much time for staring at a speedo in short-course college-style courses. But then he made a discovery...
Afterwards, however, I decided to see if I could glean something useful from the data. By monitoring the speed as I changed outhaul tension, I discovered that, in the moderate breeze and flat water, sailing with a tighter outhaul than I usually do was about a tenth of a knot faster. I later confirmed this observation with fleet maestro Ed Adams, a former Laser Masters world champion. In those conditions, he said, minimizing drag can be more important than creating power. The tricky part, he added, is that the boat doesn't feel as good with the outhaul pulled tighter, which can lead you to deduce that in fact more draft is better. The Speedpuck, however, showed me the truth. Next time I find myself in those conditions, I'll know what to do.
OK. I'm convinced. If Kurt Taulbee, Ed Adams and Mike Matan say it's so, it must be so.
Paul Goodison GBR on his way to winning gold in the Laser class at the Delta Lloyd regatta in Holland last week. Skandia Team GBR won three gold medals at this event. As well as Goodison in the Lasers, Ed Wright won the Finn class, and Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Ali Martin won the women's match racing.
Its nine o'clock on a Saturday The regular crowd shuffles in There's an old man sitting in Frisco Making photos of wahines and fishin'.
He says, son, can you show me a Force 5? I'm not really sure if it's Joe's But it has a comfortable seat And I know half the fleet And it sort of planes when it blows.
La la la, de de da La la, de de da da da
Write us a blog, you're the Tillerman Write us a blog tonight Well, we're all in the mood for a parody And you've got us feeling all right.
Now Apparent Wind's Yarg is a friend of mine He lets me sail at his club for free And he's pretty thick-skinned When he tacks on my wind But there's no place that he'd rather be.
He says, your skill I believe is what's killing me As his boatspeed is way off the pace Well I'm sure that I could be a sailing star If I could just win one more race.
Oh, la la la, de de da La la, de de da da da
Now Adam's a real smart blogger Who likes to sail with his wife And he's talking with Bonnie Who is terribly funny And probably will be for life.
And the Dutchman is practicing fact-finding As the left coast guys slowly get stoned Yes, they're sharing a program called Wordpress But its better than blogging alone.
Write us a blog, you're the Tillerman Write us a blog tonight Well, we're all in the mood for a parody And you've got us feeling all right
Its a pretty good crowd for a Saturday And Carol Anne gives me a smile 'Cause she knows that its me They've been coming to see To forget about life for a while.
And the blog, it rumbles and rambles And the stories are crazy and queer And they log in from afar And leave comments bizarre And say, man, what are you doing here?
Oh, la la la, de de da La la, de de da da da
Write us a blog, you're the Tillerman Write us a blog tonight Well, we're all in the mood for a parody And you've got us feeling all right.
An anonymous commenter to my last post asked the following question...
It’s interesting that the clip you chose to show (the light air jibe) shows the sailor violating the rules of propulsion, by coming out of the jibe faster than going in. I have several other training DVD’s and they all seem to train and advocate the same thing. (One even says to do this carefully so as not to alert the refs.) What gives?
What gives indeed?
I can think of 5 possible answers...
He wasn't going faster. It's just an optical illusion.
This is only a training video and the sailor was exaggerating to illustrate a point. When racing he would never come out of a gybe faster than he went in to it.
He was only going a little bit faster after the gybe, and only for a little while. The judges wouldn't call him for such a minor violation.
Everybody does it. You have to do it if you want to be competitive in a Laser. Don't you ever drive over the speed limit?
All Laser sailors are cheats.
Which of these answers is nearest the truth? Or can you think of a better explanation of what you see in that video?
I have had the pleasure over the past few days to review the Advanced Laser Boat Handling DVD produced by my friends at the Laser Training Center in Cabarete, Dominican Republic. And I must say I am very impressed. This is the best video training aid I have ever seen for teaching the techniques of Laser boat handling.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I raced in the Laser Caribbean Midwinters and participated in pre-regatta clinics in Cabarete in 2007 and 2008. The 2008 clinic was taught by the head coach at the Laser Training Center, Javier Borojovich, known to everyone as Rulo, and he is the brains behind the Advanced Laser Boat Handling DVD. Rulo is an excellent coach and I learned much from his classes in Cabarete. The best way to describe the DVD is that it has captured Rulo's lessons on boat handling in a medium that you can use at home. If you can't attend the Laser Training Center at Cabarete, then owning the DVD is the next best thing. And even if you have sailed with Rulo at Cabarete, the DVD is the best way to remind yourself about everything you learned there... and more.
So why is this DVD so good? Essentially... attention to detail.
The DVD covers tacks, gybes, mark roundings and penalty turns. But it breaks down each of these maneuvers into several categories, e.g. the section on tacks covers light, medium and strong wind tacks separately. Then for each of these it breaks down the maneuver into a series of steps and illustrates each step with slow motion video taken from various angles: the coach boat, aerial shots, and even cameras mounted on the Laser. The coverage of exactly what to do in each step is meticulously and clearly explained in the commentary.
As an example the section on light wind tacks has...
a discussion on why good technique for light wind tacks is so important
overview of objectives of a light wind tack
two keywords to remember
detailed explanation of how to execute the four steps of the tack
heading up
heeling to windward
switching sides
flattening the boat
with several tips on each step illustrated with video taken from a coach boat...
close-up videos of the same steps from a camera mounted on the transom of the Laser picking up some more detailed issues such as exactly what to do with your hands and feet through the tack
a variation for extremely light winds
what to do if you come out of the tack too low
two ways you can go wrong and how to correct them
tips on how to improve
Get the idea?
To give you an even better feel for the quality of this DVD check out this short clip from the section on light wind gybes...
And the sailors in the videos are world class Laser sailors such as Brad Funk, Andrew Campbell, Anna Tunnicliffe and 3-time Olympian from Poland, Maciej Grabowski. I've never seen anything quite like this before.
I can imagine using the DVD before a training session to focus in on one aspect of technique before going on the water. Now let's see exactly what to do with the sheet in a roll tack. Exactly when should I sheet in, when should I ease, how much should I ease, when should I sheet in again, and how fast should I sheet in? It's all there. Attention to detail, as I said. Review the DVD. Remember the details. Go on the water and practice. You couldn't wish for a better training aid. I'm sure I'm going to be using it a lot this summer.
The Advanced Laser Boat Handling DVD is available from the Laser Training Center for $49.95. Full disclosure: I was provided with a review copy of the DVD for free but if Ari Barshi hadn't sent me a free copy I would certainly have bought one at this price. Hell, don't tell Ari but I would probably have paid even more for it; it's that good.
One last point... I am really hoping that Rulo and his friends in Cabarete will produce a second DVD on the techniques for sailing a Laser upwind and downwind in those classic huge Cabarete waves. That would be make for an even more spectacular DVD.
