Words of Wisdom on Sailing Upwind in a Large Fleet

How do you sail the first beat of a race in a large fleet? How do you decide when to tack? How do you manage the groups of boats around you on the course?

This is an aspect of racing that I have always had trouble with. So I was pleased to come across these Words of Wisdom from Bill Brangiforte. Bill is one of the best Sunfish sailors on the planet. He won the North Americans in 2010. But he does show up at Laser regattas in New England from time to time and he's incredibly fast in a Laser too. In any case, the tips below apply to any boat.

Bill prefaced these words of wisdom by saying that on the first day of a major regatta his goal was to be in striking range of the leaders without taking too many chances. Hey, I would be delighted to be in "striking range of the leaders" in any race on any day of a regatta.

So how does he do it? (Bill's tips in bold. My insane ramblings about them not in bold.)

1. Until you are sure there is an advantage to one side, start near the middle of the line. A line sight is very helpful here. I have found that traditional line sights are not that useful in big fleets, because boats at the pin are often over early and block your sight. A better approach is to sight from the transom of the committee boat. This will give you a “safety sight” and a good reference of where you are on the line, and when to pull the trigger. 

Hmmm. I should try that. I hardly ever know which side of the course is advantaged so I should go for the middle of the line more often.

2. Always tack back after you gain on boats to weather. When their bows start to point towards you, tack and consolidate your gain. This especially true right after the start, but generally works for the rest of the race as well. 

Makes sense. Either there has been a header, or (less likely for me than for Bill) you are just sailing higher and faster than the boats to weather. Either way a tack consolidates your lead.

3. Cross boats when you can. 

Ditto.

4. Don’t let a big pack of boats cross you- tack ahead and to leeward of them.  

I guess the logic here is that if you let them cross you, you may never get ahead of them. If you tack ahead and to leeward you have a chance to cross them if you all get headed?

5. When you find yourself heading close to a lay line, start looking for any excuse to get back toward the middle- any small header will do. I like to use more pressure, as it gets you back in faster. 

I do know that I can't make any more gains in lifts and headers after I have reached the layline. But I need to get better at looking for headers or pressure to find excuses to get back towards the middle.

6. If you are heading towards the middle, don’t tack until the boats to leeward tack. 

I guess he is saying that you are minimizing risk by heading towards the middle, and if you tack away from a group to leeward you are giving them a chance to gain on you if they get headed later or they find a gust? Better to stay between them and the windward mark. You will get any puffs before they do. In a lift you will gain. And if there is a header you will all tack together and you will still be ahead of them.

7. Avoid the lay lines, but in big fleets, once you are close to the weather mark, try to over stand slightly. There are often big groups of slow moving boats pinching to get around the mark. By slightly over standing, you can maintain your speed and make a fast transition to downwind.

I do try to do this. Actually it's probably a fault that I do it too well, if that is possible. I have a pathological fear of being trapped below a group of boats at the windward mark and failing to lay the mark, to the extent that I tend not to tack below the starboard layline parade even when they are overstanding. And I have a fault of overstanding too far. It's all about improving my judgment of laylines I guess.

Anyway, much food for thought.

What do you think?

Do you agree with Bill's tips?

Does my rationalization of them make sense - or am I talking utter nonsense as usual?

Do you have any words of wisdom on your own on this topic?

Full text of Bill's random thoughts on the 2010 season (from which the tips above are extracted) at ...
http://www.sunfishclass.org/newengland/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/Bill2010WOW.pdf

New England Boat Show - Free Tickets

I have two complimentary tickets for the New England Boat Show to give away to some lucky reader.

The New England Boat Show is at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center from February 16-24.

All you have to do to have a chance to win two complimentary tickets to the show (valid for any day of the show) is to leave a short comment on this post telling me why you want to go to the New England Boat Show.

Is there a particular exhibit you want to see? Are you shopping for a new yacht? Do you want to do some comparison shopping and need to quiz a number of vendors about their products? Are you aiming to check out one or more of the seminars? Or are you just looking for somewhere interesting to go on a cold winter afternoon in Boston? Whatever the aim of your visit, just explain it in a few words in the comments.

I went to the show with some friends last year and we had a blast. I particularly enjoyed Sailfest and the Remote Control Sailing Pond and checking out all the incredibly cool charts on the Old Charts of New England stand.

But if you're currently not sure what you want to see at the show then check out Features at a Glance or browse the list of Exhibitors or peruse the list of Seminars. You are sure to find something to give you a reason to visit the show.

I will randomly pick the winner from all the entries received by 6pm EST on Wednesday 6th Feb and announce the winners shortly thereafter. So come back on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning to see if you have won.

If you are the winner I will need your snail mail address (via email) ASAP after that so I can mail you the tickets to arrive in time for the first day of the show, Saturday 16 Feb.

Go for it!

PS. Don't leave an Anonymous comment. You won't win that way! Contest not open to relatives of mine. Only one entry per person please. Decision of the judges (me) is final.

Scoring Experiment

I see that at the ISAF World Cup racing in Miami this week, the organizers are experimenting with a slightly different scoring system for the Laser and Laser Radial Classes. The winner of each race is given a zero score - instead of one point. All other places are unchanged, i.e. 2nd place boat gets 2 points, 3rd place gets 3 points and so on.

I can only guess that the reason is to give a "bonus" to the sailor who actually wins each race?

Back in the day when I first started racing, the standard system was to give the winner of each race three-quarters of a point. This functioned as a sort of a tie-breaker because, for example, a first and a third place would be a better score (by a quarter of a point) than two second places. Although I think the current tie-breaker system is mathematically equivalent in all realistic scenarios I can imagine.

Any idea why it was decided to experiment in this way?

What do you think of it?

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind

Last week was the coldest week of the winter (so far) here in Rhode Island.

On Thursday morning when we drove over to my son's house to babysit our grandsons, it was 4°F.

I went for a run later that day when the temperature was 19°F with the wind chill making it "feel like" 4°F.

I used to have a rule that I wouldn't run when it was less than 20°F. After that run on Thursday I still think that's a good rule. Brrrrr!

But it's surprising how quickly you acclimatize to the cold weather. When it "warmed up" at the weekend to the high 20's it really did feel warm. Well, comparatively warm.

So I started thinking back to January and February in 2010 when, for reasons I can't explain, I really got hooked on Laser sailing in the middle of a New England winter and wrote posts like Brain Freeze and  I Love Winter (which got me into a lot of trouble with CUSOSPUSSTAG but that's a whole other story.)

The forecast for Sunday was for around 10 knots maybe gusting to 20 knots, and for temps in the high 20's maybe even 30. So on Sunday morning I woke up all excited about going frostbiting again. I hitched up the Laser trailer to my trusty Subaru and headed down to Newport.

It was a gloriously sunny day with a puffy shifty north-westerly. (Is there any other kind of north-westerly.)

It was very reminiscent of that I Love Winter day. Similar conditions. Similar feelings.

When I'm frostbiting on days like this and I am doubtful if I will be able to hang in there for all the races, I always get this feeling of a (small) victory as soon as I have launched. Hey, I went sailing today! If I only sail one race I can count it on the journey to 100 days sailing this year. I am already a winner.

I did get a little pain in my fingertips after the first race. But I soon shook it out.

And I did get a mild attack of the dreaded thumb cramps at the end of the third race. I was going to sail in if I couldn't get rid of them. But after a bit of hand stretching I was fine, and I completed all six races.

The air temperature was 31°F. The water temperature was 35.6°F. I never felt cold all day. But there was ice all over the deck when I sailed back to the beach with a big smile on my face.

I have written before how one bad experience can almost put me off Laser sailing for months. The reverse is also true. Sailing on a spectacular day like Sunday has awoken my enthusiasm for sailing in the coldest months of the year again. There's something very special about dragging your boat across a snow-covered beach to launch and then sailing in sub-freezing temperatures. As I said, I can't explain it. It's one of those things that you just have to experience to understand.

And I didn't feel cold at all.

I love winter!

Ice on foredeck after sailing

Something nice to look at on a cold and dreary day!

It's 43 days since 16 December 2102 2012 which was the day that I sailed in the Sunday races at Bitter End Yacht Club on our vacation there last year.

Nobody was interested in racing Lasers so I sailed a Hobie Wave. There were six Waves and three Getaways (another Hobie beach cat) in the races.

After a week of strongish winds, the winds were light for the weekly racing on Sunday. Such is life.

Over the years I have developed a few key rules for doing well in the cat races at Bitter End...

1. Give yourself enough room to reach and accelerate at the start.
2. Do the minimum number of tacks.
3. Don't get stuck in irons in the tacks.
4. Sail fast.
5. Don't hit anybody.

The start line had a strong port bias and I could see that the majority of the fleet were planning to start at the pin end of the line. But, as Tillerman's Five Rules For Doing Well In The Cat Races At Bitter End don't say anything about trying to fight eight other cats to win the pin I chose to start near the starboard end of the line in every race, in clear air, with plenty of room to accelerate, with freedom to tack, and with no chance of getting pinned beyond the port layline, or getting involved in some godawful melee with eight other cats.

It worked out pretty well most of the time.

One race I didn't get such a good start but as all the boats ahead of me were approaching the windward mark the wind died and they all stalled and I managed to sneak a tack inside them and pass most of them.

And in the last race my competitors were so eager to win the pin that one of them hit the pin and the rest were all involved in some godawful melee trying to luff round the pin, thereby infringing Rule 5 of Tillerman's Five Rules For Doing Well In The Cat Races At Bitter End.

I had to laugh. Children can be so cruel at my age.

At the awards ceremony I was awarded the traditional bottle of rum for coming first in the Wave fleet.

And that was the last time I've won a race in 43 days.

Oh?

You came here because the title said there would be something nice to look at on a cold and dreary day?

OK. Here it is then.

Get Off Your Butt

When I started Lasering... some time during Reagan's first term when Abba and Kenny Rogers were still cool... going downwind in a Laser was pretty simple. Just point the boat at the leeward mark and try not to death roll.

In the intervening years, all sorts of discoveries have been made on how to sail a Laser faster downwind. Now it's all about sailing fast angles by the lee and and on broad reaches, carving, up-turns and down-turns, treating the Laser more like a surfboard than a boat.

For many years I sailed downwind with my weight on my butt and my knees. I had my back leg jammed across the back of the cockpit and my front knee on the floor of the cockpit. I felt linked to the boat. My center of gravity was low. I felt stable.

But "stable" is not necessarily the same as "fast."

Coaches started trying to persuade me to adopt the Knees Up sailing style downwind.

So I spent several years trying to learn to sail downwind with my knees up and my feet on the floor of the cockpit. It felt very strange at first but I am pretty comfortable with it now... except when it blows over 20 knots and then I cower in the bottom of the cockpit just like I used to in the old days.

But most of the time I sail with my knees up and my weight on my butt and my feet. Maybe 90% on the former and 10% on the latter.

But recently I came across this article by Andrew Campbell on the Laser Class website.

Apparently it's been there since 2007.

How did I miss it until now?

Apparently I'm still doing it all wrong.

One of the sections in the article is entitled "Get off your butt." 

Next step to better downwind sailing is to use your legs. 

“What!?!” You may be asking yourself. 

No joke, and I hate to break it to you, but you may start feeling the burn in your legs on the downwind legs now too. And, it is for the better. By concentrating the majority of our body weight in about eight knots or more onto the balls of our feet instead of our butts on the rail we can drastically improve the kinetic power of the boat. Taking the weight off the rail under your butt and putting it into the floor under your feet can make a significant difference in how you feel your boat’s natural rock and turn in the waves and water. 

In lighter wind conditions in may indeed be necessary to hook your leg under the hiking strap in order to heel the boat over. That is fine, but in breeze where the boat will heel itself over just on by-the-lee pressure on the mainsail, it then becomes necessary to actively counter that energy with pressure from your toes and legs into the bottom of the cockpit, and maybe a hand on the leeward rail at times. 

Finn sailors and Laser sailors alike have the same conundrum, and I heard this concept from a Finn sailor, and did not even realize that I was doing it. Whenever you feel as though you are getting slow, often times it coincides with a moment of sloth in your body’s activity level. If we shift the weight off of our rear-ends and into our feet we can then sail deeper and with more pressure against our sails.

This is seriously bad news.

It's bad enough working like hell upwind until your thigh muscles are on fire and the pain becomes intolerable. But at least I can give my legs a rest downwind. Or I thought I could. Now Andrew Campbell says you should "start feeling the burn in your legs on the downwind legs now too." He says I have to put my weight on the balls of my feet.

Damn you, Andrew Campbell.

Now I am going to have to spend another two or three years trying to perfect this technique so that in 2016 or so I will be sailing my Laser according to the most advanced techniques known in 2007.

But god knows what new tortures the fast kids will have discovered by then.

I think I will go and work out on my hiking bench now.

It's OK to Stay at Home

"Travel is not compulsory. 

Great minds have been fostered entirely by staying close to home. 

Moses never got further than the Promised Land. 

Da Vinci and Beethoven never left Europe. 

Shakespeare hardly went anywhere at all - 

certainly not to Elsinore or the coast of Bohemia."

 - Jan Morris

Discuss. 

Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once. 

Protractors may not be used.

Laser Sailing in the BVI

I think I have mentioned before on this blog that Bitter End Yacht Club in the BVI is about the only place in the world where my wife will actually come sailing with me. No amount of logic will convince her that sailing with me in Minorca, or even in Rhode Island in the height of summer, would be just as warm and enjoyable. Must be something magical about BEYC.

So it should be no surprise to learn that when we went back to BEYC last December I took every chance I could to go sailing with Tillerwoman on every occasion that she was interested in doing so. More on that in another post perhaps. But I did manage to fit in five half-days of Laser sailing too.

When we first went to BEYC back in the early 90's the Laser seemed to be the small boat of choice for visitors who sailed many different kind of craft back home. There was always a good turnout of Lasers for the Sunday races. But the Hobie Waves and Getaways seem to have taken over that niche at BEYC now. Maybe they are easier to handle for folk who sail keelboats back home? Maybe the clientele is older? Whatever the reason, nobody (except me) was interested in racing Lasers on this trip. So it was an opportunity for some solo practice.

On our first full day I took Tillerwoman out for a spin round the bay on a Hobie Wave in the morning and then went down to the Watersports Center after lunch and said I wanted to take out a Laser. The first member of staff I asked simply told me that it was too windy and they weren't letting clients go out in any "boats with booms" that day. (I later discovered that someone had suffered a nasty head injury from a boom in the previous week.) But it didn't look too windy for me. So I argued. Don't you know who I am? Just Google "best sailing blog on the planet." (No, not really.) Eventually a more senior instructor who remembered me from previous visits relented and allowed me to go out and die on a Laser if I really wanted to.

So I had a blast around the bay for a couple of hours, getting used to sailing a Laser with 1970's vintage rigging. A Classic Laser as I wrote about a few years back.

After a few days of hiking (hills not Lasers) and catamaran sailing with Tillerwoman (all the while thinking how much fun Lasering would be in the relatively heavy winds on those days) I got back into a Laser again one afternoon and did a practice session concentrating on proper hiking style which god knows I need to improve, trying to remember everything covered in the webinar from Coach Rulo a few days before our trip.

The next day the winds were light, so for my 62nd day of Laser sailing in 2012 I went out and practiced light air gybes and tacks and mark roundings, all of which god knows I need to improve too.

Then there was a lazy Saturday of swimming and sunbathing with Tillerwoman, followed by Sunday racing on a Hobie Wave (about which I will have to write about in another post so I can brag a bit.) On Monday morning I even tempted Tillerwoman out for a sail on a Rhodes 19 and then went Lasering in the afternoon. More futile attempts to improve hiking technique and downwind technique. Played around trying to do gybes by crossing the boat before the boom like I saw Brad Funk do in a video somewhere. And more futile attempts to improve how I time the hand swap in tacks.

On our last day we had a good breeze in the morning so I went out for a final blast in a Laser and tried to practice a bit of all of the above. One of the resort photographers came out in a boat and started shooting me so I started posing for the camera and hiking as hard as I could.

"That's impressive. I can't do that!" shouted the photographer over the noise of the wind.

"Neither can I for very long. Hurry up and take the bloody shot."

The least bad photo he took is the one at the top of this post. God knows I need to improve.

And so to the Crawl Pub for a lunch of fish tacos and a few cold draft beers, during which I managed to injure my thumb on a chair.

It was kind of ironic that after 10 days of watersports my worst injury was suffered in a pub.

What am I looking at?

You know the drill.

And I fully expect Baydog to beat everyone to the punch. In fact, I'll be very disappointed if he doesn't. Very. Disappointed. Don't let me down, Baydog.

I took the picture above on Sunday afternoon, around 3pm, not long after high tide.

Where am I?

What am I looking at?

What does this place have geographically in common with the place in Mitch's post today What am I looking at?

Why does this chart explain why I was at that place above on Sunday afternoon, and not somewhere else?

What did Tillerman and Tillerwoman have for dinner?

Extra credit if you name all 8 ingredients (excluding spices, herbs and condiments etc.)

Laser Hiking Technique

We had three of our grandkids here for the weekend.

4-year-old Aidan discovered my hiking bench and just had to have a go. He also insisted that I demonstrate that I really could lift the various weights lying around in my basement workout room. And he had a try with some lighter dumbbells himself.

I think we have a potential future Laser sailor here. Although I can see I will have to give him some tips on correct hiking technique.

Note I don't really have my workout room walls painted in rainbow hues. That's some aberration of the camera on my son's phone.