5 Tips: Getting a Good Start – and the 60 Seconds After That
If a good start is the key to good race, the last tack into the start and the first 60 seconds out of it are crucial, explains top America’s Cup sailor Terry Hutchinson. From Yachting World. The subtleties of a good start are more complicated than identifying a good spot to leeward and starting next to someone who is going to give space and be happy to be rolled – although they both seem to help. For me, consistent starting comes from repetition of the process and having a team that is working together without the need for constant communication. [...]
Shift Into Your Point Gear
Click for bigger image Light air and strong current are tricky conditions and as the results of last Sunday's race show, trickier for some boats then others. Besides reading the current and the wind, light and varying conditions call for almost continuous shifting gears to maintain good boat speed. Here's Greg Fisher's take in Sailing World on Shifting Into Your Point Gear. The ability to point is an important part of any boatspeed toolkit. In many cases, having the ability to point is just as important as having great speed through the water. There are many instances when [...]
Light Air Running
The last couple of race days have seen wind and rain during the day, but around the 6 PM start time the sun has come out and the breeze gone away. The lesson here may well be don't let 4 PM's weather scare you away from an evening sail. Having made it out, now how do you sail fast to the leeward mark in low pressure? The link below will pull up a PDF of Stewart Walker's interesting and thorough thoughts on that very question. Light Air Running by Stewart Walker, a PDF file
Know Your Mode
From the 42 Marine blog, a post on mode awareness and shifting gears. Saturday afternoon on Lake Minnetonka served up some great conditions for E Scow club racing; SW, 20-25, 85-90 degree temps…It doesn’t get much better. We had 17 boats on the line for the start of the first race, and the finishing tally at the end of race 2 was 7. Broken boats and masts and bruised egos for sure. But on top of the close racing and awesome downwind rides, there were some great lessons to be learned, one of which is to always know your “mode” [...]