GO FAST
Dear Pine Lake Sailing School Students,
I hope everyone is having a great school year, I know everyone is keeping up with their studies! The sailing season is only a month away and I promise it will come faster than you think. I want you all to start thinking about a few tactics before season so we can come into it prepared and ready to start off past the basics that even I need a refresher on after nine months of no tiller time. Think of this letter as an online chalk talk!
Before I get into this I want you all to become familiar with some basic terminology, you may know most of them already but it is good to get a refresher:
Port
Starboard
Windward
Leeward
Right of way
Proper course
Offset
Clean/ dirty air
Favored tack
Head down/ up
Knock/ Lift
Bow/Stern
Trim
Let’s start at the very beginning, the starting line. The starting line is what I consider the most important part of the race. Getting a good start can make or break a race. If you have a poor start it makes the races much more stressful and can cause a lot of people to sail worse because they start to play mind games.
Prestart. You should never go into a race blind. You should always have a game plan. A game plan includes getting a line sight, knowing what end you are going to start on, which means you have to know what side you want to be on during the first beat of the race, also depending on the wind, what time you are going to start setting up. If you do not already know a line sight is a STATIONARY object ON LAND (if it’s on the water it’s not stationary.) that aligns with the starting line. If it is possible I highly advise getting two line sights, one on either end of the line. You never know what you will be able to see during the start. When I was in cub boats the way I would do it is I would go to one end of the line and actually start on the deck of my boat and wait until I was lined up with the flag to look down the line past the buoy and find something on shore that lines up with it. You should not go on the line and try to eyeball it because it is likely that you are not perfectly on the line. If you do decide to go up to the line do not just eyeball it try stretching out your arms and try to line it up as best as possible. I see people doing this in 420’s but it is hard to do. There are a few other ways to obtain a line sight this is just the one that works best for me. Once you get your line sight this is the time you figure out what side of the line and course you want to be on. Simply going a few boat lengths above the finish line, stopping your boat and looking at the first beat is way more effective then it seems. It is usually pretty visible if one side of the course has more breeze then another side. After that I would proceed by figuring out the favored tack. A really effective way of doing this is teaming up with a buddy of yours and each of you rounding a different side of the starting line of opposite tacks are sail up the course. One of you is bound to cross in front of the other. For figuring out the favored side of the line people have a couple different ways but I try to keep it as simple as possible. The way I do it is I head my boat straight into the wind on the starting line and let my sail luff. The bow of the boat will drift to the favored side of the line. Or another last minute trick I would do if I did not have enough time or just wanted to double check is if you look at the flag on the committee boat it will be drifting to the unfavored end of the line. So now that we have our game plan it’s time to move on to the actual start.
You have to be aggressive on the starting line. I know from years of experience on trying to master this that it is so difficult to do if you are not an assertive person. When I was in X- boats I wasn’t assertive at all until my last two years because people intimidated me but once I got over that starts were so much easier which made the race a lot more fun. Now going into C-boats and collegiate racing I can see myself reverting back to my timid ways because I am surrounded by more experienced and older sailors so I am too working on this problem. If you want to be aggressive on the line the first thing you need to know are some rules. One of the most used on the starting line is windward/ leeward. Being the leeward boats gives you total advantage. Now, with saying that I don’t mean to be the furthest boat to one end of the line because that will not wok most of the time. I would say that only works one of the ten times you attempt it so there is no reason to risk it hoping it will be that one time. (side note: both crew and skipper should get the sequence time) I could go on for days about starting but I know it is a lot easier said than done so we will go much more in depth with it when we can actually attempt it out on the water.
I won’t go too much farther into the racing but I do want you to think about pointing as well. It is a very easy concept in mind but a lot of the time I don’t see it being practiced on the water. I tend to assume people know how to use their tell tails when I shouldn’t because I know so many people that still get confused by them. You have a few sets of telltails on your sails and on your side stays and once you learn how to use them they are so helpful. I am constantly checking my telltales just simply by habit every 8-12 seconds if not more frequently. The reason I look at them so much is because sometimes you do not realize if you are getting a knock or a lift and they tell you that. The telltales on your sail are used upwind to tell you if you are on the breeze or not which means you are pointing up the course to your fullest potential. They are on either side over lapping one another. Your goal is to have them both flowing straight back at your transom. If the telltale closest to you is fluttering it means you have to head down and vis versa if the telltale on the other side of the sail is fluttering it means you can head up. For down winds you are now paying close attention to the side stay telltales. You want these pointing at the four stay or in between the four stay and the mast. If the telltales shift and point straight at the mast you are on a reach so you should trim in your sail and lower your centerboard to half up, half down. If the opposite happens they are either telling you to head up or they are telling you to jibe. Another cool trick Annie Heager taught me is when you are approaching a leeward gate your telltales will point to the unfavored mark. With that being said I wouldn’t rely solely on your taletells to choose the mark you want to go on. There are many more variables to it.
Those are just a couple things I want you guys and girls to start thinking about as we come closer to summer. Down below I put a tuning guide for you all to refer to throughout the year:
http://melges.com/_pdf/2015-MelgesXBoat-TG.pdf
With other news, our fellow ILYA sailor Stephanie Roble is currently trying to go to the Olympics! I got in contact with her the other day and asked her to share with me a little glimpse of what her goals are in training/ competing so I could share it with you all and here is what she sent:
“Steph Roble along with teammate Maggie Shea just started up year 2 of their Olympic Campaign in the 49erFX. This year has three goals: apply the boat handling techniques that we’ve learned in a racing environment, get up to speed with the fleet and qualify the country for the Games in August at the World Championship. We just wrapped up our first event of the year, the Sailing World Cup Miami where we finished 8th overall. The week was full of ups and down, and while we were bummed about the result we were proud of winning the hardest race of the regatta, the medal race.
From here we will spend most of February, March and April in Europe training and doing two major regattas. May will be stateside training in San Francisco hoping for big wind and waves and then we are back to Europe to prep for the Worlds. We have a really big journey ahead of us and it’s important to remember our small goals along the way. It’s so important that we focus on the process and the things we can control. This is a huge lesson that translates to all of you. Every time you hit the water make small goals so each day you are pushing yourself to become better. Good luck with your summer sailing season!!”
Keep cheering on Steph because she is one of our own and remember she was like you guys once! I can’t wait to see you all this summer:)!
Sincerely,
Erin Sullivan