Starting has always played a disproportionate part in the outcome of a race. The shorter the duration of the race, the more this is true. Dylan Fletcher knows this very well from his experience competing in SailGP, where the races often last less than 10 minutes. Even though a reaching start against eleven 50ft foiling catamarans appears to bear little resemblance to a conventional upwind start for a large fleet of keelboats, Fletcher argues there are some fundamental principles that apply to any scenario.

“Time and distance judgement is key to any kind of start and the more you do of it the better you get,” he says. “I think that doing a lot of Moth sailing during the summer really helped my SailGP starting because in the Moth you have to eyeball it.” Fletcher explains that in the Moth, you have no technology to tell you where the line is. Judging that approach to the line and doing it multiple times helps with any other starting, whether it’s SailGP, on a Cape 31, or an RC44. In the following five tips, Fletcher shares not only how to give yourself the best shot at a winning start, but one that puts you in the best place for your overall race strategy.

What outcome do you want?

Which side of the course do you think is paying? Is it an even course or is one side looking favourable? This is the bigger picture that you need to work into your starting strategy. Everything you do in the build-up to the start needs to work back from the outcome that you want.

In a 49er, for example, if there’s just six knots of breeze everyone tends to take their place on the line really early. If I want to win the starboard end, I know I’m going to be at the starboard end potentially nine minutes before the start gun. So, when the orange flag goes up, I already need to be on the line.

Going for a committee boat end start on a right-favoured course can be a winning, but higher risk strategy – here at the 2025 49er Worlds in Cagliari. Photo: Jesus Renedo/Sailing Energy

Understanding your outcome and making sure you work back to the right process is absolutely critical. Identify your ideal point on the start line and where the fleet is lining up. This will show you where the opportunities are potentially going to be. Doing a timed run before the start, particularly in displacement keelboats where the timings are quite predictable, will give you a good sense of how to time your approach with a good deal of accuracy.

Dial back the risk

Some starting approaches are riskier than others. You need to work out the risk versus reward factor of the start you’re considering. Working back from our overall outcome in SailGP, our aim for the season is to make it into the three-boat grand final at the end of the year in Abu Dhabi. We know that if we go around mark one in 5th place (just better than halfway in the fleet) and we overtake at least one boat, it gives us a good enough average to achieve our overall aim of making it into the top three. We don’t need to take massive risks on the start line. So how can you apply this to a keelboat start and your own scenario? We look at how to apply this in the next tip.

Left-hand track

Let’s say you’re racing on a left-side favoured race track where you need to hold your lane on starboard for a long time. Alternatively, there might be a good bit of port end bias to the way the line has been set. Do you really need to win the pin on a port-end favoured start? It’s a high-risk strategy that can go really well or go really badly.

Depending on your overall goal, maybe it’s good enough to let the pack fight for the pin. You can instead start a third of the way from the end where there’ll be more space to get a clean start. Make sure you’ve got the best transits available and/or that you’ve pinged the line as accurately as possible. We’ve already talked about the importance of time runs and the pin-end scenario is where it matters the most.

If you feel like you’re arriving at the pin a little too early, don’t just stay there and hope for the best, or bail out in the last 30 seconds. There’s no time to salvage a good start if you bail out that late. Bail out with at least a minute to go because that’ll give you more time to reset. This allows you to look for a second opportunity to secure a good approach to the line.

In the 49er fleet you need to secure your spot on the line early. Photo: Jesus Renedo/Sailing Energy

Do the ‘dead bird’

What if it’s a go-right race track, like it so often is at Lake Garda, for example? Starting right next to the committee boat as the gun fires is perfect of course, but potentially high risk. This is especially true if you’re starting on a black flag or a U-flag. A lower risk approach but almost as effective is to do the ‘Dead Bird’.

I’m not sure why it’s called that, other than it might have been a favourite of America’s Cup helmsman Ed Baird, and it’s ended up being the ‘Dead Bird’. The tactic involves coming into the line behind the front row, right near the committee boat. As soon as you can tack, you flop over on to port tack and make a beeline for the right-hand side.

Of course, this is sometimes easier said than done. But even a poorly executed Dead Bird could get you into clear air going the right way. This is compared with many boats further along the line who got great starts but just don’t have the opportunity to tack on to port until many minutes further up the track. They might be ahead of you at start time, but you’ll be ahead of them five or 10 minutes later.

Resist the panic-tack

If everything is pretty even across the race course, there’s no bias in the line, and no side is paying particularly, it’s about getting into a clear lane as soon as possible. Your goal is being able to achieve your best VMG speed. In this instance, it doesn’t really matter where you start, so pick what you’re comfortable with.

In the 49er with Stu Bithell, our super strength was starting near the left-hand end of the line, so that was our default setting when there were no other major factors to consider. Don’t underestimate your ‘super strength’. When you’re racing in an important regatta and the pressure is on, lean on what you know works best for you.

Of course, sometimes you’re going to get it wrong and you’ll find yourself gasping for air in the second or third row out of the line. I’ve made this mistake myself a thousand times where I tack out straight away in the hope of finding something better. But it’s nearly always better to wait 10 seconds, take stock of your situation, and choose your moment to tack out on to port. Chances are you’ll make a much better choice if you can resist the panic-tack and, instead, give yourself a moment to think.

See all of our Expert Yacht Racing Tips sponsored by Musto.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post Five expert tips for the perfect start: Dylan Fletcher’s guide to time, distance, and risk appeared first on Yachting World.

I was navigating on the 80-footer Beau Geste on the Round New Caledonia Race, steaming towards a reef system when suddenly all the systems went down. We were on a dark ship and were within five minutes of hitting the reef.”

It’s because of times like these that Will Oxley remains so committed to his no-stone-unturned approach to navigation. He’s all too aware that the smarter the technology we rely on, the less smart we become. At least, that’s the danger.

“When I get people coming to me for coaching and training in improving their navigation skills, the first thing I’ll ask is have they mastered the fundamentals?” says Will. “Have you done your RYA Yachtmaster certificate, for example?

That’s where you get to learn the fundamentals of the job – coastal navigation, transits, how tides work, about wave patterns and the fact that you’re not necessarily safe in more water than the depth of your boat.”

Since the arrival of GPS and electronic charts, many sailors have increasingly lost touch with these fundamentals, which leaves them dangerously exposed, according to Will. Here are his five best boat knife tips for making sure you’ve covered yourself for those times when systems go down and the only thing you’ve got to fall back on are your raw navigation skills.

Software skills do not make a navigator

The ability to use software like Expedition and Adrena is obviously critical to being a good navigator in the modern age of offshore racing, but this is not the be-all and end-all. While people come to me asking for help in training them in the best boat knife use of these tools, I’m conscious of my responsibility to make sure they’ve covered the other vital aspects of navigation.

The software tools are the top of the pyramid of skills required, but you can’t call yourself a good navigator unless you’ve studied the fundamentals – the base of the pyramid – in great detail. There are plenty of examples I could draw to make the point, but one that we see in the Caribbean 600 is when someone hits a rock that they say wasn’t shown exactly on the chart.

If you come from the UK where the charts are five- or six-star and every tiny rock is accounted for, it’s easy to fall into the trap of putting the same level of blind trust in the ENCs (electronic navigation charts) for the Caribbean. They are nowhere near at the same level of accuracy and you’ll come unstuck if you place too much faith in them. This is just one of many examples why studying the fundamentals matters so much.

Pro navigators use the latest navigation software – but still rely on paper charts as vital back-up. Photo: Amory Ross/Team Alvimedica/Getty Images

Make backups for the backup

You’ll hear people tell stories about how the boat went aground because the chart was inaccurate or there was a GPS failure. But they’re not really valid excuses because you have to assume that these things are going to happen at various points in your sailing life.

You can get yourself into some pretty complicated situations with a deck screen and a detailed chart. For instance, at night time, you can get inside some rocks that are not very wide, but you’re still happy that all is well. Now, what happens if your GPS goes down? A well-rounded navigator should be able to say: “I know that if I stay between these depth contours, then I’m safe. I know there’s a lighthouse and the bearing to that lighthouse needs to remain at this angle for me to be safe. There’s a transit here…” and so on.

There are a whole lot of other pieces of information, using fundamental navigation, that you should be paying attention to.

I use a mesa rugged tablet as a backup to the main desktop nav system on any boat that I sail on, so even if the boat’s electronics go down – say, after a crash gybe and all the antennas have been ripped off the back of the pulpit – then I can flick straight to the tablet.

But what if the mesa goes down? Navigation is as much about knowing where you’re not as knowing where you are, and you always need to know your escape route if absolutely everything goes down. At all times, and for all potential worst-case scenarios, you need to plan your way to safety.

Spread the workload

Just as we’re talking about backups for all scenarios, the same applies to the navigator too. You need to spread the workload and make sure other people on the crew are up to speed with your plans. When you’re doing a handover and you’re planning to have a sleep for a little while, explain the projected scenario for the next few hours, including those vital paths to safety that we talked about. Before the race you’ll do hours of preparation, particularly looking at the sailing instructions and the course routing.

I realise everyone else on the crew has their own area of responsibility, so I’ll boil down the really vital information that I think everyone needs to know, and condense it into one page. I’ll summarise the key points from the Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions and say, “Everybody should be aware of this, and there will be a fine if someone asks me a question that’s already on this one page,” because there’s basic stuff that absolutely everyone needs to know.

It’s easy to sit back and think “oh, Will is prepared, we won’t read it. We’ll just assume that what he did was right.” That reliance purely on the navigator is a big error that even professional teams sometimes make.

Article continues below…

5 Expert Tips: How to run a succesful offshore campaign on a budget

Lawrence Herbert loves his offshore racing but he and the Corazon crew are campaigning their J/133 on a tight budget.…

5 expert tips: How to be a yacht’s watch leader

Although he’s the crew boss and watch captain of 100ft Maxi yacht Scallywag in his own right, Pete Cumming is…

Set your risk level

We’ve talked about limiting your risk and erring on the side of safety, but occasionally someone will come up to me after a race and say, “Hey, what you did going in so close to the shore there, that was dangerous.” And I’ll say, “Well, no, because I was out there last week in a RIB and we sounded that whole area. And I know 100% for sure that what’s on the chart isn’t there.”

The more you research and the more you do your homework, the more you can push your level of risk, or at least what other people perceive to be risk. When we’re racing 100ft maxi yachts out of Porto Cervo we can’t afford to hit the rocks because these are big, expensive boats and the rocks on the Costa Smeralda are really hard. But a small advantage of just feet and inches can really count in such close races, which is why on the layday the navigators will be less likely to be in the bar enjoying a few beers, and more likely to be out in a RIB plumbing the depths and mapping out every nook and cranny of ‘Bomb Alley’.

There’s also a high level of cooperation and knowledge sharing between the navigators, which is exactly how it should be.

Eyeballs still matter

These days even the bowman is pinging the line with his own GPS-enabled wrist watch. But eyeballs still matter, for bowmen sighting the line and for navigators using their own senses rather than placing all their faith in charts and electronic navigation aids. There are plenty of places in the world – like the Caribbean or Hamilton Island in Australia – where I’m looking at the chart but there’s a point at which it becomes an eyeball.

If you’re working off six-star charts in the UK you can place a lot of trust in them, but if it’s a two-star chart you’re definitely using your eyeball from a long way out. In this age of electronic wizardry, eyeballs, and all your senses and instincts, still matter.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post 5 expert tips: Your guide to navigation fundamentals appeared first on Yachting World.

Although he’s the crew boss and watch captain of 100ft Maxi yacht Scallywag in his own right, Pete Cumming is always eager to learn from the best. After operating as a driver/trimmer on board Volvo 70 Tschüss 2’s line honours victory in the Transatlantic Race 2025 in June, he was inspired by the calm leadership of watch captains Neal McDonald and Stu Bannatyne.

“Neal and Stu are really good at making sure everyone on the boat is connected with the decision-making process, which keeps everyone motivated and all pushing towards the same objective. Which might seem really obvious, but I’ve been on plenty of boats where the front end of the boat has no idea what the people at the back are thinking.

“The moment Neal or Stu come off watch, they’re checking in with the navigator, Campbell Field, just getting an overview of what’s going on before they go to sleep. Are there going to be any sails challenges coming up in the next four hours while they’re off?”

Done right, the watch captain spans many roles, from co-ordinating the boat handling up on deck to making sure everybody on their watch is physically and mentally able to work to their best within a demanding and maybe even sometimes hostile working environment.

Here are Pete’s five key tips for being the best watch captain you can be.

Staying in the loop

I think it was Brad Butterworth who said that when a team breaks down, lunatics start running the asylum.

When there’s no communication through the boat, and maybe a lack of trust, you get in situations when the crew suddenly decide they’re going to call the gybe because the navigator’s asleep and you don’t want to disturb him. With the seasoned pros this lack of comms is never allowed to happen.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips to help you better understand sailing heel angles

Keelboat sailors obsess about maintaining the optimum angle of heel. According to Chris ‘Twiggy’ Grube, it’s a good obsession to…

5 Expert Tips: How to recover from a bad race

You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. But when you’ve had a bad result, how do you…

It’s the watch captain’s job to make sure the chain of communication is always operating smoothly. Splinter groups develop on boats all the time, but if you can work with the navigator and the guys on deck so that everyone’s got buy-in to the strategy and the decision-making process, it makes the world of difference to the atmosphere on board, and ultimately to the team’s performance.

Earn respect

To be an effective watch captain you’ve got to earn the respect of the people around you, and that generally only comes with experience, a sense of competence and a good deal of self-confidence without arrogance.
If someone questions you, you’ve got to be able to cope with that and not look weak with your decision-making. Sometimes there can be big egos on board and you have to be able to stand your ground. You also need to lead from the front and occasionally show the guys that you’re prepared to get your hands dirty and do a tough or unpleasant job yourself.

That said, it’s important to choose the right moment. Don’t go down a rabbit hole of trying to get one small job done if that takes your attention away from the big picture. That’s your main job. Ultimately you’ve got to have good knowledge of most areas on the boat, without being an expert at everything, which is why watch captains tend to be recruited from the middle of the boat – a trimmer or someone who’s worked in the pit area who’s connected to the front and the back of the boat and understands the challenges of both ends.

Questions, not commands

A good watch captain empowers his team to make their own decisions, to run their own part of the boat as best they can. You have to be able to ask questions of each other, to check in on each other and ask for thoughts and ideas rather than pretending that you’ve got all the answers.

Stu and Neal are brilliant on watch and they might ask me: “Pedro, question for you: is the staysail over-trimmed? I’ll leave it with you.” It’s not an order, it’s a prompt. So I’ll go forward and I’ll see if the staysail needs a bit of an ease. They’re very good at empowering every team member to make their own decisions.

Keep it fun

Sometimes you can forget why you’re out there. We do this because it’s fun, and it has to be fun for all the crew. You might be capable of extracting the best performance in the world, but if you’re a miserable bugger you can shut that watch down pretty quickly. It reaches a point where everyone just counts down the minutes until they can go off watch.

Don’t be that person. Keep it fun, maintain an open dialogue where everyone feels comfortable talking to everyone else and enjoying each other’s company.

Have a quiet word

If there’s a bad atmosphere, as a watch captain you need to get to the root of the problem quickly. If someone is playing up or not fitting in with the team for whatever reason, the worst thing you can do is try and shame that person in front of the crew. It’s not always easy to find a place on board to have a quiet word with them, but that’s the way to approach it.

Find your moment to hear what they’ve got to say, because sometimes the reason for the upset can be completely different to what you might have imagined. Most people will appreciate the fact you’ve tackled the problem head on.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post 5 expert tips: How to be a yacht’s watch leader appeared first on Yachting World.

You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. But when you’ve had a bad result, how do you get past the negative emotion and start turning that into a positive to take forward into your next race?

Terry Hutchinson has been grappling with this challenge for more than four decades. He says he’s still learning. Even for someone of Terry’s deep experience at the top of the sport, every day brings up new scenarios and new lessons, sometimes painful but always useful if processed in the right way.

But how to learn those lessons and improve teamwork without resorting to finger pointing and ending up in the blame game? It’s a tough job but it’s vital to the overall mission, not to mention making sure everybody is enjoying the process.

“Good communication creates clarity,” says Terry. “How do we communicate so that we keep our focus on the details and the process of racing well? The goal must be clear decision making without emotion. When you can make a decision without any emotion, you tend to make a higher percentage decision.”

Easier said than done in the heat of battle, which is why you need to read and absorb Terry’s best five tips for rallying the team after a bad outing on the race course.

Own your mistakes

When training recently on the TP52 we had a boat handling mistake which ended up with the spinnaker going underneath the bow – the worst possible thing that can happen.

It wasn’t an error on the bow, it was a steering error, and I pointed this out to the helmsman, and he got it. It’s not about attacking anybody, it’s simply that the only way we learn from these situations is by acknowledging them and working out what we’d do differently next time.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips to help you better understand sailing heel angles

Keelboat sailors obsess about maintaining the optimum angle of heel. According to Chris ‘Twiggy’ Grube, it’s a good obsession to…

5 expert tips: How to build a great sailing crew

Every crew has its own DNA, its own ecosystem. Making that the best and healthiest crew dynamic possible is a…

Whenever any of us makes a mistake, we’d better be the first to acknowledge it, because without that how can you build the credibility to call anybody else out?

If you’re finding it difficult to get someone to own their mistake then I’ll bring the ownership back on myself, because nine times out of 10 it’s down to a communication error. So you get them to talk through what they were thinking. You don’t need them to say, “Hey, I screwed that up.” You just need to ask how they can be supported in those situations to eliminate that happening again.

Do your own job

When the majority of the crew are amateur sailors just doing it on the weekends, one of the things we’d instil is, ‘Know your job. Do your job 100% perfectly first’.

And when you develop the consistency to do that, then learn the job of the person in front of you and behind you. Not to do their job, but to help support them when they need a hand. It’s a great focus for every team member to work on their own skills before they’re too critical of others.

Debrief later

At the end of every race and practice day you should be creating your ‘capture list’ to write down all the things that happened, both the good and the bad.

You want a daily debrief with the whole crew but generally it’s better to do it the morning after, before you go out racing the next day. Sure, you can do it when you come ashore but people are tired, they need to eat, drink and rest. So aim for the morning after when moods are likely to be a bit less emotional.

Photo: Rapt.Tv / Alamy

Sometimes things happen in the middle of a race day, showing up an error that needs sorting as soon as possible. If you have a boat handling area error and there’s not a lot of time, get the relevant people together for two minutes, have the conversation and report back to the team before the start of the next race.

Then there’s the ‘personal debrief’, where you might have a serious conversation with yourself. People know that when I go to the back of the boat by myself, that’s my time to reflect, get my head back into the game and be ready for the next race.

Prioritise big errors

Always aim for as much detail as possible on your capture list, but at the same time don’t expect to tick off everything on the list. Use the capture list to identify what you did well, not just what you did poorly, and use the list to drive the narrative in your next debrief.

When you have a long list of things to address, just pick a maximum of three things that had the biggest impact on your race result. Start with something that went well, then move to the meat in the middle – something you feel you can improve upon – and then finish up with something positive. You don’t want to start the day out with a whipping; make sure you set out with a positive team mindset.

It’s how you finish

At the recent Maxi European Championship we were getting great starts but just weren’t getting anything to show for it. We knew that we’d got to just keep close, not hit any panic buttons, make sure that when the opportunity arrives we were in a position to take advantage of it. Remember, it’s not how you start but how you finish.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post 5 Expert Tips: How to recover from a bad race appeared first on Yachting World.

Keelboat sailors obsess about maintaining the optimum angle of heel. According to Chris ‘Twiggy’ Grube, it’s a good obsession to have, and keeping consistently to that ideal heel is a vital goal for success on the race course. “It’s about getting the right amount of angle on the rudder and making sure you’ve got good flow over both foils,” says Twiggy.

Every class has a known optimum heel angle, although this will probably vary across different wind and wave conditions. “In the J/70 we’re aiming at 8° of heel in super-light conditions, but once we’re up to full power conditions we’re aiming for 12°, and an absolute max of 14°. The J/70 has a short keel so any more than that and you’re slipping sideways and losing grip in the water.

“The J/70 also runs a very neutral helm, there’s not much feel in the rudder so it’s tempting to let the boat heel a bit more to leeward, just to get a bit more weather helm and a bit more bite,” he explains.

Twiggy warns against this temptation, but admits there are few shortcuts to getting comfortable with such a neutral helm other than more time in the boat.

Whatever the wind and wave conditions, accurate setup of the rig will make it a lot easier to achieve consistent heel angle. So assuming you’ve got the static rig settings in the right place, here are Twiggy’s best tips for achieving that optimum angle of attack on an ever-changing race course.

Have a heel monitor

Make sure one person on the boat is tasked with keeping an eye on heel angle – your ‘heel angle monitor’. In a Cape 31 it would probably be someone on the foredeck crew, while in the J/70 it’s normally my role as jib trimmer. It’s also important to have feedback from the helmsman about what they’re feeling through the rudder, and if they’re struggling with too much load on the helm.

Build your own mental gauge and spatial awareness of what the right amount of heel feels like. Of course you can – and should – use the electronics to keep you informed about heel angle too, but there’s always a bit of time lag in what they’re telling you, so using instinct and feel is always your most useful and up-to-the-moment gauge of optimum heel.

Ideal heel angle with vary from boat to boat. Photo: Cavan Images

Body weight is key

When you’re sailing in anything less than full-power conditions, then body weight is your main tool for maintaining constant heel angle. As jib trimmer on the J/70 I’m the first to swing my legs inboard and go down to leeward. You’re always on your toes, never sitting down for too long, ready to move up or down as required.

There’s a lot you can do together as a crew if you all move in unison, leaning out for a gust or inboard for a lull. You can put additional power into the boat by bringing the traveller up, but be careful not to bring the boom end too far to windward of centreline or you’ll put the brakes on.

Backstay first

Once the breeze has built to the point where everyone is full hiking and crew weight is out as far as possible, now you’re adjusting the rig to vary the power through any changes in the breeze. On most keelboats the backstay is your first point of adjustment.

Keep winding on the backstay up to the point where you see those starvation creases in the luff of the mainsail. Don’t go any further than this. The last thing you want to do is ease the traveller to leeward – only do this when you’ve adjusted everything else first. It’s not necessarily true for all keelboats, but on the J/70 keep tightening the vang, and tension the Cunningham.

Just be aware that pulling on the Cunningham tends to put you in a lower mode, so any time you need to maintain your pointing ability – out of a busy start line or living in a thin lane with a boat tight to leeward – don’t pull on the Cunningham too hard.

Article continues below…

5 Expert Tips: Your complete guide to mainsail trimming

Experienced sailor though he may be, Alain Sign has had his hands full getting to grips with the role of…

5 expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind

Learning to live in a thin lane is one of the key skills that separate the great from the good.…

Be pre-emptive

Someone on the boat should be calling in every gust and lull, counting down the seconds until it’s about to arrive. It’s not an easy skill, but still better to do it half-well than not do it all. The more you predict and pre-empt a gust or a lull, the smaller the adjustments you’ll need to make.

If you wait until the gust hits, the boat and the heel angle increases, the inertia of the mast becomes an extra factor in the equation, and you need to ease excess amounts of mainsail and jib to get the boat back on its feet. So a little movement early is way, way better than a big movement too late.

Avoid the stagger

Once the breeze is really up there and you’ve used all your other depowering tools, the only things left are to ease the sails. When the main trimmer eases the traveller, the jib needs to go out too, to keep an open slot and avoid the luff of the mainsail turning inside out too much. Keeping the boat moving in strong winds is a combination of accurate steering with positive trimming of the sails in and out in unison.

Occasionally a gust will hit, maybe at the same time as you hit a big wave, and the boat will start staggering. Now you’re in crisis mode, well past optimum heel angle. Just stay calm, press ‘reset’, and work hard together to get the boat back on its feet and back in the groove as soon as possible.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post 5 expert tips to help you better understand sailing heel angles appeared first on Yachting World.

Experienced sailor though he may be, Alain Sign has had his hands full getting to grips with the role of mainsheet trimmer in a fleet as competitive as the Cape 31. Alain sees the mainsheet trimmer’s role as the hub, the central nervous system which is connected to every other role on the boat. “I’m having a conversation with pretty much everyone else on board,” he says.

“With the trim you’re looking to guide the helm to where they’re going, and I’m taking my cue from what the tactician is saying. Then I’m talking with the runner trimmer looking for power-on or power-off.

“And then there’s maintaining the right relationship between main and jib trim, working together through the gusts, lulls and shifts.”

Data analysis is another trend creeping into Cape 31 racing, with an analyst back on shore looking at when the boat was fast or slow and feeding the details back to the team before the next day’s racing.

Through the wind range, different elements of the multiple array of sail controls take on different levels of importance. Here are Alain’s five best tips for keeping your mainsail – and the overall boat speed – at the highest level of performance through different wind speeds.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips: Guide to asymmetric spinnaker handling

One of the most significant advantages of racing with asymmetric kites is the simplicity of asymmetric spinnaker handling compared with…

5 expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind

Learning to live in a thin lane is one of the key skills that separate the great from the good.…

Mode priorities

All the time you need to be asking yourself, ‘What am I trying to achieve with the setup?’. I’m listening very carefully to the tactician’s priorities at any given moment as you need to mode the rig to what they need. Is it a fast-forward mode, or a high VMG mode, for example?

On a stable day I’m looking to control the heel angle so will be constantly playing around with the traveller. I’m also looking at boat speed and true wind angle, checking how close we’re sailing to the breeze.

With the helmsman I’m moving between sailing not too high and not too low, working to find the VMG sweet spot, managing the relationship between traveller position and mainsheet tension as my two primary controls.

Ease for speed

In sub-powered light wind conditions, if you’re struggling to get the boat moving, ease for speed. Make sure you ease the mainsheet and the jib to create really open leeches for the air to move past. Ensure lots of twist and don’t steer too close to the breeze, not until you’ve built the speed and momentum.

As soon as you get over 6 knots of breeze it’s good to bring the traveller all the way to windward, even to the point where the boom is two or three degrees above the centreline of the boat. This creates ‘false load’, creating a bit more weather helm and feel for the helmsman to work off.

Photo: Ludovic Fruchaud/IMACIS

Harden that leech

As you begin to progress into full power conditions, start closing off the mainsail leech. Now you’re starting to drop the traveller further to leeward, maintaining your target heel angle. You’re also working with the fine-tune on the mainsheet, and with the runners to straighten the mast for a lull or letting it bend in a gust.

In an ideal world, when the runner and the jib are set up nicely, they kind of do the work for you and there’s not much trimming or adjustment to be done with the mainsail. That’s when you know you’re getting close to the sweet spot of optimum rig tune.

Big breeze

The windier it gets, the more tension you want to put into the shrouds. On a Cape 31 you’re only allowed to adjust it before the race, so don’t go too extreme on these adjustments if the breeze is looking variable.

Once it’s getting windy enough for the mainsail to start ragging, you want to max out on your runners, pulling on lots of vang and Cunningham, and let the traveller to leeward. You also want the jib sheeted further out to leeward to keep the slot open.

On the Cape 31 the jib up-and-down is led to the main trimmer while the jib trimmer tends to be hiking off the side of the boat. This means you can ease the jib leech through the gust and pull it tighter again through the lull, maintaining the right balance of power between mainsail and jib.

Macif Ultime trimaran in big conditions during the Brest Atlantiques. Photo: Alexis Courcoux / Brest Atlantiques

If you’re getting really overpowered it’s sometimes worth easing off again on the vang, making sure the bottom of the mainsail keeps driving the boat forward while letting the top of the sail twist off and spill the excess power. It’s also possible to pull on too much Cunningham which you can see when the entry to the sail goes too flat, so make sure you don’t overdo it.

Use the runners

If the runner trimmer is looking around and anticipating the gusts and lulls, easing and tightening the runners accordingly, the mainsheet trimmer doesn’t have to do an awful lot.

When you’re in that light wind mode, where you’re going from 6 knots to 8 knots of breeze and you’re looking to find power, that’s when accurate runner trimming becomes really important. When the gust comes in, you want the boat to accelerate, getting those turns on the runner. Then if it’s slowly dying off, you need to be putting power back into the mainsail again.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post 5 Expert Tips: Your complete guide to mainsail trimming appeared first on Yachting World.

When I go out on the Solent to go racing, I often see a lot of boats not even doing a single practice run before the start,” says Ian Williams. “And if you don’t do a practice run, you’ve got pretty much zero chance of getting your time on distance right.”

To a match racing helmsman like Williams, time on distance is part of his religion, although he understands why some sailors might be loath to practise such a critical part of the race. “Practising a timed run does require a little bit of planning. Maybe you’re late off the dock, you’ve got other priorities competing for limited time on the water, maybe getting the rig set up, practising your tacks and gybes – so I get it.”

But there’s really very little excuse for not working on your time on distance judgement. “It’s a learned skill. To some people it might come naturally, but for me, I do it much more mathematically. I’ve done enough of it that I think I can judge the distance quite well now,” he says with typical understatement.

“There’s no doubt that whoever you are, the more you practise it, the better you’ll get.” Here are Ian’s best tips for nailing your time on distance.

Do a practice run

Do at least one practice run before any racing start. If you’re in a big one-design fleet the start can be crucial. In a handicap fleet, nailing the start to the second might be less critical – even so, you definitely want to do at least one practice run to get a feel for the current and the wind and how quickly you’re going to close the line.

The key thing is always to make sure you’re near the start line 15-20 minutes before the start. Sometimes the pin end mark gets laid quite late, so make sure you’ve done everything else in preparation and leave those final minutes as an opportunity to test the line once it’s been set up.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind

Learning to live in a thin lane is one of the key skills that separate the great from the good.…

5 expert tips: A professional’s guide to weather routing

Whether you’re preparing for a race or even just a leg of a longer race, there’s always a process for…

Judge distance

In match racing we normally have our bowman calling how long it would take us to get to the start line, updating every three or four seconds the number of seconds that it’s going to take to get there. I’d expect an experienced bowman to be within about 10% accuracy. It’s not an exact science, but when you get tuned in after some practice, your bowman should be hitting that level of accuracy.

We’re always thinking whether we want to lead or follow back to the line, so there’s an extra layer that doesn’t apply to a fleet race. But the principles of judging time on distance are the same. In a fleet race, the critical time is when you’re coming across on port and tacking in towards the line onto starboard – you need to know how long it will take you to get to the line from that point.

The five-second rule

I use a very rough rule of thumb for a zero current and a non-biased line. In pretty much any displacement keelboat it normally takes about five seconds to travel a boat length upwind. So let’s say we’re 10 boat lengths away from the line, in which case I know that it’s 50 seconds of full speed sailing to get there.

This is something I’d always confirm by way of a practice run. I’ll line the boat up on starboard, going upwind at full speed, then time how long it takes to do 10 boat lengths. So if it takes a minute, then I know it’s six seconds a length. If it takes 40 seconds, it’s four seconds a length. That will obviously vary depending on the speed of the boat, the bias on the line, and any current.

Knowing what full speed at the line feels like gives you the understanding of whether the fleet is lining up a bit too close to the line, or if you can afford to punch forward a little bit.

Race start for the famous Rolex Sydney Hobart. Photo: Rolex/Carlo Borlenghi

Recalculate for bias

Things change as soon as line bias or current come into play. The more bias on the pin, the more time you need to factor into your final run towards the line. If normally it’s five seconds per boat length, on a very pin-biased line it’s quite possible you’re looking at eight or nine seconds per boat length.

If you’re somewhere very tidal with a couple of knots of current, again you may need to adjust your time on distance dramatically. I like to express current as boat lengths per minute, So if you’ve got two knots of current against you, that’s about a metre per second. So if you’re in a 10m boat, it’s about a boat length every 10 seconds; over a minute, it’s six lengths. So your unit then is six lengths per minute. And you’d know at a minute out from the start that you really want to be six lengths further up-tide of where you’d normally be.

Reaching starts

As with upwind starts, I like to get a top speed and know how many metres I am from the line. One really important thing to know with a reaching start is what I call the Line Wind Angle; is the wind blowing straight down the line or rather from in front or behind?

Critical is how close you can get to sailing along the line at an upwind angle, as you’re likely to approach the start sailing upwind. If you can sail along the line like that you can stay very close to the line and then bear away with only a few second to go.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 Expert tips: How to perfect a time on distance sailing start appeared first on Yachting World.

Learning to live in a thin lane is one of the key skills that separate the great from the good. As Henry Wetherell explains, having boats tight to windward and to leeward of you requires everyone in the crew to work in synchronisation.

Although Wetherell has sailed for a number of seasons with helmsman John Pollard, Australian sailor David Chapman was a new addition to Team Xcellent for the SB20 Worlds in Singapore. “We put in as much time as possible before sailing the Worlds together, a winter series event in Cascais, and some good training time in Singapore including the Pre-Worlds,” says Henry.

“You can’t really just turn up and win, you’ve got to put the time in together, and living in a thin lane is one of those areas that really tests your teamwork and coordination.” Here are Henry’s five best tips for surviving and thriving in a tight spot.

Focus on the trim

Of course you want to be focused on accurate sail trim at all times, but living in a thin lane is where the small details become absolutely critical. One false move and you could get spat out of the front row.

If your main threat is to leeward then you need to be trimming as tight as you possibly can without stalling the sails or the foils. On the other hand if your chief threat is from windward and you’re at risk of getting rolled then you need to be able to foot off and trim for maximum speed.

Watch the jib leech

There’s a window halfway up the SB20 mainsail luff which allows us to see the top of the jib leech. I spend a lot of my time looking up at the jib leech telltale, checking in with the other guys and squeezing in the jib sheet as hard as it will go. When you’re looking for maximum pointing you’re taking that leech telltale to the edge of stalling without it ever actually reaching that point. If it’s flowing freely all the time you can probably afford to sheet in harder.

Meanwhile the helmsman is focusing on the luff telltale towards the bottom of the jib and I’m glancing at that too, to make sure we’re properly on the breeze. If a big lift hits us and the leeward telltales are lifting, I need to make sure I’m easing the jib until we’ve luffed up to the new course. So it’s not just looking up all the time, it’s being constantly aware of the wider situation around you.

Work the mainsail

The way we work the team on the SB20, the mainsail trimmer has overall control of the boat. Dave [Chapman] monitors the changing tactical situation, and we adjust the trim and the steering to what he says is the current priority for any given moment. Dave’s primary controls are the mainsheet and traveller but he’s also calling for vang on/off depending on how much power is needed at the time.

In Singapore when we were getting off the start line with people pinching high to hold their lane, we’d be maxed-up on the traveller and easing the vang to keep the power in the mainsail. The backstay is mostly eased too, and you’re trying to keep everyone’s weight out as long as possible without dumping any power.

Once we’re getting overpowered we’ll pull on the backstay first, then the vang, then the outhaul, all with the traveller still high up the track.

Article continues below…

5 Expert Tips: Tidal planning and strategy

“We’re all tadpoles swimming in a stream,” says Tom Dolan of single-handed offshore racing. With so many human, technical and…

5 expert tips: How to use an asymmetric spinnaker in light airs

Just as the best teams seem to find an extra high mode on the upwind legs, often they’re also very…

Backstay and vang

Every boat is different in terms of how to vary the power in changing conditions. If you ever get a chance to look from behind at your boat you’ll see how much backstay adjustment affects the leech profiles of both sails. The backstay bends the mast from the top, which opens the mainsail and jib leeches at the same time. So every time the backstay moves, the trim needs to change on the sails.

In the SB20 fleet on Team Xcellent we’re quite vang-heavy. We leave the traveller quite high and then vang-sheet the mainsail. The vang is a good tool to flatten the bottom of the mainsail while also increasing forestay tension, which flattens the entry to the jib.

While the vang is a useful upwind tool on the SB20, for the J/70 and other bigger keelboats like the Cape 31 they’re much more reliant on a combination of backstay and traveller. Whatever class you’re sailing in, you need to know how to make these changes instinctively and that only comes from time in the boat.

Know when to bail

Nine times out of 10, once you’ve lost the line of the boat in front and you’ve fallen to leeward of them, you don’t want to be in their gas any longer. It’s time to bail out and get back into clear air. There are exceptions to the rule, such as when there’s a really strong tidal gain on one side of the course. That’s one of those rare occasions when the lesser of two evils is to suck up the bad air for a bit longer.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind appeared first on Yachting World.

Whether you’re preparing for a race or even just a leg of a longer race, there’s always a process for planning your routing, says Si Fi. “I’ll start looking at the forecast and the different weather models about five to six days out from the start. It’s vital to do some wide-ranging research, taking a look at the overall weather pattern and where the models agree or disagree, but it’s also important not to get to the point of paralysis by analysis.”

He uses a range of technology to plan the routing, but advises a KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) approach. “Most of what I do is based around Expedition and Adrena. I think one or the other will serve most people’s needs very well. Ultimately it is better to know the tools you’re using well as opposed to trying to use every software tool available.”

The ever-accelerating advance of AI will doubtless revolutionise weather routing at some point but he warns of becoming too reliant on the latest technology as good seamanship and sailing skill will still often trump the technology.

Fisher still has the skills to navigate with sextant and stars, although he admits: “I haven’t tried it on the new generation of high-speed foilers like the IMOCA. I suspect trying to get a steady reading while you’re bouncing along at 25 knots could be quite challenging!” he laughs.

The latest generation IMOCA 60s are probably a bit too quick for celestial navigation

Choose weather models

There’s a huge range of weather models, but the two main ones for the global stuff are the EC (European) model, and the GFS (American) model. Then there are the UK and French models to consider too. These are the best models for looking at routing when you’re well offshore, but when you get closer to shore, and closer to race start day, there’s a whole range of higher resolution local models worth looking at.

Most people tend to lean on the EC and the GFS models because they’re the most available and relevant over a period of longer than 24 hours. GFS is completely free and runs four times a day. The EC also runs four times a day but is typically available to download only twice a day.

I’d normally use these two models initially to understand how the weather is working and the main features in play. Then in the last 24 hours before a start I’ll look to the higher resolution models for more detail and fine tuning of the strategy.

Article continues below…

[coolletion]

Do the models agree?

When you’re preparing for a race, look closely at what the different models are saying. How much do they agree or disagree? If you’re five days out and each model has multiple different answers, you can be pretty confident the forecast is going to change significantly in the coming days. But that uncertainty can be useful in determining what to focus on.

In the days preceding a race I run different models through routing software to see how the answer changes both from run to run and also day to day. Is one model trending towards another, or are they converging on the same answer? You can be most confident where all the models agree, but if they aren’t in agreement you can often draw a little more confidence from the model which is moving the least from day to day. Consistency can often indicate more accuracy for that particular scenario.

Ensemble modelling

Ensemble modelling is another useful weapon to have in your armoury, particularly for ocean races. GFS and EC have ensemble forecasts where they start with an initial ‘control’ model, and then tweak the initial conditions very slightly. What you end up with is 30 different model forecasts in the case of the GFS, or 50 in the case of the EC.

It’s a useful tool to see when and where the forecast diverges over time. Running multiple routes, and seeing how tightly packed or spread out the routes are, provides valuable insight into how many strategic options are possible and how consistent the deterministic forecasts are likely to be.

Often you’ll see one or two groups of tightly packed routes, which gives an idea of where the most likely options are going to be. Where the ensemble forecasts or associated routes descend into chaos after a certain number of days will at the very least tell you things are going to change and that you’ll need to keep your options open and not be too radical.

11th Hour Racing team huddles around the navstation for a look at the latest weather picture in The Ocean Race. Photo: Amory Ross/11th Hour Racing/The Ocean Race

Talk it through

Besides looking at scenarios in more than one way, at a human level it’s always good to discuss routing with a wider group of people. On The Ocean Race programme, we tend to work with a bigger team on the shore side, with assistance from professional meteorologists and other navigators.

But there’s always a certain amount of chat between the guys in the race – whether it’s your teammates or rivals – because you’re all in a similar position. Of course at some level everyone wants to keep their cards close to their chest, but it’s good to share ideas and get a feel for what other people might be looking at or worrying about.

Manage your risk

Good routing comes down in large part to good risk management. A big part of that is how much risk you place on the weather forecast or a routing option, versus what the rest of the fleet is doing. It’s a strategy versus tactics trade-off.

Some decisions and routing options might give you a big win if they work out, but if they don’t then you lose everything. There’s often a safer option, or one where you can cover the fleet better. Very often it’s prudent in races to give up a few miles if you’re ahead, to make sure the fleet can’t get past you.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to always keep your head out of the boat when you’re on the race course. You always need to be prepared to modify your strategy based on what’s going on around you, whether it’s the weather, your boat’s performance or your competitors. The race winning strategy will have to factor in all those things.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: A professional’s guide to weather routing appeared first on Yachting World.

Hugh Brayshaw wasn’t long into his offshore career before he encountered the importance of negotiating a cold front in the right way. “It was the first leg of the 2017 Solitaire du Figaro, and we were in the middle of the Bay of Biscay with the prospect of a double cold front coming through,” he recalls.

“We knew before setting off this front was going to hit us on the second night of the race. The forecast was predicting these huge wave heights and the highest wind reading was 54 knots – which is still the most amount of breeze I’ve been in.

“Fortunately I’d put in an early reef and was also early to switch down to the smaller jib. So maybe I lost a little bit to begin with, but three or four boats had to abandon because their mainsails ripped or blew apart from just over-flogging.”

From this and subsequent occasions, Brayshaw has seen the huge risks – and opportunities – that come with every cold front.

“It’s something I try to get across to my guys on the RORC Griffin Youth Programme. It’s an opportunity to make some gains if you’re behind, or extend your lead if you’re already ahead. You might get hit by some hard rain and a lot of wind, but with the right attitude you can really make the cold front work to your advantage.”

Crack off

In the English Channel typically you know that when a cold front is coming through, the wind will be coming from west-south-west and then does a right-hand shift with the front, after which the wind will move to more like west-north-west.

Because you know there’s going to be a shift at some point, it pays to crack off slightly to build speed and get to the shift a bit quicker than if you stayed on normal upwind VMG.

For a conventional keelboat you might only be talking about cracking off 5° or 10°, but on boats where you can handle more power – like a canting keel boat or a multihull – you might even crack off as much as 15° because the extra distance sailed is more than justified by the extra boat speed.

Be ready to tack

Everyone on the crew needs to be aware of what’s about to happen. You need to be ready for a quick tack when the cold front hits. If the front is arriving in the middle of the night, it’s even more important to have fully briefed everyone on how things are going to be set up for the change of wind speed and angle. Make sure everyone is aware of what sort of compass numbers you’re anticipating as the shift arrives, and how much the wind is likely to increase.

Sometimes it’s super obvious when you get to the shift, it’s pretty much an ‘autotack’. But other times it can be really quite slow moving and there’s not too much activity in the clouds. So it’s good to keep an eye on the AIS to track the other boats in the fleet and how the cold front is progressing. That’s a useful source of real-time knowledge that’s well worth watching when you’re trying to judge the best time to tack.

Talk it through

For teams who only get together a few times a year, or maybe have come together for the first time to do a big offshore like the Rolex Fastnet Race, it’s inevitable that you won’t have had much time to sort out your communications and understanding between each other. As much as possible, and especially in rough conditions, you really want to avoid all the shouting back and forth from the foredeck to the pit and to the back of the boat. Instructions are bound to get lost or misunderstood.

Talk through your planned manoeuvres in detail before the front arrives, or ideally even before you leave shore. It’s so easy to get ropes twisted over each other, or getting the sail up from down below and attaching the wrong corner to the wrong sheets or halyards.

Make sure you’ve got some of your most experienced people in the pit, crew who knows the pattern of what looks right or when it looks wrong.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips for sailing in cold weather

Unlike most of us, Bob Beggs seeks out extreme cold and is currently planning his next yachting venture into the…

5 expert tips: Jack Bouttell on repairing your boat mid-ocean

In the 50-year history of The Ocean Race (ex-Whitbread/Volvo), Leg 3 of the 2023 edition from Cape Town, South Africa…

Tack and peel

Seeing as you’re expecting more breeze on the other side of the wind shift after the arrival of the cold front, a tack-and-peel can be a really slick manoeuvre, so get set up for one in advance.

If you’ve got a tuff luff with two grooves, ideally you want to hoist the smaller headsail up the windward side of the current headsail. When you tack and the smaller headsail is now taking the strain as the new working sail, it’s pretty straightforward to pull down the old, bigger headsail on the windward side of the small jib.

Add and extra reef

When the conditions are really rough, sending people up on to the foredeck is a bit of a last resort. If changing down to a smaller headsail seems too hazardous a manoeuvre, putting a reef in the mainsail is the simpler and less risky way of reducing sail area without sending people forwards.

Remember, it’s much easier to shake out a reef than putting a reef in, so make sure you do your reefing well in advance of reaching the cold front. Better to be safe than sorry, and take your preventative medicine early rather than pay a high price later on.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: How to prepare for a cold front when sailing offshore appeared first on Yachting World.

Paul Larsen was converted to the appeal of deck chutes on a particular day aboard Sir Peter Harrison’s 35m maxi yacht Sojana. “You’d be racing into the leeward mark with another smaller boat, and you know they’d be thinking, ‘We won’t get our kite down until they drop theirs.’ Suddenly our kite disappears in the blink of an eye, we’re around the mark – but when I look back they’re just in a huge, huge mess back there!”

Larsen can’t quite work out why deck chutes haven’t caught on in a bigger way in racing because they’re relatively easy to install and not difficult to use once you’ve got the basic rules of operation sorted.

“It works really well, certainly compared with the alternative,” he says. “It wasn’t so long ago when standard procedure was to have all the crew up on the foredeck clawing cloth over the lifelines, trying to get the kite in. And if the helmsman turned the bow up too soon and the wind got under that kite, then all the little ants got thrown overboard.”

For some, the answer has been top-down snuffers. “But they come with their own problems of getting fouled up, or not going up or not coming down, and having all that drag up in the air isn’t ideal.”
If this has got you wondering more about whether a deck chute might be for you, here are Paul’s five best tips on how to make this system work on your monohull or multihull.

Article continues below…

5 tips: Vendee Globe veteran explains how to face the fear and do it anyway

Facing your fears is something that challenges every sailor, but none more so than those taking on single-handed offshore racing.…

Staysails: 5 tips on using them to turbocharge your boat speed

As Mike Sanderson points out, staysails are hardly a new idea. The old clipper ships used to use multiple staysails.…

Get set up

The deck chute setup is not so different from what you see on a small two-man catamaran like a Formula 18 or a Hobie Cat. It’s got a big, rigid hoop – say about 80cm wide – that you lash near the bow in a way that stands upright.

Leading off the hoop is a big sock with a pull-down cable – a retrieval line – running through the middle of it and aft towards one of your primary winches in the cockpit. The retrieval line goes through a couple of rings on the kite so as the line pulls the kite into the chute, the first chunk of kite hits the back of the sock and the fuse (we’ll come to that) snaps and then it pulls on the next section of kite, and so on until the kite is bagged.

Tweak your fuses

A fuse is just a few hitches of whipping twine that are strong enough to do the job of leading the retrieval line and the kite to the back of the sock, and weak enough to snap during the process of retrieval. Depending on your size of kite and how long the sock is on your deck chute, you might get away with just one fuse or maybe need two.

After each kite drop is complete, with practice you can re-whip the fuses in about three minutes. On Allegra we use the deck chute to retrieve the A2 kite, but for the A3 we use a top-down furler.

A deck chute set up for use on the J Class Svea during The Superyacht Cup Palma. Photo: Sailing Energy/The Superyacht Cup

Burn off apparent wind first

When you’re retrieving a kite on your biggest primary winch and it’s spinning super quick, that’s a lot of rope to come flying down in a short space of time. So the halyard has got to be eased at the right time and speed as you don’t want the kite dropping over the bow and flopping into the water. It’s quite a precise manoeuvre at this stage.

If you’re on a fast boat and you put on too much speed the apparent wind goes forward and the spinnaker blows back onto the boat – rather than floating forward to be sucked into the chute mouth. You’re trying to manage the apparent wind all the time so that the kite is dropping in front of the mouth and is scooped up without too much pull on the sail.

Get two thirds away

The better you get at this choreography and timing of the drop and the turn, the more you’ll want to be aiming for a smooth rounding where you’re steaming into the mark at full pace and as you start to turn, the whole thing is disappearing in the radius of the turn.

That’s the expert version though. Make sure that you have at least two thirds of the sail stashed in the sock before the helmsman turns the boat up towards the breeze, especially if it’s more than a few knots of wind.

As much as possible you want to avoid the kite blowing aft beyond the chute mouth and then having to drag it round the corners of the hoop. The deck chute arrangement can be tough on kites, particularly when the crew is getting used to the timing of the manoeuvre, so expect to be taking your sail to the mender’s a bit more often than usual. It’ll also take you a while to work out where best to position the retrieval patches, so there is a bit of trial and error until you fine-tune your technique.

Don’t get sucked in

One last word of warning, don’t get sucked into the chute. Yes, really! People occasionally get sucked into the chute if they stand too close. There’s spinnaker flying everywhere and if you get a wrap of cloth around you then you can end up being grabbed and pulled in.

It’s probably a bit like being eaten by a python, so best advice is not to get too close to its hungry jaws.

While there are potential pitfalls, the big benefit of deck chutes is how quickly you can be ready for the next hoist. Fuses can be reset in a couple of minutes, and then the kite is good to go again without needing to be repacked or rezipped.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post How to use deck chutes for improved spinnaker handling appeared first on Yachting World.

Modern cruiser/racer multihulls have a high level of safety provided you know what you’re doing. Helena Darvelid has taken all of her experience from world record-breaking passages in all-out speed machines and applied that to the slightly less frenetic world of multihull competition in big races like the RORC Caribbean 600 and the Rolex Fastnet Race, where Allegra has won the division in the past two editions into Cherbourg.

Poor choices often come down to over-optimistic sail selection which can put the boat in jeopardy, but with planning and a good understanding of how the boat performs across the range of wind and wave states, almost any situation is manageable.

“Since the start of the year we’ve done about 11,000 miles on Allegra, from Mallorca to the Canaries, the Transat, the Caribbean 600, Newport Bermuda Race and back to Mallorca,” says Darvelid.

“The windy races are the ones that stand out, including the past two Rolex Fastnet Races and last year’s Gotland Race, because that’s where I’m from [Helena is Swedish].

“We had 40 knots of wind and peak speeds of over 35 knots which felt amazing.

“Once you have a team that knows what it’s doing, you don’t have to feel intimidated by big conditions, you can really enjoy it.”

Here are Helena’s five tips for keeping it safe and fun while pushing to the limit on big, powerful multihulls.

Rehearse safety plans

We always go through the safety procedures on the boat, knowing where to locate all the safety equipment. In the case of a capsize, what would you do, and in what order? Where are you going to keep your lifejacket? If the boat is upside down and you have to get through an escape hatch, you don’t want to end up on the upturned boat without your lifejacket, so make sure it’s readily accessible.

We always throw in a ‘surprise’ man overboard drill for every race, just in case we have someone new on board. Make a habit of going through the whole routine each time for every major passage you do.

Article continues below…

Best catamaran and multihull: The very best yachts on two and three hulls

There are many categories in the European Yacht of the Year awards, from the best luxury yachts and performance yachts to the best yachts for families and evet…

What’s it really like to go from a monohull to a catamaran? A liveaboard cruiser’s lessons learned

For over a decade, my wife, Rachel, and I lived aboard what could aptly be described as a traditional bluewater…

Stay two steps ahead

Always aim to stay two or even three steps ahead. Anticipate everything that’s likely to happen next. Basically, in any manoeuvre, we’re always ready.

Allegra is a big boat with a large central structure, so we can’t see each other. We have six comms headsets for the key positions: the pit, bowman, trimmers, race skipper, and navigator.

Communication between the crew is vital during the preparation and execution of manoeuvres, but sometimes you can have too much chat which can create confusion. That’s why you need to talk through all the manoeuvres beforehand so you’re only saying what needs to be said. We also have a ‘No comms’ backup mode in case of comms failure or the need to execute a manoeuvre before everyone is geared up.

Stay in position

Everyone knows their position and what’s required. We’ve practised beforehand, so you go to the same position every time, even if you’re off watch. If it’s an overnight race or a long one like the RORC Caribbean 600, then there’ll be an off-watch and if you have a key person asleep, you wake them up, and everyone goes to their positions instantly. It then only takes a few minutes to take a reef or do a headsail change.

We never leave someone asleep to give them extra rest if they’re needed in position. Everyone has to be involved in the same way each time. But the watch system needs to be flexible to cater for the course requirements.

On busy courses we’ll run a buddy system where two people of similar skill sets cover each other in their own watch system and make sure that their double is well slept, fed and watered so that there’s always someone with that skill on deck and in good shape.

Allegra racing in the Rolex Fastnet Race. Photo: Rick Tomlinson/RORC

Set up for speed

Going faster is quite often safer and more comfortable in multihulls so set your rig up for that. You need to ‘lean’ on the boat to make it ride predominantly on one hull – as opposed to having multiple hulls wracking between different waves.

It’s difficult to set hard and fast rules on what to change when, because so much relies on the particular boat, your angle to the wind and how gusty and shifty the breeze is.

One of the biggest considerations about sail plan is your angle to the waves and what kind of wave sets you’re dealing with. If in doubt, going smaller is the safe option although do first try all the de-powering options such as twisting, easing, traveller down, daggerboards up etc.

Where the opposite is sometimes the case is when you’re going downwind in light airs and you’ve got a choppy wave state to punch through. Here you’re looking to head up the boat onto a hotter angle and put more power into the sails to give you momentum through the chop.

With catamarans the sea state can make the boat’s rolling action quite sharp as the hulls ride on different troughs and peaks. This in turn shakes the wind out of the sails making them only really effective for smaller windows. Sailing higher creates more apparent over the sails and helps them fly longer. Your polars won’t tell you this.

Know your exit strategy

When you’re beam reaching in strong winds be aware of the ‘death zone’ where the high levels of apparent wind that you’re generating can exceed the righting moment of the boat.

This is potential capsize territory, so always know what your exit strategy is at any given moment when a gust hits. Are you going to bear away or luff up? The skipper should communicate what the plan is so everyone understands what’s going on and can anticipate what the rest of the team is expected to do.

If you need to exit by heading up, make sure the sails are trimmed to enable this. You still want drive in the main as this will be the sail that helps spin the boat into the wind. If you have the headsail pinned in and the main doing nothing, then the rudder will be less effective turning the bow up.

Ideally, in overpowering conditions where you’re achieving stability limits, you should have both sails on the edge or already beginning to luff. This leads to a neutral helm and means that as soon as you start coming up, the luffing increases on both sails and the boat depowers quickly from the head down.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips for catamaran racing appeared first on Yachting World.

One of the most significant advantages of racing with asymmetric kites is the simplicity of asymmetric spinnaker handling compared with symmetrical spinnakers.

But the finer details of how to get the best out of the gennaker are quite subtle and take some practice and coordination between the whole crew, particularly the communications and understanding between kite trimmer, helmsman, mainsail trimmer and the foredeck crew.

In the tightly fought Cape 31 circuit, semi-pro teams are looking for every tiny advantage on the race track. Here are five great tips from Alain Sign for how to find that extra edge on the downwind, whether in marginal planing conditions or full-power.

Select your sails

In the Cape 31 we’re limited to carrying two spinnakers during racing, but even if you have unlimited choice, make sure to check the weather forecast before you head out for racing. If it’s a variable day, try to work out the gust-to-lull ratio. Set up the boat for the most likely choice based on the prevailing conditions, and have the next most likely choice within easy reach in case you need to make a rapid change.

Make sure the other sail is ready to be plugged in and has a drop-line ready to go, so that you can get your bow person prepped to switch it over during the upwind leg if the conditions change significantly for the next downwind.

Article continues below…

Downwind mode

When you come around the windward mark you should know your polars well enough to gauge whether or not to promote planing. You’ve got a target wind speed, boat speed and steering angle you’re looking to achieve.

But as soon as you’re around other boats, you’re not necessarily able to sail to your ideal numbers. Instead, ask yourself what you want to achieve tactically. Do I want to try and soak inside them and stay low? Or do I want to go planing and try and push over and in front of them?

On the Cape 31 if we’re going for a low soak mode, we get the jib down and use crew weight to heel the boat more to windward for better projected area from the spinnaker. If we’re going for planing then we’ll keep the jib up for the extra drive, and get ready to shift the crew weight aft once we’re up on the plane.

Over- or undertake?

Talking of overtaking or ‘undertaking’ the boats around you, it’s important to understand the course axis of the downwind leg. If you’ve got a downwind leg with a long starboard, for example in a round-the-cans race during Cowes Week, it’s going to be beneficial to push high and work your way over the top of the opposition.

But if you’re on a shorter windward-leeward course and not much time remaining on starboard, you want to try to work your way down to a lower line than the boat in front so you can control the gybe.

Once you’ve gybed, you may want to change mode and aim to get planing, depending on how your tactical situation is developing. Getting an early grasp of the course axis in conjunction with the weather forecast will also help you make those critical choices about which kite to use for which leg of the course.

Plane early

Getting yourself planing before everyone else is one of the key skills in marginal planing conditions. Making that early transition can give you a massive advantage, but trying and then not succeeding can end up being an expensive giveaway of time and distance. Block out some time in your training schedule to get the whole team working on how to get the boat on to the plane.

While the general wisdom about trimming an asymmetric is to keep the luff constantly on the curl, it’s not quite as straightforward as that. Hold on to the luff a bit more than normal, because every time you trim the kite sheet in or out, it’s loading or unloading the rudder. So maintain a slight bit of oversheeting to keep the rudder load constant until the boat is successfully up on the plane.

Faster is better

Once it’s a bit windier shift your ‘default setting’ from soaking to planing. There are certain conditions where it’s safer to go faster, for example when it’s blowing a constant 18 knots. At this point soaking can be more hazardous as the apparent wind is coming from further aft which makes the boat quite unstable and can really load up the rudder. Instead you want to bring the apparent wind further forward, over your shoulder at about one or two o’clock so you’ve got less to deal with when problems come up like a side wave hitting the boat.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: Guide to asymmetric spinnaker handling appeared first on Yachting World.

Every crew has its own DNA, its own ecosystem. Making that the best and healthiest crew dynamic possible is a big part of what interests Richard Parslow. “Psychology is a huge part of the sport,” he says.

“They say the longest four inches in golf is between the ears, and how we interact with each other in the boat also has a huge outcome on the race course. I’ve been fortunate to be on a lot of successful teams where we’ve had a shared outlook on the campaign, usually pretty laid back, laughing a lot, but in the background really organised and committed to doing the work.”

When it comes to building a crew, he says: “You need to think carefully about the team you are assembling, choosing those who are the best fit for the long term, not necessarily because they are the best in the world at a particular job.” Here are Richard’s five best tips for getting everyone on the crew pulling in the same direction.

Have shared goals

I remember driving back from a youth event once and my helmsman said what a good regatta we’d had, and I was thinking how badly it had gone. He was enjoying himself and I was all about trying to win the event. It’s really important at the start of the campaign to make sure everyone’s goals are aligned, that you share the same aims.

Assuming it’s about winning, everyone needs to be highly motivated. Back in the day when we raced on the Ultra 30s you had nine people on a big dinghy which capsized easily, and you could just about swap out one person in a weekend without it affecting your team coordination and performance, but no more than that.

That was a big part of why we used to win in the Ultra 30, that consistency of crew on board.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips: Jack Bouttell on repairing your boat mid-ocean

In the 50-year history of The Ocean Race (ex-Whitbread/Volvo), Leg 3 of the 2023 edition from Cape Town, South Africa…

5 expert tips: Shorthanded mainsail reefing

The double-handed team of Deb Fish and Rob Craigie have got mainsail reefing down to a fine art. “Even when…

Bring skills

As well as skills to race the boat, make sure the crew brings complementary skills for the onshore stuff and the logistics – the ability to work with glassfibre or carbon, metal work, fix engines, maintain the coach RIB, cooking and good technique in the protest room. Have as many bases as possible covered within the team.

Hone the process

I’m a big believer in the regatta process, that you’ve got a consistent thing that you do every day. It starts before the event with logistics of travel and accommodation and then goes into a daily process for each race day, from ‘wake up to write up’.

Everything on a checklist is one less thing to think about on what’s already a hugely complicated day. Man is a habit forming animal and we’re very happy when we’re able to go through a repetitive process. It means you’re unlikely to forget anything. Without a systematic approach, because of potential ‘diffusion of responsibility’ in larger teams, some things might slip through the cracks.

Cool off

I’ve been pretty lucky with most of the teams I’ve been on – there hasn’t been any sort of toxic breakdown. But certainly when everybody’s under a lot of pressure, emotions can get high and people get upset and angry and things are said.

A really good way to get back down from that high level of emotion – anger, even – is to go back to your process…“Okay, what went wrong there? Did someone just mess up, or is there something wrong with the process? And to make sure it doesn’t go wrong again, do we just need to practise more, or do we have to re-think the process?”

Finely honed relationships are vital in crew from everyday cruisers up to the very top of competitive sailing. Photo: Ricardo Pinto / America’s Cup

That approach gets you back to a place where you’re not so upset any more. It depersonalises the problem and works towards a collective solution rather than pointing the finger.

Have a laugh

Campaigning across a whole season can be a long, hard slog. You’re going to spend a lot of time together, training, travelling and competing. Whatever level you’re operating at, you need to have a sense of humour that works for everyone on the crew. You’re going to have things go well and a lot of things go really badly. And it’s when things go badly you really test your team bond and the power of the relationship on the boat. Sense of humour is a massive part of getting you out of those moments and back on the right track.

Some people swear a lot, but try to avoid effing and blinding all over the shop – it increases pressure and tension on board, If you’re upset about something and you swear, it doesn’t make you any less upset, but it makes the other people around you more upset. Then they’re likely to react. And the more upset you get, the less good decisions you make.

Clear, calm communication will produce a quieter, more efficient racing machine, and whether you’ve had a good or bad day, you should always be able to find something you can share a laugh about!

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: How to build a great sailing crew appeared first on Yachting World.

Being an effective crew boss relies on good preparation and a great sense of timing, says Annie Lush. “The role basically comes down to organising manoeuvres, so it’s about having the right kind of communication and using the right words to make sure the front, the middle and the back of the boat are all working together,” she says.

On smaller boats around the 40ft mark, Lush says it’s common for the pitman to take the role of crew boss. “But when you’re on a 100ft superyacht with maybe 30 crew, you’ve probably got a dedicated crew boss who is most likely spending a lot of time in the ‘engine room’, next to the grinders and the pedestals.”

Having someone who understands the role of the pitman is key, but having good tactical knowledge of the race course is also very important, Lush points out.

“You don’t necessarily need to understand every role on board, but when things go wrong, which inevitably they will do, then you need to know what the priority is for the tactician at that given moment.
“That way, you can help minimise the damage on the race course and restore the focus on the bigger picture as quickly as possible.”

Here are Annie’s five best tips on how to be an effective crew boss:

Build your playbook

You should be looking to build up your playbook from the moment you step on a boat and keep on adding to it and refining it as you go along.

That means I always carry my wet notes with me as well as marker pens and tape for calibrating sheets and halyards and anything else where you need to replicate settings.

The longer you sail on the boat, the more manoeuvres and experience you build up, the more comprehensive and refined your playbook will be. It’s your bible.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips: Jack Bouttell on repairing your boat mid-ocean

In the 50-year history of The Ocean Race (ex-Whitbread/Volvo), Leg 3 of the 2023 edition from Cape Town, South Africa…

5 expert tips: How to improve your offshore racing skills

French Figaro sailors, whether they’re currently on the circuit or former Figaro skippers who cut their teeth in the class…

Set your stopwatch

Key details in your playbook are the times it takes to execute any given manoeuvre in a range of wind conditions and sea states and with crew you have on board. Just because someone on board a TP52 says, “Oh, we could get set up for a gybe-set in 35 seconds,” that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do the same.

We realised this on [all-female] Team SCA. Record how long each manoeuvre takes and then make sure the tactician and the afterguard know exactly what that figure is. During an in-port race in the Volvo Ocean Race it looked like we were getting the kite down too early compared with two of the men’s teams next to us. But they ended up getting their kites down too late – we rounded inside them and were ahead out of the leeward gate.

Better too soon than too late

Which brings us on to the next point. If you don’t know how long a manoeuvre will take because you’ve never done it before, take your best guess at the expected time and add a few extra seconds. In more than 95% of situations it’s better to get ready too soon than too late, especially at leeward marks or gates.

Tacticians frequently underestimate the length of time for the middle and front of the boat to get set up for a manoeuvre or a sail change, so be clear with your language and your tone of voice that they need to make their final decision about whether to do a gybe-drop or a straight take-down of the kite with an absolute minimum of 90 seconds, if that’s the time you’ve got down in the playbook [or your head] for that manoeuvre.

Photo: Team Maiden/OGR2023

Mind your language

A crew boss needs to be clear with their tone of voice and use of language. People say I sound a bit like an army sergeant major when I’m the crew boss, but I’m okay with that because you need everyone to be absolutely clear about what’s happening next. The whole crew needs to use the same terms so you minimise any risk of confusion or misunderstanding.

Instead of ‘Yes’ say ‘Copy’. Instead of ‘No’ say ‘Negative’, because ‘No’ can sound too much like ‘Go’. Instead of ‘Stop’ when someone is winding a sheet or a halyard, say ‘Hold’.

Every time a point of confusion or misunderstanding comes up, make a note and discuss it at the next debrief so you have a plan for how to communicate more clearly next time.

Offshore discipline

Going offshore requires an extra level of discipline. People in their specific roles absolutely need to stick to those roles unless someone else really needs helping out at a particular moment.

Don’t be tempted to let someone sleep a bit longer and risk getting something wrong because you’re trying to do it short-handed. Putting a reef in is much easier when you have the right number of people involved.

Think when using your head torch at night. It’s good to have it set to red to preserve the helmsman’s and trimmers’ night vision, but some marks on sheets or deck you can’t see with red light, and you might be in gnarly conditions. So sometimes it’s quicker and safer to switch your head torch to white light, then switch back to red light when you’re done with the tricky part of a manoeuvre.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post Expert sailing skills: How to be a great crew boss appeared first on Yachting World.

In the 50-year history of The Ocean Race (ex-Whitbread/Volvo), Leg 3 of the 2023 edition from Cape Town, South Africa through the Southern Ocean to Itajaí, Brazil, was the longest ever.

Jack Bouttell was crew on Charlie Enright’s 11th Hour Racing Team, and became chief boat fixer over 14,840 miles as the IMOCA suffered a series of breakdowns.

Broken battens in the mainsail, two damaged rudders, damaged foil downlines, as well as a huge rip in the mainsail… time and time again the team had to dig deep for creative solutions to make repairs while keeping on racing.

Many times the team wondered if the breakage would mean retirement from the leg but through ingenuity and sheer determination they worked their way through every problem. Here are Jack’s five best tips for keeping the wheels on your wagon when things start breaking.

1. Use checklists

I’m a big fan of checklists. If you’re building up a spares list from scratch, then note down each department of the boat – sails, navigation, electronics, hydraulics, engine, and so on – and what you think could go wrong.

At the end of every leg of The Ocean Race we’d debrief not just what happened on our boat but if there have been breakages on the other boats in the fleet. Then we’ll make sure we cover off those areas too, and do our best to have a solution for our rivals’ problems as well as the ones we experienced.

2. Safety priority

It’s important to divide every kind of breakage into two categories: safety or performance. Safety is always the priority and your spares and tool kit needs to have solutions to address all the potential problems that could put the safety of the crew at risk.

Once you’ve got those priorities covered, you can think about the performance priorities and build your spares list to cover some of those areas. For dealing with breakages at sea it’s the same mindset, a safety issue for the yacht or crew must be dealt with immediately and you have to forget about performance.

For a smaller breakage ask yourself: can we finish the race without a repair? What is the most opportune time to repair, to lose the least distance, and can we last until then without repairing the problem?

Article continues below…

Expert tips: how to sail multihulls downwind in big breezes

Pushing fast multihulls downwind in gnarly conditions can be a hazardous business. Knowing how hard you can push, and when…

5 top tips: Sailing upwind in survival conditions

Across 45,000 miles of steering around the world on the Clipper Race, sailing upwind safely in survival conditions becomes routine.…

3. Tailor your spares list

The longer you sail with your particular boat, the better the experience you have for knowing what’s important to keep in your tool and repair kit. If you know what typically tends to break, you can build up a spares kit that’s very specific to your boat.

As you gain experience you also learn what you can afford to leave behind, to save space and weight on board. Our spares kit got smaller throughout the last Ocean Race, but then we had a very different list for different legs of the course.

Headed into the Southern Ocean you’ll need a lot more contingency and spares than a coastal race in the Mediterranean or even a Fastnet Race, because you’re close to shore and have the option to stop somewhere.

4. Get creative

Sometimes there’s no obvious solution to the problem in front of you. We had this on the Southern Ocean leg when the tack of the mainsail ripped off at the first reef. It’s one of the highest loaded areas of the sail and just putting a patch of sticky-back over the area was not going to do anything for very long.

We didn’t have anything on board, no sewing machine. So we asked ourselves how we were going to fix it? After some thinking we decided to go for some carbon plate, cut it up into rectangles and bolted the carbon plate through the mainsail. Adapting a boatbuilding solution to solve a sail repair problem actually worked amazingly well.

5. Spares must-haves

Carbon plate is one of the must-haves in our repair kit, in various thicknesses for different applications. It’s good to have a few shapes, little disks and a few squares, so if a padeye pulled out of the deck you could use it as a backing plate or to help plug a hole.

We always carry Sikaflex because you can glue pretty much anything even when it’s wet. Sticky-back sail cloth material can be useful although it’s hard to make it stick when wet, so I take plain sail cloth material and then use Sikaflex to glue it to the sail as and when needed.

Lengths of Dyneema lashings are always useful, and for stitching sails I have a push/pull hand-sewing tool so you can do all the stitching from one side of the sail. For electronics, the big fail is fuses, and if you have hydraulics you’ll probably want oil in case there are some leaks. For engines, impellers and alternator belts are your biggest must-haves.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: Jack Bouttell on repairing your boat mid-ocean appeared first on Yachting World.

The double-handed team of Deb Fish and Rob Craigie have got mainsail reefing down to a fine art. “Even when we’re really familiar with each other and we know our processes, we still talk everything through before we start. Good planning and communication are the most important ingredients for making sure things go well and avoiding the big mistakes,” Fish explains.

On a double-handed boat like their Bellino it’s also about sharing out the workload as evenly as possible. Whatever works for a two-man team should work when sailing fully crewed where more hands make lighter work of the job. Deb says the overriding goal is to get from no reef to reefed in as short a time as possible to minimise the risk of damage to the sail.

Plan ahead

Our reefing system is just normal slab reefing because we want to keep things simple with the minimum chance of things going wrong. A few items will make life so much easier for any reefing manoeuvre, eg constrictors on some lines. When you’ve got a reef in, you need to have the main halyard, jib halyard and reefing line all in tension, ideally on winches. But because we don’t have three winches available, we put constrictors on the main halyard and the reefing lines.

Before you start a long offshore race you’ll have looked at the forecast and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what reefs you might need to use, if any. If we’re looking at a really light airs race we won’t have the reefing lines in. But if in doubt we’ll be set up for having the first reef, or if there’s the slightest chance of needing the second reef, we’ll put it in.

Article continues below…

5 Expert Tips: Offshore Preparation

What’s your goal for the season? Shirley Robertson apologises if her offshore preparation sounds ‘a bit Olympic sailorish’ but says…

5 expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind

When you’re competing in a big fleet, it’s not the winning races that marks out the great from the good.…

The other consideration is knowing which tack we’re likely to be on when we’re putting in the reef. The aim is to have the reefed part of the sail on the opposite side of the boom to the reefing line. You can control the sail from the mast if your boom is eased sufficiently for the sail to be flapping head to wind.

Steer to the best wind angle

Just before reefing we’ll change course if necessary to allow the mainsail to flap freely without pressing on the spreaders when the kicker and mainsheet are released. If we’re beating we don’t need to change course, but if we’re deeper than about 70° true wind angle we’ll come onto the wind, and adjust the jib accordingly.

Be safe, sure and fast

The better you have talked through the manoeuvre, the better equipped you’ll be to execute the reef safely, securely and quickly. Putting in a reef should take no more than a couple of minutes provided everything goes smoothly. We minimise time out of the cockpit by doing all the prep first. I then move to the mast where I clip my short tether to the base of the mast to allow me to brace securely and use both hands confidently.

Be meticulous about doing things in the right order. For example, make sure you tension the mainsail luff before you put the reefing line in, otherwise it’s easy to damage the luff of the sail.

It’s also important to have the reefing lines secured at the right position along the boom for your re-reefing points – if your boat doesn’t have a fitting in the boom, you can use Dyneema line. I also control the sail to the desired side so that the reefing line runs straight from the reefing point to the boom, with the sail on the opposite side.

Photo: Richard Langdon/Pip Hare Ocean Racing

Work as a team

Make sure your roles are well defined and know where the potential sticking points are in the process. For example, when you’re shaking out a reef there can be a lot of friction in the reefing line, especially if you’re using a constrictor.

If Rob is struggling to wind it up, I’ll be pulling it through for him to make his life easier. The same for when I get back to the cockpit, I’ll pull in the mainsheet as Rob has already been working hard on the winches for the past couple of minutes. It’s about sharing the physical workload as much as possible.

Tidy up

Once you’ve completed the reef, get back up to speed before tidying up. Lastly you’ve got to decide whether you want to tie the base of the sail up with sail ties. If the reef will be in for any length of time it’s worthwhile, not least because you have much better visibility.

I find this the least secure part of the operation – at the mast you’re very secure, the middle of the coachroof is less so. So depending on how long it’s in for, we may not bother with any ties in the middle, we might just secure the front and the back. Just make sure you have your backup plans for anything that might go wrong. Plan for what you’ll do if the reefing line breaks, because they do from time to time. They’re under a lot of load. Replace often and keep an eye on them for wear and tear.

If you do tie the reef in, put the sail ties around the sail, not around the boom. If the reefing line did break, the clew would just go up in the air, whereas if the sail tie was tied around the boom then it would rip straight through the sail.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: Shorthanded mainsail reefing appeared first on Yachting World.

When you’re competing in a big fleet, it’s not the winning races that marks out the great from the good. It’s the ability to bounce back from bad positions and find a way through the fleet into the top 10. One of the key skills is the ability to survive in thin lanes when there are boats tight to windward and to leeward of you. It’s what all of us have to do out of a busy start line, but lane-holding is a great skill for further up the race track too when you’re trying to grind through the traffic.

We ask Olympic gold medallist helmsman Šime Fantela about how he and the rest of the crew in top TP52 teams like Bronenosec or Provezza work at surviving and thriving in thin lanes on perhaps the most demanding and closely contested keelboat racing circuit in the professional world, the 52 Super Series. Here are Šime’s best tips on how to go fast in a thin lane.

Stay positive

Psychologically it can be very challenging to be sailing in a confined space with boats on either side of you. Generally the boat that manages to sail at optimum VMG for longer than the rest of the fleet has the best chance of getting to the windward mark in first place, or at least in the first few. So when you’re sailing in a thin lane, don’t start adjusting controls or altering your steering too much from what you’d normally do. It’s easy to get psyched out before the other boats are actually giving you bad air.

Aside from lots of real-world racing experience, the best way is to practise living in a thin lane in your tuning and training sessions.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips to improve your tacking

While a tack is one of the most fundamental manoeuvres, it’s also hard to execute well. The more crew on…

5 expert tips for leeward mark roundings

The leeward mark is one of the biggest pinch points on the race course, with the opportunity for huge gains…

Involve the team

It shouldn’t all be down to the helmsman. Everyone needs to know what you’re aiming to achieve at any given moment. The tactician should be calling your speed and progress relative to the boats to windward and to leeward of you. The helmsman needs to get all the information he requires without being tempted to look around.

Steering is only one part of the speed equation. Make sure everyone is in the comms loop. The mainsail, headsail and backstay trimmers all need to work with the helmsman to either point up for height, foot for speed or maintain normal VMG. As helmsman, you need to tell the rest of the team what you’re feeling through the helm and if you feel like you’re potentially on the edge of stall. Then tell them when you’re steering down to re-accelerate and reload the sails so the mainsail trimmer knows when to ease for some twist until you can feel the rudder getting its grip back.

Photo: Carlo Borlenghi/Rolex

Speed in the bank

When you have a window of opportunity – some flat water, a good puff of breeze, or one of the other boats dropping back slightly – build the speed and get it in the bank.

Accelerate and go for a speed build for as long as possible. It’s useful momentum to carry you through the difficult moments further up the track, maybe a bad set of waves or a lull.

Have someone constantly watching and calling the conditions that are about to reach you, if you’re about to hit a bad set of lumpy waves or a flatter patch, as well as calling the gusts and the lulls.

Take the pain

Sometimes it’s worth living with some bad air and keeping going for a bit longer. For example, racing in Palma tends to be a ‘go left’ race course, so you want to do everything you can to stay on starboard tack for as long as possible. But in situations like these you also need to understand the manoeuvre loss of your particular type of boat. If your boat loses very little through the tacks then it might be worth hitching out early – as soon as you feel you’ve lost your lane – and going for two quick tacks to get back on starboard again but in clearer air.

However, if the speed loss through manoeuvres is high, typically in a fast catamaran for example, then it could be worth living in a compromised lane for a bit longer. It’s really hard to set a rule of thumb for this. This is where experience comes in, to tell you when to persist with a thin lane and when to cut your losses.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind appeared first on Yachting World.

Just as the best teams seem to find an extra high mode on the upwind legs, often they’re also very good at eking out an extra-low mode on the downwind. Unlike symmetrical spinnakers, where you can square back the pole and sometimes sail directly down the rhumbline, with an asymmetric gennaker you’re always having to work the angles.

In light airs these angles can get pretty big as you work to keep the apparent wind flowing over the sails. If you can keep the flow AND gain a bit of extra depth compared with the boats around you, then you’ve got the opportunity for some significant gains downwind. Here are Ben Saxton’s five top tips for keeping the boat rumbling along in the low lane.

Listen to the trimmer

Keeping up the speed is one of the most vital goals when you’re pushing downwind in light airs and you need to let the spinnaker trimmer be your guide. Whatever size of boat you’re sailing, the feel through the spinnaker sheet is one of your key indicators for how low you can afford to go. An early luff is way better than stopping completely and having to build from scratch again. The key relationship is between the spinnaker trimmer calling the pressure in the sheet and communicating with the helmsman so that the two are in sync.

On bigger boats you can rely more on the target apparent wind angles which are really useful to steer to. In the smaller boats you simply don’t have that kind of data, but going on feel is never a bad thing. Make sure you’re always maintaining a good gap between the back of the spinnaker and the mainsail. If in doubt it’s better to over-trim rather than under-trim the mainsail to maintain that healthy slot.

Sailing the angles with an asymmetric. Photo: Kinetic Catamarans

High or low?

It’s one thing to work your best VMG with no other boats around you, but on a busy race course you’re going to have to work out when to sail higher or lower than normal. There’s no real rule of thumb, but generally if you’re rounding the windward mark with lots of other boats you simply can’t afford to be rolled by five or more of your rivals. So it’s most likely worth sailing the extra distance and going higher than you normally would to keep the apparent wind forward and keep the clean air across your sails.

If you’re in danger of being rolled by just one boat and you’re thinking about gybing away soon anyway, take the short-term pain of a bit of bad air knowing that you’re still well placed for the bigger strategic picture. Sometimes it’s okay to be rolled by one boat knowing that if you keep your leeward position then you’re most likely to be able to dictate terms at the gybe, and maybe get your own back by rolling them out of the gybe.

Article continues below…

5 tips: light airs racing – how to keep going when all around are drifting in circles

The forecast was spot on, the breeze has slackened as pressure rises, but now with the remains of an open…

5 tips: the gybe set spinnaker hoist – when to use it and how

There is always a temptation to keep things simple on the racecourse and opt for a bear away spinnaker set.…

Trim the boat

Mostly if it’s really light winds then you’ll go for some leeward heel to help the sails fill and to reduce the wetted surface area of the hull.

On a narrower hull, once there’s enough breeze to fill the sails without the need for gravity, you’d pull the boat upright. But in a boat like the Cape 31 with a really wide transom you’ll still keep the leeward heel in anything up to 8 knots of breeze because the gain of getting the kite round is less than having a big, wide transom in the water.

You want to get weight further forwards in light airs to reduce wetted surface area of the transom, but don’t trim so far that you’re fully lifting the transom because then you’re losing waterline length which is an important factor for boat speed.

Keep all movement smooth and gentle so as not to disturb the boat any more than you have to.

Photo: Rolex

Ease the tack line

If the sea state is flat and you’re aiming to get low in light winds, easing the tack line is an option for having a rounder, more powerful entry to the gennaker. Don’t try this in really light airs where you’re struggling to keep flow over the sails, because in these conditions flatter is faster. But once you’re going relatively low and only gybing through small angles, you can sometimes ease the tack line which helps give the kite a bit more depth, as well as rotating the kite around to windward.

Look behind you

Have someone dedicated to looking behind for the breeze, spotting the best opportunities coming down the race course. Because everything tends to happen quite slowly in light airs, the tactician should have time to do this job. You want to be careful that you don’t have too many cooks, but a two-way conversation can be good for bouncing ideas around – just make sure it’s clear who has the final call for making the next move.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: How to use an asymmetric spinnaker in light airs appeared first on Yachting World.

While a tack is one of the most fundamental manoeuvres, it’s also hard to execute well. The more crew on board, the harder it is to co-ordinate the timing of the roles. The bigger the sea state, the more critical the timing and execution of the tack to minimise the boat-stopping impact of the next wave.

Coming from an Olympic sailing background, having raced in the Laser single-hander and represented Germany in the Star keelboat, Robert Stanjek has taken his obsession for the small details into the big boat scene. He gives a lot of thought to every aspect of the race course, including what makes a good tack.

He only asks that you don’t judge him by his tacks on an IMOCA. “They are a 60ft tank designed to go fast in a straight line for hundreds of miles,” he says. “Tacking them around a short course is not a pretty sight because they’re just not designed for it!” [Note: this was before the major collision between Guyot and 11th Hour Racing at The Ocean Race Leg 7 start].

Instead, Stanjek offers his five best tips on how to tack a more conventional, fully-crewed keelboat.

With close upwind traffic in one-design fleets, like these ClubSwan 50s at the Rolex Swan Cup, marginal gains made through each tack can have a big pay off. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi/Rolex

Alter your rate of turn

Tacking is not a simple manoeuvre. For a good tack on a fully crewed boat you need everyone working to the same rhythm. The helmsman, mainsheet trimmer and headsail trimmer all need to be on the same page. Most of the time the tactician calls the countdown and the driver puts the boat into the turn.

But you need to vary the rate of turn for different conditions and sea states. In flat water you start on a wider radius to accelerate into the tack, so that you extend the middle of the tack and make useful metres towards the next mark while you’re going through head to wind.

The heavier the boat, the better the momentum through the mid-part of the tack and if there are no waves to slow the boat, you can really take advantage of that windward gain.

Target speed before angle

For the last part of the tack, you exit on a slightly smaller radius and a bit below your target angle, somewhere between 10-12° lower. The headsail trimmer is pulling the jib on, say 85%, and the helmsman is leaning nicely into the jib. I always like to have the trimmer calling target speed. The helmsman has eyes on the water and the telltales, and the trimmer has eyes on the numbers.

Keep pushing for target speed, and only when you have reached it do you start heading up for target angle. Throughout this speed build it’s important the jib and the main trimmer are working in unison, gradually tightening the sheets until you’re back to 100% trim.

Choose your moment on waves

As soon as you have any significant sea state, you need to turn on a tighter radius because if you hit a wave badly during a tack it’ll really slow you down. You can’t afford to go for the long glide towards the breeze, so now it’s about completing the tack as efficiently as possible, in the flattest part of water you can find.

If the waves are long you should start to turn the boat as you go up the wave, and you can accelerate the boat out of the turn as you are going downhill. In this case the wave can actually help you. But in most cases where the boat is too long for the wave you need to choose the flattest spot available.

Normally you’ll find there are five or six consecutive waves in a pattern and then two to three bigger waves – so time your tacks for the smoothest part of the wave cycle.

Article continues below…

5 tips on strategic starting for sailors

Getting a good start is not just about being fast off the line in clear air. Sometimes the better start…

5 tips: finding clear air in a crowded racing fleet

For the leading boats clear air comes free, but for those locked in the middle of a competitive fleet this…

Use crew movement to steer

It helps to have the crew all leaning in a bit to help promote the tack. Even better if they all do a quick hike before they change sides to do a kind of ‘roll tack’ to help initiate the turn. The crew needs to match the speed they cross the boat to the speed of the wind.

In stronger wind it’s a case of getting from one side to the other as quickly as possible, with minimal time off the rail. But when it’s light airs you need everyone to be patient and wait a little longer on the old side, let the boat tack and only when the sails have fully filled on the new tack is it time to gradually bring the weight up to the new side.

Don’t panic in traffic

It’s one thing to execute a perfect tack with lots of space around you, but then there’s the challenge of continuing to do that on a busy race course. A common mistake I see is helmsmen spinning the boat too quickly and losing the boat’s momentum because they’re in a bit of a panic about the traffic.

Avoid the temptation to turn the boat through a smaller radius than usual. Stick to your usual timings and processes, and have the confidence to execute a standard tack even in the heat of battle.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips to improve your tacking appeared first on Yachting World.

French Figaro sailors, whether they’re currently on the circuit or former Figaro skippers who cut their teeth in the class years ago, seem to do very well in the fully-crewed offshore world. So what makes them so good? British sailor Alan Roberts has spent the past decade immersing himself in French offshore racing culture, learning by competing against the best of the best in the Figaro scene as he works his way towards a Vendée Globe campaign.

Roberts is in demand as a very effective consultant on fully-crewed offshore racing projects where he tends to operate in the tactician or navigator role. The short-handed nature of the Figaro forces a sailor to set strict priorities about what’s the most important focus at any given moment of a race. It also teaches a level of intensity and focus that he feels is often missing from the mentality of many offshore sailors.

According to Roberts, every second and every metre of advantage counts, and knowing how to up the intensity and maintain that level of focus are key skills that he aims to impart to every team that he works with. Here are his five tips for resetting your offshore racing priorities for greater success on the race course.

Close quarters, tactical racing places big demands
on solo skippers. Photo: Alexis Courcoux

Prioritise

As a Figaro sailor you’re forced to face up to your priorities all the time. Over time you become very good at quickly filtering through the job list to focus on the things that are going to make the biggest difference.

Planning ahead is the most critical skill. There’s never enough time, so the more you think through the scenarios in advance, the better you’ll be in the heat of the moment. It’s also about bringing a higher level of intensity and urgency to your sailing.

In long, offshore races there’s a tendency to fall into a more relaxed pattern, which means you can start to miss important details. Over time this can compound into a significant loss of time and distance. Every moment, every wave matters.

Article continues below…

5 Expert Tips: Offshore Preparation

What’s your goal for the season? Shirley Robertson apologises if her offshore preparation sounds ‘a bit Olympic sailorish’ but says…

5 tips on developing your polar diagrams to improve your boat speed

Sails are fresh, the bottom is clean, there’s a good crew, but you’ve been losing out to similar boats on…

Share the plan

When I come aboard a boat as a navigator, I bring along details of the weather forecast, our likely routing on the course, and an overall game plan for the race. It’s important to involve the whole team so that everyone gets a chance to contribute and talk through how and when things are done.

It’s also vital to run daily briefings in the lead up to the race and make sure everyone has the latest version of the documents. A simple PDF highlighting the key points is a really good way of sharing the plan with everyone on the boat. It means every crewmember can anticipate the likely next move rather than waiting to be told what to do.

Swap roles

Figaro sailors can do any job on the boat. That’s part of what makes a team of Figaro sailors so strong in a race like the Fastnet. They can float in and out of different roles because they’re great multitaskers.

Most keelboat sailors tend to be much more specialised in their skill set, but a great way to overcome this is to dedicate part of your training sessions to swapping roles on the boat. How often does a driver go up to the bow? Or a bowman step into the mainsail trimmer’s role?

Communication and expectation are two really important factors a whole team needs to understand. Swapping roles during a training session can really improve communication and expectation and make sure everyone is working more cohesively as a unit.

Alan Roberts is an in-demand solo skipper and offshore racer

Visualise scenarios

There’s no substitute for focused time on the water, but something that’s almost as good and which you can do pretty much anytime, anywhere – even in the car or on the train – is visualisation. Running through a mental simulation of different scenarios is a really effective way of practising even when you’re nowhere near the boat. It’s something you can do as an individual, perhaps thinking through the detail of how you prepare the Code 0 for a hoist, for example. Or it can be a visualisation process between the whole team, whether it’s face-to-face or even on a midweek Zoom call to talk through various manoeuvres and the crew choreography.

Risk: reward ratio

Just because somebody else won a race with a certain strategy or manoeuvre doesn’t mean you could have done exactly the same. With a cold front about to hit the fleet, maybe they waited until just 10 minutes beforehand to reef the mainsail and change to a heavy-weather jib. A well drilled team can afford to leave it that late. But if you fumble the reef and get caught out with full mainsail in 35 knots of wind, it could end your race. So discuss and agree on your risk:reward ratio so you have a shared response to a changing scenario. The more training, the more experience, the better you know your boat, the more cold fronts you’ve been through, the more you can turn the dial on this risk:reward ratio. Set your expectations to reasonable limits for your abilities and skill levels. Sail up to, but not beyond, your limits.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips: How to improve your offshore racing skills appeared first on Yachting World.

The leeward mark is one of the biggest pinch points on the race course, with the opportunity for huge gains – or the risk of enormous losses. Dylan Fletcher says the most important ingredient for a successful leeward mark rounding is to start planning well in advance of the moment. “Where are you aiming on the next leg? And where does that mean you need to be positioning yourself half way down the run in order to get the correct rounding to execute your longer-term race strategy?”

This is particularly important at a leeward gate when you have a choice of marks, although the same still applies for single leeward marks. Dylan shares his five best tips for making sure you achieve the entry and, more importantly, the clean exit out of the bottom of the race course.

Prepare the team

Make sure everyone knows the plan well in advance, and that everyone is clear about their job during the drop and the rounding. That includes a plan for if, and when, things go wrong – for example, if the kite falls in the water during the drop. Who’s going to leave their normal post to get up on the foredeck and help get it back on board?

Over time you should aim to build up a playbook, including the timings for how far in advance you should begin the jib hoist and the gennaker drop in, say, 5, 10 and 20 knots of breeze. The more you can turn the rounding into a procedure that runs like clockwork, the more boats you’ll pass.

Avoid the slow soak

One of the most critical factors is to make sure you’re coming into the leeward mark zone at a pretty hot angle with good boatspeed for as long as possible. One of the worst scenarios is finding yourself trying to soak down towards the leeward mark with no speed. It’s not so bad with a symmetrical spinnaker where you can square back the pole, although it’s still not ideal. In a bowsprit boat, soaking down from a high angle, going slow with the sails barely filling is tactical death. Don’t be that boat.

Avoid the slow soak coming into a mark situation, which can allow the rest of the fleet to get around the outside

Come in hot

The ideal approach is broad reaching in towards the mark on starboard, right on layline, or if it’s light winds even slightly below layline. This will enable you to build as much apparent wind as possible which will carry you through the bad air of the boats floating down from to windward of you. Now is your opportunity to make big gains. A drop-gybe on a small to medium-size keelboat is the best manoeuvre, where you’re coming in on starboard below the bulk of the fleet, dropping the kite on starboard side and gybing at the mark then rounding up tight and in the high lane as you exit the mark on to the new windward leg.

Use the current

Current can and will have an enormous effect on the way you approach the leeward mark. When you’re punching against a current that’s flowing upwind, be very cautious about dropping the kite too soon. In anything but strong wind, you can be dropping as you’re turning up around the mark. Don’t allow yourself to get caught in that situation where you’ve dropped early and you’re only just making ground against the current. This is the one time when it’s okay to drop a bit too late and tidy up the mess as you’re being carried upwind on the current conveyor belt.

On the other hand, if the current is carrying you downwind, err on the side of dropping the kite too soon and be absolutely ready to turn upwind as soon as the bow passes the mark. Even if there’s only the tiniest gap between the mark and the boat ahead or on the outside of you, go for the gap! When the current is taking you downwind, once you’re level with the mark, that gap will always open up for you. So don’t be shy, take it.

Executing your exit strategy should set you up well for the next leg. Photo: Sailing energy / World Sailing

Exit strategy

When you have a choice of gate marks to go around, don’t necessarily be tempted by a biased gate and simply go for the shortest distance every time. A biased gate should be just one minor factor in a number of considerations. The main thing is to give yourself the best chance of a clear lane out to the favoured side of the course.

So if you know it’s a ‘go left’ course on the upwind legs, most of the fleet will be turning right through the gate and sheeting in on starboard. Rather than fighting for clear air in that long line of boats, a good alternative can be to go around the left-hand mark and tack immediately, or as soon as possible, on to starboard after completing the rounding. Be prepared to put up with some short-term traffic and congestion if it ends up giving you a clean lane in the right direction for the next leg.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips for leeward mark roundings appeared first on Yachting World.

Years of short-course racing in small keelboats in fleet race and match race competitions had made Annie Lush very good at downwind VMG sailing. But when she started offshore racing, she found herself sailing across the wind: the forgotten art and science of reaching!

“For me, that was the biggest shocker. Going from Olympic sailing to ocean sailing was not so much the difference between inshore versus offshore. Okay, so it takes a while getting used to not sleeping much. But more than that, it was the sudden realisation that everything I’d learned for 10 years was not that relevant to offshore where you spend a lot of your time trying to sail the boat as fast as possible, mostly on some kind of reaching angle.

“When you’re racing around the world, you’re trying to go as close to your fastest angle. So you want to reach whenever you can, you never want to sail VMG if you can avoid it. For me it was about learning completely new ways to set up the boat for top reaching speed.”

Here are Annie’s five expert tips for helping you hit optimum speeds with the wind on your beam.

Go extreme

When you’re beam reaching and struggling to manage the power in the rig, go extreme on all your settings. If you’re reaching along in 25 knots, that’s pretty extreme conditions for any kind of boat. So extreme situations demand extreme measures and going to the extreme of your settings.

It’s easy to think you just pull on the Cunningham a little bit more than usual. Don’t! Pull it on as hard as it will go, pull on as much backstay as you can, don’t be afraid to go to the end of your controls because that’s what they’re there for.

As for crew weight, most boats want the weight all the way aft and as far out as possible.

Reaching under big masthead asymmetric. 

Know your limits

Having talked about the extremes, there is a caveat. If you’re on the cusp of whether or not it’s possible to carry a spinnaker, or any kind of big headsail, remember to keep in mind the performance window that the sail was designed for.

Normally your sailmaker will give you a maximum apparent wind speed that the sail will tolerate. This is an important number to keep in mind because when you’re reaching, there’s a lot more stress on it. You might have a spinnaker that is fine for sailing downwind in 30 knots of true wind, but if you’re trying to suddenly sail 125° true wind angle, it might not be able to take it.

So you do need to know the design limits of your headsails, otherwise you’ll be blowing up your sails pretty quickly.

Balance the helm

What configuration of sail plan is going to work best on a reach? The overriding goal should be to achieve good balance on the helm so that the rudder isn’t overloaded. You want the boat to be able to track in a straight line.

For a reach, chances are you’ve got more sail up in front of the mast, which means the mainsail might be flapping a lot as you try to lose the power. If your main is flapping all the time you might as well put a reef in it.

Article continues below

Helming downwind: Pip Hare’s top tips on how to maximise your speed

For me, helming downwind, particularly in big breeze, is one of the absolute joys in this world. It is a…

Beam seas: Pip Hare’s top tips on dealing with the most challenging conditions

Big beam seas can be the most challenging, unpleasant and dangerous of all conditions to sail in. Exposing the entire…

Practise your reefing procedure before racing and consider if it’s worth installing different systems to make it easier. Putting a reef in or out shouldn’t lose you too much time because you can keep the boat going in a straight line, whereas getting a spinnaker up or down requires a big bear-away while you make the sail change.

Also keep staysails in mind. Even though it’s more sail area, a staysail can really help with balance and keep the boat tracking straight.

Set targets

Before you get on to the reach, make sure everyone knows what the target angle will be, especially the trimmers because they need to set up the leads for the sheets. If you’re going to be flying a spinnaker or a gennaker on a really tight reach, you’ll want to set up with a lot of tackline tension.

Have someone calling the puffs, so that the helm is ready for a bear-away if needed and the trimmers can ease the sails slightly. You know everything is working nicely if no-one is having to adjust anything too radically.

Big eases of the headsail are exhausting when you have to constantly wind in the sheet again, and it’s a sign that the boat is out of balance.

Photo: Ainhoa Sanchez/VOR

Reduce sail early

If you see signs of a squall and think it’s about to strike, don’t wait for it to happen. Reduce sail early while it’s easy to do. If you have to get a big sail down in 30 knots of wind or more, it’s a big turn downwind and will be hazardous and time consuming.

These early calls will preserve energy and equipment. However, one trick from our days in the Yngling carries up to bigger boats nicely too. When you’re pushing for a gybe mark or a scenario where you’re not quite holding the spinnaker, strap the foot in by sheeting on as hard as possible. Now blow the kite halyard and the sail will flutter out to leeward above the surface. Once you’re able to bear away, just rehoist the halyard and off you go again!

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 expert tips for going fast while reaching appeared first on Yachting World.

What’s your goal for the season? Shirley Robertson apologises if her offshore preparation sounds ‘a bit Olympic sailorish’ but says defining your goal is key. “Whether you’re doing round-the-cans racing at the weekend or aiming at a Fastnet or a Round Britain and Ireland Race, you and the rest of the crew need to define a shared goal which you can all commit to.”

The other thing, if you haven’t already begun, is to start the offshore preparation today. Even with the boat out of the water in the yard there’s still plenty you can and should be doing in the pre-season.

Shirley is not one to leave anything to chance. Yachts are incredibly complex machines made up of thousands of components and every one needs checking.

“Go through every part of the boat and make sure you replace any blocks, fittings or ropes that look even remotely suspect. When you invest all that time and money into going offshore, your race result and your safety depend on the reliability of every item on board. The failure of even one component, such as your main halyard shackle, for instance, can be your race gone in a moment unless you’ve got the right spare ready.”

Shirley Robertson. Photo: Rick Tomlinson

While the following five tips are aimed specifically at offshore preparation for racing, most of Robertson’s advice is very applicable to any campaign: offshore, coastal, or round-the-cans.

Order key kit

Some bits of equipment are really hard to get hold of right now. Dee [Caffari] and I have been waiting for months for some of our equipment to be delivered. Whether it’s the pandemic, Brexit, or both, there are hold-ups in the supply chain.

Look at the Notice of Race for your big competitions of the year and find out what safety requirements there are, and what equipment you’re going to need. Order it today, or if you can’t find new you might have to get creative with how you source it. Talk to your local boat yard, fellow competitors, Facebook groups and even use eBay.

Walk the course

Taking an early look at the Notice of Race will also start you thinking about the course. What maps and/or routing software do you need? What are the key points on the race course?

Shirley Robertson and Henry Bomby (Swell, SunFast 3300) after finishing the Fastnet in 2nd in both IRC 3 and Two-Handed division.
Photo: Paul Wyeth/RORC

Seek out good information on the course – whether it’s a podcast, website, magazines or Google Earth, talk to people, do whatever you can to visualise it. Sailing with Henry [Bomby] last year in the Fastnet, he was brilliant as he’d done the race before. He had broken the race down into stages. When we got to the Needles, for example, he’d ask: “What are we looking for? What do we think is likely to happen next?

What’s the next course angle?” Now is a great time to start getting your head in the game and think about the details that will be vital in the thick of the action.

Article continue below

Create cheat sheets

As an offshore race progresses you’ll get more and more tired. It gets harder to make clear decisions, which is why you’ll thank yourself if you’ve been building up cheat sheets for different scenarios.

Before you’re about to do a difficult manoeuvre, or whatever you’re about to change on board, a cheat sheet will help you do the right things in the right order, even when you’re tired. Sometimes a cheat sheet can be useful to help you change focus, to make you realise you need to stop thinking about speed for a moment and think about navigation and the bigger picture on the race course.

The other side of planning is practising your ‘what if’ scenarios. What if you break a sail, break the boom, or there’s a man overboard? The ideal is to practise all these scenarios but sometimes there’s just not enough time in a season for that to be realistic. At the very least, when you’re sitting in the pub as a crew, talk through these scenarios so everyone has an idea of what to do.

Season’s first sail

The first time you get back on the water is always exciting, but be realistic about what you want to achieve. The most important thing for your offshore preparation is to build up the job list. The boat might not have sailed for six months, you might have done a bit of maintenance or replaced some gear, maybe some new ropes might not be the right length or need some calibration marks. Use the first sail for a low-stress shakedown. I always have a wet notes book in my pocket, and I’m constantly adding to it. Hopefully over the course of the season the items on that list will get shorter and less important as you tick off the jobs.

Sailing at night

The job list will get even longer when you go for your first night sail. Do this as early as possible in the season because it’ll reveal all kinds of things you hadn’t anticipated. How much light do you want while you’re sailing? Have you got enough pockets in the cockpit for tidying up halyards, sheets, winch handles etc? It can be hard to tell one colour of rope apart from another in the dark, so night sailing will really test your systems and organisation on board.

What kind of food are you going to have ready for a rough night? If you don’t want to risk even boiling water for a freeze-dried meal, consider the new self-heating meals.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post 5 Expert Tips: Offshore Preparation appeared first on Yachting World.