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.

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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.

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

Time in a boatyard rarely goes exactly to plan. Investigate beyond where you usually look and you’ll almost always uncover work that wasn’t expected. The trick is to turn that disruption into long-term value — tackling hidden jobs head-on and using time out of the water as an investment.

The old rule of thumb still applies: buy well but only buy once. With a clear game plan and good guidance futureproofing can be one of the smartest refit strategies there is.

Old, but far from out

To futureproof thoroughly, you need a good sounding board of expertise, like David Gabriel, the refit manager for Rustler Yachts. The traditional brand is perhaps still most closely associated with its 36; a classic, long-keeled cruising yacht that counts Princess Anne as a former owner.

HRH now sails a much more modern Rustler 44, but refits of the 36 remain regular work for Gabriel. He explains what updating an older yacht for the long haul can look like.

“The 36 refit we’ve got underway at the moment is designed to give her maybe a couple of decades before she needs another major overhaul. It’s very much an investment for the owner setting her up for a long sailing future. She’ll be a much more modern yacht in terms of technology than anyone could have imagined when she was launched.

Spending money below the waterline might not often be seen, but is one of the first steps to futureproofing your yacht. Photo: Rustler Yachts

Forward-looking sonar, a hot water-based heating system instead of hot air, and completely new plumbing and electrics will make her feel new again,” explains Gabriel.

Surprisingly the original rig of the 1990s yacht was judged so good that it’s been given a clean bill of health — not in need of replacement for up to a decade.

So what makes an older design worth this level of commitment over a cheaper new production build? “It’s a pattern we’re seeing, including with other quality brands we refit,” says Gabriel. “It lowers the price threshold to own a really solid yacht at a time when raw material costs are pushing new prices up for everyone. While it’s not the same as commissioning a new Rustler, it’s a great way to enjoy a genuinely high-quality yacht.”

Jobs easily missed

Nathan Bone Yachts has been refitting yachts in Plymouth for over 50 years, seeing trends come and go, but also how getting the fundamentals right can set a yacht up for a long life with only routine maintenance needed. “Good futureproofing is about dealing with the jobs that are hard to reach, always with safety first in mind,” Bone says.

But which jobs to tackle, and in what order? “Ideally, we shape the work by talking a lot to the owner, building a solid relationship before we even start, and making a plan that will serve them well for years.

Like a classic car, even if the yacht isn’t that old, you always find more once you open her up. We’ll usually take a proper look at the keel, for example. It might be tempting to focus on the looks first, but the question should always be ‘What’s caused it to look like that?’ Often there’s something deeper going on.

Coachroof refurbishment and repainting. Photo: Rustler Yachts

“The deck is always a big consideration. We restore teak wood when we can and enjoy doing it, but we also replace decks completely with teak or modern alternatives. That’s a major job – and one people often kid themselves about, thinking the deck has more life in it than it really does. If you can see the screws, it’s usually past it.

Good teak is wonderful, of course, but synthetic options can be excellent too — it depends on the yacht and the owner,” Bone explains.

So are things ‘not like they used to be’, or do improvements in terms of materials and fittings mean they last longer? “It’s a mix. Acrylic hull paints have improved massively and last a long time. Coppercoat, if applied correctly, can last 12 years. PropSpeed is a fantastic product that improves economy and speed and just wasn’t available before,” says Bone.

“We’d also always recommend spending on quality deck gear — that’s an area where the metal quality from some makers has definitely dropped.”

Article continues below…

A second hand yacht that holds its value? Here’s how to get one

Whisper it quietly, but yachts, and perhaps their owners too, quite often have an archetype. A well-worn Amel Super Maramu…

What’s hidden beneath

Neil Desty of Desty Marine is well known in the UK yachting industry as a go-to yard by marine insurance companies, as well as for contracts with major UK yachtbuilders. He suggests that everything under the waterline is the first thing to consider when looking to futureproof. “Spending money on what you don’t see in the water isn’t often so appealing to an owner but it’s absolutely fundamental.

“Spending money here is generally spending money you won’t spend again for a long time, so, if you change a seacock, consider changing all of them, and, why would you change a seacock and not change the hose coming off of it? It just makes sense.”

When it comes to the hull itself, Desty notes there is often reluctance to spend there too. “If we’re taking the keel off, spend a little extra for some good quality washers, a good quality plate, and generally do things properly. We do a lot of osmosis treatment and owners are often tempted to save a bit by not putting in a good layer of epoxy to give it a good waterproof layer and seal off the laminate.”

Watertight decks are vital, whether real wood or synthetic alternatives. Photo: Rustler Yachts

Good ingredients

In an age where the yachting industry has become increasingly environmentally conscious, buying well-made yacht components might be one of the best things we can do to minimise impact on the environment, simply by making things last longer.

When it comes to deck fittings, poor quality metal has found its way onto many yachts over the past decade, often the result of cheaper raw materials from China and rising prices closer to home.

Some marine manufacturers are making a point of buying the best quality they can, explaining to customers why their product costs more instead of trying to compete on price. Alex Blair, UK sales manager for Ultra Anchors, explains: “We only occasionally get objections to our anchors, and it’s always about price. But once we explain, it makes sense.

We use Swedish 316 steel for Ultra anchors — it’s the best you can buy — and that lets us offer a genuine lifetime warranty on the anchor and five years on the swivels.

“Stainless steel chain costs more than galvanised, but for good reason, so we’ve taken the same approach there too. Long-term sailors know their anchor is their insurance policy, and it’s something you absolutely have to get right.”

Anything on deck will be exposed to UV. Plastic fittings are particularly vulnerable, and those made with UV-stabilised materials will last much longer. Investing in proper covers can also dramatically extend the life of deck components.

Hull and keel integrity is fundamental to a yacht’s long term future. Photo: Will Bruton

Buying Smarter for Longer

Some yacht kit has a surprisingly short shelf life, while other gear — if you choose carefully — can be fitted once and forgotten about for decades.

Batteries

Lead-acid or AGM types are usually good for three to five years before sulphation sets in, while a well-managed LiFePO₄ lithium bank will still be cycling happily after 10-15 years.

Standing rigging

Stainless steel wire is typically changed on a 7-10 year schedule, often at an insurer’s insistence. Modern Dyneema (the creep-resistant DM20 variety) can run for a decade or more if it’s properly jacketed and protected from UV.

Sails

Plain Dacron will last 7-10 years of moderate seasonal use, but a Hydranet or Dyneema-reinforced cloth can add several seasons – sometimes 12-15 years – before shape loss forces a replacement.

When a boat is out of the water there’s no point in not checking and replacing sacrificial anodes. Photo: Will Bruton

Anchor chain

Galvanised anchor chain typically needs replacement after 5-10 years of hard service, but stainless steel chain can often last more than 20.

Seacocks

Brass seacocks may dezincify in as little as five years, while bronze or Marelon valves often see out the life of the boat.

Hardware

Deck hardware follows the same pattern. Cheap plastic-sheaved blocks will wear and seize quickly, whereas a bronze or stainless winch, kept greased and maintained, is an investment.

Electronics

Magnetron radars are prone to fade after 5-7 years, whereas solid-state Doppler sets don’t have these issues.

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.

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The post How to futureproof your yacht: Essential refit jobs for your time in the boatyard appeared first on Yachting World.

Lawrence Herbert loves his offshore racing but he and the Corazon crew are campaigning their J/133 on a tight budget. Necessity being the mother of invention, the 28-year-old and the rest of his 20-something crew have come up with some ingenious cost-saving approaches with minimal or zero compromise to performance.

Herbert learned a lot about boat maintenance and reliability in the Caribbean where he worked for a few seasons on race boats including the J-Class yacht Lionheart. This hard-earned knowledge has equipped him well to run much of his own maintenance programme rather than paying others to do the work.

Having been forced to retire from the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race due to an injury to a crewmember not long after a stormy start in the Solent, for 2025 Herbert was determined to leave no stone unturned in his quest to complete his first Fastnet.

“I must admit there were one or two stones still unturned before the start, and one was not replacing the main halyard. When I heard a big bang, my heart sank as I immediately looked skywards,” he recalls.

“Fortunately it was the Cunningham pinging accidentally out of its cleat, so no harm done. But mostly we worked hard to make sure Corazon was ready for anything, even if it ended up mostly being a light to medium airs race this year.”

Here are five of Herbert’s best tips for bulletproofing your boat on a budget.

Faring a keel takes time so plan to sort big jobs like this well ahead of key races

Plan your schedule

Identify your next important race and build your preparation schedule back from there. In IRC you want to optimise your rating as much as possible for the route. You need to know when the rating deadline is for your race and make sure you get a rating slot as late as possible before that. For the Fastnet we had our sails re-measured two weeks before the start.

Sails shrink over time, and just by re-measuring a headsail we got an improvement to Corazon’s rating. Get all the big structural jobs out of the way during the winter when you’re not likely to be sailing so much. Do your hull and keel inspection super early in the year.

We did ours in January and had our rudder bearings replaced at the same time, which took longer than expected. Jobs like fairing the keel and the hull – all these things take time.

If you’re not sailing much for a few months, mouse all the control lines, sheets and halyards out and keep a bare deck while the boat isn’t being used. Even in the winter you’d be amazed how much UV damage can degrade lines. So take them home, put them through the washing machine with a small amount of fabric softener and vinegar (not soap!), and they’ll come out almost as good as new.

Winch maintenance

Elsa Swetenham is our winch maintenance expert on Corazon. She serviced our winches at the start of the year and again just before the Fastnet. For the early-season winch maintenance you want to put quite a bit of grease in there because it’s going to be there for a few months.

The downside of more grease is how much it slows down the winches, so unless you’re doing a really long passage like a transatlantic, for your pre-race winch maintenance you want to put in less grease. This means the winches will spin quicker, everything will run more easily, and all those small gains add up to a better performance on the race course.

Second-hand sails

If you’re mostly day racing on windward-leeward courses, your sail inventory is fairly well defined. But for a big offshore race like the Fastnet you have to be ready for pretty much all conditions and every angle. It could be blowing 33 knots at the start and three knots at the finish.

We can’t afford to buy new for Corazon, so we’re always keeping an eye out for second-hand sails. There aren’t many J/133s around, so we’re looking for sails that are a similar size but might require a bit of recutting.

Article continues below…

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

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Find solutions

It can get wet down below and the last thing you want is for your cushions to get soggy. We could have paid a fortune for properly waterproof cushions, but instead we thought, why not get some waterproof bed sheets like they use in a care home?

So we bought a set online, put them over the top of the bunks and any water that comes down the hatch runs straight off and into the bilge. If you’re coming off watch you can jump into bed without anything getting soggy.

Budget electronics

We bought a Starlink satellite internet unit so we could download GRIB files and weather updates, as well as keep friends and family updated with our adventures out at sea. We didn’t have time to mount it properly so we ran the Starlink off the battery from a power drill. We’d get it out once every six hours for GRIB file updates and keep it running for just 15 minutes at a time.

We’ve worked hard to keep everything as simple and as low-power as possible. We used to have a clunky old chartplotter down below, so we stripped that out and now we have a fanless mini PC which has a really low power draw and integrates the B&G system with Expedition for weather routing software. Everywhere we can, we’re trying to make the boat as light and fast as possible – and save as much money as we can.

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 run a succesful offshore campaign on a budget appeared first on Yachting World.

Visit any of the major boat shows with a view to placing an order and a budget of around £100,000 to £250,000 will put you in the production-built yacht market, perhaps up to around 40ft at a stretch. It won’t buy you even the smallest Hallberg-Rassy new. But take the same amount into the used market and a lot of options open up if you’re prepared to buy an older yacht.

Buying a yacht for £100,000-£250,000: A tricky price point?

Buying a yacht is not without complications. It can be hard to predict what will need to be spent, even after having a survey done. Balancing purchase budget and a fund for works that are needed is very important.

“The big advantage of buying an older yacht is that you are trading depreciation, which is an upfront cost, for the cost of refit/upgrade, which is a cost that you can manage and decide when and how to spend,” explains broker Alex Grabau.

Adapting a pre-loved boat for family cruising can get you more for your money. Photo: Monday Never

“As depreciation is often no longer a notable factor with older boats, an owner must also then understand and accept that such costs of refit/upgrade may then become their ‘cost of ownership’ – with not all of it recoverable upon subsequent resale.”

When it comes to saving money, Grabau says it’s clear what almost everyone looks for first.

“The one everyone wants to buy will be the older boat (so little or no depreciation) where an owner has just refitted or upgraded her for a planned adventure which has either been completed quickly (with little wear or degradation to the equipment), or where the plans have been cancelled.

“The owner will almost certainly see a percentage of their refit investment written off, making the boat a fantastic opportunity for a buyer looking to save some money and, perhaps most importantly, time,” he adds.

Get covered

Once purchased, next steps are likely to mean rectifying any serious faults or problems highlighted by the survey. “The only aspects which are going to stop you heading off immediately relate to safety, reliability and, linked to that, the stipulations of your insurer,” adds Grabau.

“This will usually mean inspection – or in some cases replacement – of standing rigging if older than 10 years, replacement of saildrive diaphragms (if fitted) if over seven years old, thorough servicing of mechanical systems, and either servicing, replacement or upgrade of safety equipment.

The first post-refit cruise will always be special. Photo: Living With The Tide

“Most other refit items can be attended to immediately, or pushed further down the road if budgets don’t immediately allow.”

Marine insurance companies regularly deal with customers about to buy a yacht that they have plans to improve. Understanding whether the yacht is fundamentally safe is the primary concern of an insurance broker, explains Andy Crick, a director at Pantaenius UK.

“When a customer gets in touch about a yacht they want to insure we take a holistic approach; every yacht really is different. As a broker it is important to consider the fundamentals. Is it likely to catch fire? Is it likely to sink? Is the rig likely to come down?

Rescuing another family mid-Atlantic made safety a priority for Will and Cat when seeking their next yacht. Photo: Monday Never

“We regularly insure yachts that have a passage to make to where they are going to have work done, but we need to ensure the yacht is safe for that delivery passage.

“One prospective yacht may need very little work done, having benefitted from a proactive and comprehensive maintenance schedule in prior ownership. Whereas a similar yacht out of the same yard at the time of build may have had a harder life, been cared for less sympathetically over the years and might require extensive work in a number of areas,” says Crick.

What to look for: key considerations by yacht insurance brokers when buying a pre-owned yacht:
■ Type and age of yacht and material of construction
■ Structural integrity of the hull. Has the vessel suffered damage? Have any past repairs been completed properly?
■ Condition of the hull-to-keel joint and age and condition of keel bolts (where relevant)
■ Seacocks and through-hull fittings. What type are they? How old are they? What is their condition? Are all below-the-waterline hoses secure and double clipped?
■ What are the bilge pumping arrangements?
■ Age and condition of stern seals or sail drive seals
■ Rig; type, age, condition, last service, inspection or replacement?
■ Onboard electronics: type and condition of the batteries, condition of the wiring, RCD protection?
■ Onboard gas system (if any), including hoses, pipes, regulator and safe storage of gas bottles. When was the gas system last professionally inspected and serviced?
■ Fire prevention measures and onboard firefighting equipment
■ Condition of the rudder and steering system
■ Main engine and gearbox condition and maintenance
■ Operation of navigation equipment
■ Lifesaving apparatus.

Article continues below…

Taking ownership: Buying a yacht abroad

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We did it

Catherine and Will Marks bought their 1995 Contest 46 Paradox. When it came to finding their second yacht, Will and Catherine Marks had experienced enough sailing to shape a list of features that quickly struggled to tally up with their budget.

Having previously owned a production-built boat, they were determined to buy a yacht that was well built and set up for long term cruising. A little more knowledge, however, had given them a long list of criteria.

Generous aft cabin makes the Contest 46 very comfortable for living aboard. Photo: Monday Never

“We backed ourselves into a corner with the list we’d come up with.”

An incident while crewing on a Discovery 67 crossing the Atlantic had made a deep impression on the couple a few years before. The video they made of it rescuing a family on a yacht that had lost its rudder now has two million views on YouTube (Monday Never).

“It was an experience we reflected on a lot and certainly had a massive influence on our own decisions afterwards,” explains Will. The couple now have a young child of their own and have been afloat as a family for three years.

Paradox proved a great family yacht. Photo: Monday Never

“We looked at a lot of boats that met, or were very close to meeting, all of our criteria. Passports, Hylas, Kelly Petersons – I think we looked at over 20 yachts. Eventually we found the Contest – not a particularly well-known yacht in the US, but a boat with a pedigree.

“Finding a quality boat in our price range meant we were often in a bracket where the yacht hadn’t been well looked after, we realised that,” explains Will.

“Our surveyor was great, but he gave us over 110 points to attend to. A handful were urgent. When lockdown hit, we went into the deep end working on the boat. It was then that things emerged the survey couldn’t be expected to pick up, like leaks from deck hatches.”

The couple embarked on a program of works to get the boat how they wanted her. “All in all we invested around $100,000, which we knew we wouldn’t get back, but it put the boat in the right place for what we wanted to do.”

When it came to moving back ashore and selling the yacht earlier this month, Will and Catherine found themselves inundated with offers. “Brokers were quite negative when we made initial enquiries about listing, but we had loads of interest straight away.”

Matt Donald and Paige Grogan have a Contest 40S

Matt and Paige first owned a Contest 40, before trying classic yacht ownership, then deciding to come back to GRP. While they looked at other brands, in the end, they came back to one they were familiar with, choosing a slightly different variant of the Contest 40 they’d owned before.

Matt and Paige livea board with their dog Lancer. Photo: Living With The Tide

“We offered well under the asking price knowing she needed work. We then spent a month and a half in Mayflower Marina, Plymouth, renewing the electrics, heating, refrigeration and rigging. The survey was a good guide to what we really needed to do,” explains Matt.

“This Contest actually has slightly less stowage due to how the water tank is fitted, but we think she has a slightly faster turn of speed. We owned an overland truck for a while as well and had sailed our previous Contest to the Caribbean and back.

“By the time we bought her we’d really figured out what we needed in terms of living comfortably afloat. Paige is a freelance graphic designer, so getting the electrics set up to run laptops all day was important.

“The combination of what she offers in terms of space, being good to sail and her build quality is really what made us buy another Contest,” explains Matt.

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 Buying a yacht for £100,000-£250,000: Tips and tricks 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…

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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.

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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

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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.

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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…

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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….

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The post 5 Expert Tips: Your complete guide to mainsail trimming 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.

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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….

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The post How to use deck chutes for improved spinnaker handling 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…

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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.

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

Dee Caffari knows the importance of sleep to any offshore sailor, whether you’re racing solo, double-handed or fully-crewed. “Most sailors don’t understand how the lack of sleep can affect your performance and your ability to make decisions,” she says. “If people increased their awareness of the topic they’d be much better at it.”

Dee says it was skippering a team of amateurs on the Global Challenge that really opened her eyes to how differently we all deal with sleep deprivation. “Some people are natural at it, some people really struggle. And as conditions change, so does people’s ability to sleep or not sleep. And then I went from that environment, leading a team, to being on my own.

“My biggest transition between my ‘wrong way round’ circumnavigation and the Vendée Globe was the psychology, learning about myself and how to get the best out of myself. Understanding how hydration, my food intake and my sleep, all affected my ability to make a decision.

“It can be something as simple as getting a weather forecast and looking at the routing, and not really understanding what the options are. Then, after a 20 minute sleep and waking up, looking at the routing again and the answer being blatantly obvious.”

Here are Dee’s five most important tips for fitting a good sleep into your offshore routine.

Don’t be a martyr

In our enthusiasm for wanting to look keen and be a good team player there’s a common tendency for sailors to say: “Oh, no, I’m fine. I don’t need sleep.” But actually, if you’re on your off-watch, your job is to sleep. It might be to eat and drink and fix something as well, but your priority is to get your share of sleep. You never know when your next chance to rest is going to arrive, so get sleep while you can.

Don’t think you’re doing everyone a favour by staying on deck because further down the line you’ll be in worse shape, and then you’ll be no good to anybody.

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Get in a routine

It’s important to know when to push through and when to stick to a watch pattern. If you’re only expecting to be at sea for three days or less, most people can manage with minimal sleep. You can get by with cat naps, and without being in a routine. But once you go beyond three days you need a routine and day one is critical.

Let’s say you’re doing the Fastnet Race and you’ve just battled your way out of the Solent in 30 knots, and it’s been full on and you’re out the other side. Then you start the long beat to windward and everyone’s still quite excited. But this is the moment when the people on the first off-watch need to get their heads down. Because you still want that level of enthusiasm and focus at midnight or three in the morning, and to carry on through to the end of the race. It’s really hard to get that initial group to go off-watch, but it’s essential they do.

How much is enough?

For me, my best sleep comes just before it gets light in the morning. So I like the early hours and if I can be off-watch in that time it makes me much more productive. Of course you don’t always get the choice to sleep when you want and everyone is different.

When I was sailing solo I used to grab cat naps of 10 to 20 minutes, and a long sleep for me was an hour and a half. I became conditioned to sleeping while listening to the sounds of the boat. If one of the sounds is wrong, you’ve got to get up and do something about it.

It’s important to get as much sleep as possible when off-watch

If you’re sailing with other people, be honest and tell each other what you need to function at your best. Conversations might include: “How long have we got on this leg? This is at least six hours, right? I just need to get my head down for two hours. If you can give me a solid sleep now, then I’ll be alright later.”

Take earphones

I like listening to the noise of the boat because I can anticipate what’s coming. But now the IMOCAs are up on foils, the sailors are saying they can’t sleep or even function without noise-cancelling headphones. It allows the sailor to switch off, otherwise it’s living in this torture of constant white noise. That means you have to really trust all the alarms you’ve got set on your instruments so you can react quickly, because you’re not hearing the sounds of the boat.

But on fully-crewed boats, just work out what works for you. Some people like to plug in their earphones so they can mentally switch off, as well as tune out someone else’s loud snoring.

When to wake your co-skipper

Whether you’re racing or cruising double-handed, you need to work out a system between you. You have to look at when and where the critical moments of the passage are likely to be coming up. For example, for a sail change, a manoeuvre or approaching a headland, you know you’re both going to need to be awake. So your downtime is when you’re straight line sailing.

Once the boat is settled and there’s not much to do, one of you can get your head down. You just need to agree that actually waking somebody up is fine. Anything that can be done more efficiently with two of you, that’s when it’s okay to wake up the other person.

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.

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The post How sailors plan sleep routines at sea: An expert guide 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?

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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.

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Boats may have nine lives, but a sailor is not supposed to have nine fingers. Every year, however, we hear of instances of crushed hands, lost fingers, and major damage from poor line handling techniques. Technological advances have greatly reduced the amount of sail and line handling required of today’s sailors.

Sail areas are increasingly concentrated in a few, large sails, rather than broken up into several smaller ones. Hydraulic furlers, asymmetric spinnakers, in-mast reefing and self-tacking headsails all mean that we need less rope to manage our sails.

If you’re in a hurry, running your hand along the length of a line can help avoid kinks. Photo: 59° North Sailing

In fact, rope is notable in its absence from the sleek cockpits of new yachts, which can often seem like a lines-free area.

The risk of this is that out of sight can mean out of mind and, while the amount of line handling on modern yachts has decreased, the loads on those remaining lines has not.

Line handling is an essential skill for keeping yourself, and others, safe. As skippers, it’s something we should be talking about more often, especially whenever we have novice crew on board.

I asked other sailors for their thoughts and was surprised by the strength of their responses: everyone had a story to tell.

Respecting the loads

“A loaded line”, the former skipper of the 125ft Fife Mariquita, Jim Thom told me, “is like a loaded gun. They’re silent until they go off.”

It reminded me of an incident aboard an 80ft maxi I’d once worked on as a deckhand. The genoa sheet blew without warning, and it did, indeed, sound as though we were under fire.

Ensuring you don’t raise the line above winch level is key to preventing the line from spinning off. Photo: Yachting World

The sail flogged violently until we tacked and took on the other sheet. Fortunately, no one was on the leeward side deck at the time.

The speed and ferocity with which it happened have stayed with me and to this day I’m never comfortable with anyone standing near loaded lines.

Understand the power when line handling

A winch magnifies your effort by whatever ratio they’re designed for.

A modest 50:1 winch will output 1,250kg to the line for the 25kg you (or the batteries) apply to it.

That’s about the same as the weight of a VW Golf which, if it was actually attached to the other end of your halyard rather than the mainsail, would certainly focus the mind.

Novice crew won’t know how much pressure to apply to a winch and will need supervision.

experienced sailors transitioning to larger boats may not understand the loads involved and overexuberance with a winch can prove catastrophic.

One cruising sailor, who had decided to charter a larger than normal yacht in the Med, applied their beginning of holiday joie-de-vivre to a halyard winch and brought the mast down, somewhat curtailing their charter.

Winch technique

Winch handling technique needs to be revisited as the size of yacht you are sailing increases. Inexperienced crew need detailed winch briefings and demonstrations.

Standing sideways onto a winch with hands in a closed fist, little finger towards the load, gives the strongest stance. Three turns should be sufficient for pulling in by hand, anymore and you risk getting a riding turn.

However, extra turns are needed before tensioning it. A common mistake is to only use three turns and then go straight to the self-tailer.

Filling the winch drum with four or five turns is a critical moment when accidents can happen – keep hands well away. Photo: Rachel Sprot

While the self-tailer may grip the line enough to apply considerable load to the line, at some point it may need easing and will need to be taken out of the self tailer, with insufficient turns on the drum to manage the now considerable load.

Filling up the drum with four or five turns is a critical moment when accidents can happen. Crew should be briefed to slide their hands down the line, keeping them a safe distance away from the drum as they do so.

Keeping hands well back from the winch when line handling gives more thinking time if it does slip. Working at winch height, and not raising the line above winch level, is key to preventing the line from spinning off.

Handling a loaded winch with insufficient turns is dangerous.

Those lines not being used can then be coiled neatly on the guardwires. Photo: Rachel Sprot

One skipper of a 70ft yacht reported losing their hearing for a week after they were hit by a flogging jib sheet. They’d stepped in when a novice crewmember, who had only applied two turns around the drum, was struggling to keep control of the line.

Having long tails on the headsail sheets means that if they are flogging an extra turn can be lassoed on without getting too close to the winch. Headsail sheets which are only just long enough for normal operation, will be too short to do this safely.

Deck gear

Lines are only as strong as the things they’re attached to. On a boat which is working hard there’s nearly always something working loose, or seizing up.

Doing a deck walk and keeping a simple set of tools handy to rectify any defects, such as seizing a shackle or tightening up a car assembly, are easy to do and may prevent a more serious failure.

Knowing what lies underneath your deck fittings is also important: are there substantial backing plates, or just a few penny washers?

Gear failure is often preventable if signs of fatigue are identified early on, and the equipment is used as it was intended.

Flaking a line

As boats get larger the lines don’t just become thicker, they also get longer. The longer the line the more difficult it is to work with.

your hand along its entire length will help take out any kinks, and if you’re in a hurry, can be just as effective as flaking it into a perfect figure of eight (though don’t say that out loud in St Tropez!).

Flaking a braided line into a figure of eight will help prevent kinks that could hinder line handling. Photo: Rachel Sprot

Stopper knots

As the line diameter increases, the figure of eight becomes less effective as a stopper knot: they shake loose too easily. An Admiralty Stopper knot is more secure.

Danger zones

Be aware of apex zones, such as a preventer line doubling back around a block on the foredeck. If the block failed, anyone standing in the apex could be seriously injured.

Ideally, we should avoid creating an apex in the first place, especially if they rely on a single component like a block. It’s better to run a preventer through the fairlead, or around a bow cleat, in addition to any blocks.

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Let go

When line handling becomes a tug of war it’s time to let go.

Amy Graydon, first mate of a sail training vessel, explicitly teaches that ‘let go’ means open your hands and drop the rope after a crewmember suffered a rope burn from trying to hold a headsail sheet which didn’t have enough turns around the winch.

Tidy up

Loose lines on deck are dangerous: they’re a trip hazard, won’t run freely when they need to be eased, or run too freely and end up in the water.

A messy deck disguises hazards such as a bight of rope, and will make it harder for crew who are quite literally learning the ropes, to see what’s going on.

A thumb knot in the block secures lines not currently in use. Photo: Rachel Sprot

The tails of lines in use should be coiled around the winch they’re associated with or flaked neatly beside them. Lines which aren’t in use, such as spinnaker sheets, can be coiled on the guardwires and secured with a thumb knot in the block.

And without going into full Marie Kondo mode, there’s something very satisfying about a row of well-stowed halyards!

Stay calm

Line handling often occurs at high pressure moments: coming alongside, spinnaker hoists, a sudden tack. These are all times when the skipper might be feeling stressed, and it transfers to the crew. Take your time for manoeuvres and make time for line handling.

Calm leadership will prevent people from making mistakes and enable them to perform at their best.

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The post An expert guide to safe line handling at sea 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.

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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.

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

According to Andy Beadsworth, when you’re helming the boat you’re not so much steering as ‘applying load to the tiller’. “Sometimes the boat heels over and the load comes on to the tiller or wheel, but you want to keep going in a straight line. So as the helmsman you have to resist the load coming on if you want to keep the boat tracking in a straight line, or sometimes you go with the load and let it help you turn the boat, either luffing or bearing away, depending on your aims at the time.”

The bigger the boat, the bigger the loads, and the more the steering comes down to the efforts of the entire team, where the helmsman is the conductor who has the final say over the music that the orchestra is playing. Here are five of Andy’s best tips on the finer points of accurate, race-winning steering technique:

Don’t fight the boat

Accurate steering is mostly dependent on achieving the correct balance of the boat achieved through boat heel and sail trim. The thing I’ve learned from steering J-Class boats like Velsheda is you’ve got to allow the boat to go in the direction you want it to go in and stop it going in the direction you don’t want it to go.

Find your easy speed

One of the most important things is to have ‘easy speed’. It’s not necessarily your ultimate speed that’s important. Wherever possible, it needs to be easy, easy speed when you’re racing.

When you’re sailing with flat sails with a tight leech, the groove is very, very narrow. We all know that full and twisted setups have got a wide groove and if you’ve got the space to be able to sail like that it’s a much less stressful mode to operate in. When you’re racing against 50 other boats on a busy race track, you need to be able to pull the sails in and for the boat to go fast straight away. With hard and tight leeches, everything is quite precise and demanding. I find when we do well it’s when we’ve got ‘easy speed’ when the boat just wants to go.

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Steering to change

Quite often in the race it’s not really about going fast, it’s about sailing modes – being able to go fast in lifts towards the next header, or position your boat against another slightly differently just by changing the mode you’re sailing rather than sailing as fast as you can all the time.

When you’re steering through changing conditions, whether it’s going from gust to a lull or vice versa, or sailing through a header or a lift, this is when teamwork is tested the most. A number of things need to happen in unison to steer the boat accurately through a change of pressure or angle.

One of the most difficult scenarios is the header because as the boat heads and the mast starts to come upright you apply some rudder angle, and you can feel a load going on. Sometimes the boat starts to accelerate again and other times it doesn’t. So you’re tempted into applying more load… and then a bit more, now you’re up to 5° rudder angle but you’re not seeing the acceleration. Then you call to the mainsail trimmer to burp the mainsheet the tiniest amount, so he does and the boat picks up and accelerates again.

Of course you can force the boat if you want, but you’re putting a huge amount of drag on the boat to achieve it. As a helmsman and a trimming team you’re working to keep the whole system in balance.

Good communication between skipper and trimmer is vital. Photo: Nico Martinez / RC44

Use all your senses

Learning to use all your senses is a great way of improving your steering. Exercises like steering blindfold or closing your eyes for a few seconds is a great way of tuning into the other cues the boat is giving you – the wind in your face or the sound of the boat through the water, feeling the heel of the boat through your feet and so on.

Telltales on the jib are incredibly useful tools, but in light airs they can be unreliable, and in rain they can stick to the sail. I like to keep the jib luff tension as slack as possible, so I can see the pressure on the sailcloth. If your jib is hanked to the forestay, having small scallops between every hank can be a really good indicator for steering the boat accurately.

Think like a trimmer

To be able to do all the positions on the boat makes a massive difference because you understand the problems the rest of the crew live with through various situations. You can either expect your crew to do everything perfectly and just steer the boat how you want to steer it, or you can make it easy for them.

Sometimes you have to take the boat by the scruff of the neck and tell it what to do, but most of the time it’s about trying to keep the boat going fast and avoiding scrubbing off speed through overuse of the rudder.

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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.

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The post Top helming tips to keep your yacht balanced appeared first on Yachting World.

We hit a wave, the bow bouncing into the air. The roar reverberating from inside the covered cockpit intensifies and I look out of the bubble window to a wall of seemingly solid water rushing down the deck towards me. Medallia lurches, the water crashes into the window inches from my face then cascades down the open back of the cockpit, writes Pip Hare.

My fingers are curled around the edge of my carbon bucket seat. I need to ease the headsail, which I know will add some speed but the other side of the cockpit seems a long, treacherous journey away. I sit for a bit longer contemplating my moves while Medallia relentlessly thunders on.

Pip Hare finishing the 2020 Vendée Globe in 19th and 1st British skipper. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images

I spent my first few experiences sailing my new IMOCA in this sort of stunned state. The boat is incredible, it holds the course record for the Vendée Globe race, it is powerful – simple in some ways, complicated in others – and seemed like such a huge step up for a sailor like me. Sailing this fast is the most incredible experience but I wondered how long it would take for this speed and violent motion to become normal – or if it ever would.

It is not just the boat that has changed over the last year. I started my 2020 Vendée Globe race as a rank outsider in an old yacht, having pulled a campaign together with crowdfunding, a lot of hard graft, and support from friends and strangers alike. But now I find myself as skipper and CEO of a fully professional offshore racing team.

We employ 13 people across the whole business, our focus is on delivering elite sporting performance and a solid tangible return to our sponsors. I am an athlete, a business person, a figurehead and I have responsibilities that weigh much heavier on a sailor than navigating any Southern Ocean storm.

The transition to this new state has been rapid. I’ve had to learn along the way and at times the business has paralysed me in the same way the boat did on the first few sessions. But one of the great attributes we have as human beings is our ability to adapt. My ‘new normal’ is a million miles away from what life looked like in 2019.

Fast track foiling

The new Medallia 2 racing along on foils. Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The best part of my job is, of course, the sailing. I’m not embarrassed to say that although the boat we chose as our next IMOCA was exactly the boat that I wanted, the first few times I sailed it I was intimidated by its pedigree. You do not want to lose control in a 60ft boat with 550-plus square metres of sail.

The mechanics of sailing the new boat are reassuringly familiar and most definitely easier to manage than on Superbigou. All sails can be managed from the covered cockpit and a central pedestal. The mast track has locks to hold the head of the main in position on each reef point (no more trips forward to reef).

Above: launching the new foiling Medallia, formerly Bureau Vallée 2/Banque Populaire VIII. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The keel can be moved at the touch of a button and lines are positioned with corresponding halyards and tacks on opposite sides of the boat so winches can be loaded pre-manoeuvre and left. These details make a difference, and I quite quickly felt confident managing the boat on my own.

I got used to the foils in a ‘painting by numbers’ mode last year. Put them out above seven knots of boat speed and they will start to improve righting moment, allowing more power through the main. From 7 knots to about 18 knots of boat speed there is not that much difference in how the boat feels, it is just faster with the foils.

Above 20 knots of boat speed is when the magic happens. This is when the bow starts to lift out of the water and the boat becomes animal. I played around with this, following the tuning guide and having fun with the speed, but never felt I was getting the most out of the boat.

Medallia getting ready to launch. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

This season, with a new set of sails and having the confidence of a full and thorough refit, I worked for a couple of weeks with coaches to help me understand using my foils properly at speed. As with sailing a skiff, it is about keeping the bow up enough to clear the water, but not so much that you ‘wheelie’ or take off. This can be controlled with foil rake (we can rake them forwards up to 5° to lift off more) and fierce management of the ballast and sails stacking.

I’ve learned to feel the boat trim and when I need to lift the bow. Keel angle is also vital in this equation: above 20 knots of boat speed and the keel starts to provide negative righting moment. In simple terms it starts acting as a foil lifting the boat out of the water, so at high speeds the keel angle needs to be dropped to maintain control and for extra speed.

Keeping the bow up to clear the water –but not too much – is the key to extra speed with Medallia. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

Pip Hare’s full schedule

My race calendar for 2022 is busy. I have three solo races, and will be taking part in the Round Britain and Ireland Race with a full crew of five. The boat must be at the race village up to two weeks ahead of each solo event, and then there are deliveries to and from each start and finish.

This takes out nine weeks from 39 weeks on the water. I will be spending around five weeks racing. Then, so long as we have no major failures, I have reluctantly agreed to a roughly 60/40 custody share of the boat with my shore team. That leaves just 15 weeks to train.

Working with team technical director Joff Brown. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

Once again my performance goals are a steep, hard climb. My overall aim for this year is to learn to sail this boat to its full potential in its current configuration.

Medallia is a 2015 Verdier/VPLP design, it was the first generation of boats designed with foils (rather than have them retrofitted) and the only one of its generation which is still running on small foils. Foiling is a new experience for me, so my objectives for 2022 include learning how to sail well with the original foils. I will be changing to big ones in early 2023.

To fast track this I’ll be working with coaches – but even this is not simple. The IMOCA class is booming, and many people I might turn to for advice are already working with other teams or have projects of their own. This forced me to look outside the world of solo racing and begin working with coaches from fully crewed teams.

Training with Medallia in the Canary Islands. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

This, it transpired, has been a stroke of genius. Jack Bouttell and Ben Schwarz both raced around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race and are now on the Jules Verne crew for the maxi trimaran Spindrift. Having them on board has given me the opportunity to experience the ‘no excuses’ approach of the fully crewed world.

Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

We have worked on sail crossovers for my new sails, polars, trim books (a manual of sail settings, foil adjustment, stacking positions and much more for all possible conditions), instrument calibration, autopilot settings, and so much more. At times all I could do was watch as this well-oiled team of strong, younger men put my boat through its paces. But with each gear change I learned and questioned, and felt how my boat should be when it is fully arced up and raging.

I can’t sail exactly like them. I’m a 48-year-old woman, alone, managing sails which are way in excess of my bodyweight. But now I have sailed with them I go out alone and realise I can achieve the same performance on my own – and when I am there I can sustain it. I just won’t be up there all of the time.

Athlete’s life

Fitness training, diet, and sleep are also important parts of my routine and, as ever, hard to manage. My age is something that can’t be avoided. I’ll be 50 when I start the next Vendée Globe. At a time in life when many people are moving on to more gentle physical activities, I’ll be making my debut as a full-time professional athlete.

Pip’s calendar includes the 2022 Vendée Arctique and Route du Rhum; 2023 Transat Jacques Vabre; and 2024 Transat before the Vendée Globe. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

I need to work on my strength constantly, building muscle is essential to managing the enormous loads on the boat injury free. The only way I can build that strength is through focussed gym sessions and good nutrition. When you spend your life on the road, living out of Airbnb apartments and travelling to presentations, routine is near impossible.

Working with personal trainer Rob Stewart, we run three 6am sessions a week in my garage gym when I am home, and I fit weight training sessions in on other days. If I’m not sailing, I will add an hour of cardio training (usually running), while on sailing days the cardio takes care of itself.

My diet is proving harder to manage. In truth I seldom leave myself enough time to shop well and prepare good quality regular meals. The irony is that I eat best when I am racing because I am forced to plan my meals ahead.

Behind the scenes

Our shore team has grown, and they too have a big job to keep our beast of a boat in good condition. Joff Brown has stayed as technical director to the team and brings 20-plus years experience of running IMOCA racing programs. A winter refit allowed us to ‘undo’ Medallia’s post-Vendée fatigue. Now the team are focussed on keeping everything running, and working with me to develop and adapt, to make the boat faster, to make my life easier.

We’re moving away from the ‘keep it safe’ ethos that underlined boat preparation in my last campaign towards ‘make it fast’. The team is obsessed with details, weight saving, efficiency – and they need to be.

It has been very important for me to offer entry level jobs to young people as well as ensuring a high level of knowledge and experience within the shore team. Finding the right people has not been easy – many people apply for sailing positions on the team, but finding people who genuinely want to make a career in technical boat preparation has been hard. We are still relatively small compared to many of the IMOCA teams, so everyone has to take responsibility for their areas.

I have less to do with the boat preparation that I am used to. I hand over at the end of each day on the water; we talk through problems, suggestions, work up the job list. Joff is also working on planning for our 2023 refit. We’ll be working with designer Guillaume Verdier and Kevin Escoffier from team PRB on the new foil design. Building work starts this summer and installation will be at Carringtons in early 2023.

Money talks

Lou Adams is Pip Hare Ocean Racing’s head of business and operations. Photo: Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The other side of the team is the business. It is the engine that drives us all forwards, but it is not glamorous and is the bit that seems to suck my time. Lou Adams has taken over full time as head of business and operations. It has been a real relief to step back from the day-to-day running of our team, which is complex and complicated.

In the same way that Formula 1 teams pack up and move their operation to a different race track every few weeks, so we need to arrive at different venues, fully functional with a mobile workshop, tools, spares, and support boat. My only job now is to turn up with the boat and the rest happens around me. I cannot explain what a weight off my shoulders this is (though I still feel a little like a prima donna).

But when it comes to dealing with fundraising, finances and sponsor obligations, I cannot walk away. We are a team, and we race as a team – albeit in my name. However, as CEO and spokesperson, much of my time needs to be spent with the people who fund us (or who we would like to fund us).

As a naturally shy person I have had to learn to speak in public, to have the confidence to sell myself in meetings and it is still a struggle for me to come to terms with presenting myself as anything other than very normal. But, together with Lou, I have worked hard on developing a way to collaborate with our sponsors that genuinely brings them into the team, and addresses what they want out of a partnership.

Pip was awarded the RYS Francis Chichester Trophy, among many accolades. Photo: Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The most stressful part of my job is managing the finances. We are a small team reaching high, and managing our cashflow is a huge challenge. I feel the weight of responsibility towards employees, subcontractors, and sponsors enormously and I am not oblivious to the world at large: we are in an immensely privileged position and I feel accountable for making the most of what we have on every level.

Most months I have big decisions to make that could change the course of the campaign. We need to sign more sponsors to complete our funding package and for both Lou and I this is constantly in the front of our minds. Although the last Vendée Globe race had a lot of mainstream media coverage, sailing is still a lesser known sport to sell.

Upping the ante

The world of IMOCA sailing has changed incredibly in the short four years that I have been involved and solo ocean racing is enjoying something of a heyday right now. The 2020 Vendée Globe race really highlighted the value of this international sporting event and there has been a big influx of sponsors into the class. This translates to more teams of a higher calibre.

Not only is there fierce competition on the water but we’ll also be fighting for places on the start line. In every other edition of the race, finishing the previous Vendée Globe race gave a skipper automatic qualification to the next. Not so this time round.

There will be 40 places available on the start in November 2024; 13 of these will be given over to new boats (there are 14 new boats in build), one is a wild card at the organisers’ discretion and the remaining 26 places must be earned by skippers competing in and finishing IMOCA races.

On a global level this is incredible for the sport. It means more events, more races to follow, more chances to compete. On the other it has upped the ante in an event which was already tough. We need to race and I need to finish. This adds up to more miles on the boat, more budget to raise, more time and resources to keep everything in the best condition. Every time we race there is risk. If we don’t race the risk is bigger.

The shore team takes over when the boat is in dock. Photo: Pip Hare Ocean Racing

There’s always too much to do and each day I need to try to work out the most important thing for the campaign. This level of pressure has been normal to me for a few years and I’m used to it. Now, at least on land, I have my team to shoulder the load.

The one thing that grounds me, the reason it’s all worthwhile, is the fact that I now find sailing at over 25 knots normal.

I’m constantly filled with wonder and amazement at what I, a small human being, can get this boat to do. Being alone in the ocean allows me to step away from the reluctant businesswoman I have had to become. I have so much to learn, I want to become a completely different sailor over the next few years, but getting to grips with a foiling IMOCA is blowing my mind.

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Robert Scheidt always used to start out of the middle of the line. That was in the days when he was the stand-out talent in the Laser single-handed dinghy, winning world titles year after year.

Scheidt set the pace for exceptional downwind speed but as the rest of the world closed the gap, the Brazilian admits he should have changed his conservative approach to starting. If you’re aeons faster than your rivals, the start doesn’t matter so much. But for most of us, getting a good lane out of the start is critical for setting us up for the rest of the race. Scheidt shares his five best tips for being fast out of the blocks – and how to recover if you stumble.

Build a routine

I like to be one of the first to get on the water, say one hour before the race so I can check the course, my settings and get dialled into the conditions. Then, about 10 minutes before the orange flag goes up I’ll do a few timed runs towards the committee boat end or the pin end, to check the time and distance for the conditions.

I’ll sail along the line, check the bias with my compass and see which looks like the favoured end. Routines like this are super important. If there’s current, these pre-start checks are even more critical. If you have the opportunity to get a transit, take it. If there are any recalls most of the fleet will hang back because they don’t want to be disqualified. That’s a great opportunity to use your transit, be confident that you know where the line is and move forward for a great start when others are hanging back.

Practise going slow

We all want to be able to sail fast, but it’s also important to be able to sail slow. This is a really useful skill for pre-start manoeuvring. I moved from the Laser into the 49er for a year, and I was amazed how some teams could stay in the same place for four minutes or more.

Article continues below…

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If you can develop this ability to stand still, you’ll have a massive advantage on the boats around you as you approach the start. Practise your double tacking and reversing techniques to help you create a gap to leeward, and practise acceleration drills.

Different boats take different amounts of time to get up to full speed. Most people don’t practise their slow-speed skills, so you’ll have a big advantage if you do.

Risk versus reward

Risk management is a big thing at start time. You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses, you have to understand the wind conditions, and you have to understand the course and which side is paying.

There are times you can be more conservative, let’s say if you are really confident that you’re fast in those conditions. If the race is long, you have strong winds, you feel fast, you don’t have to win a side on the start, then you can be a bit more conservative and start more towards the middle, and use your speed to crack the race open.

But if, for instance, you have a light air race in a sea breeze, like we had in the Tokyo Games, you can find the pressure is always coming out from the edges of the course. That’s when you need to be more aggressive at the start because your opportunities to get to the best part of the race course are much more limited.

The serious racing side of Wally – a big fleet start at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup 2017. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

Have a ‘plan b’

A bad start doesn’t mean the race is over, because the boats are still pretty close. There are still opportunities, and the first important thing is not to panic. A lot of people deviate from their original strategy, because they had a bad start and usually that means they end up making even more mistakes.

Be patient, and wait for your moment to get a clear lane back to the favoured side. When I’m sailing on a big boat I share my Plan B with the whole crew, so if anything goes wrong, everyone is dialled in to what we’re going to do next. I’ve seen a lot of guys having a bad start, but really, really quickly get back into the race like that.

Slow strategy

If you’re slower than other boats in the fleet, which happens all the time in handicap racing, you need to rethink your starting strategy. Starting to leeward of boats that are faster than you is not a good idea because you’ll get rolled soon after the start and be in their bad air.

One of the options when you’re slower is to try to win the race committee side or at least be on the windward side of these big boats and be able to tack off and sail free for a few minutes. Those faster guys are going to be gone very quickly and then you’ll have free air again.

Robert Scheidt

Robert Scheidt is one of the most successful Olympic sailors of all time, representing Brazil in seven Games and winning a total of five Olympic medals as well as numerous world titles in the Laser and the Star keelboat. He also sailed as part of the Luna Rossa America’s Cup campaign.

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Weather forecast accuracy will always be a hot topic of debate. As a forecaster I’ve seen the accuracy of models improve greatly over the last couple of decades, but so too has what sailors expect. Gone are the days when the shipping forecast was pretty much our only source of weather information. An explosion in the amount of information available online means it’s easy to keep looking at forecasts until we find one that we like!

The profusion of weather forecasts in GRIB file format makes life easier in one respect – but more difficult in another. We can very easily see a forecast wind field and get an idea of gusts, rain and a whole host of other details, but we must also appreciate what it is telling us and what it is not.

Although for many of us looking online to see what wind is expected is all the forecasting that we do, that misses out on a lot of detail we would get in a properly prepared forecast.

For example, a GRIB file gives a specific wind value but we all know that the wind is rarely steady in speed or direction – even over a small area when dinghy racing, it’s the boats that get in phase with wind shifts that will win. Extend this to a larger scale when on a passage, and the wind may be very different between one side of a headland and the other, but GRIB files are likely to miss this unless they are very high resolution.

What weather forecasts tell you

So, what are we looking at? Computer models forecast for the whole world – these are called global models and vary in resolution from about 0.25 of a degree to 0.5 of a degree or more. These are pretty accurate over the short term, particularly away from land.

An example of a hi-res GRIB from PredictWind. When reading a GRIB file it’s important to understand what it is not telling you just as much as what it is. Photo: Chris Tibbs/PredictWind

When conditions are stable the forecast may be good for a week or longer. When depressions are rattling across the Atlantic, for example, forecasts will be less accurate in the detail although they will give a good indication of the pattern.

Global models are the ones we use crossing oceans, but they become less accurate when sailing along the coast where the interaction between the atmosphere and land is so important. Take one variable, temperature: over the land the temperature may rise 10°C or more from the dawn minimum to the mid-afternoon maximum. But at sea the air temperature variation is only 1° or at most 2°.

Sailing by the coast we often see clouds building over the land as it heats through the day. While this may indicate the development of a sea breeze, it also indicates instability and turbulence. With rapidly heating land adding instability into the atmosphere, combined with the turbulence caused by wind blowing around headlands and the drag as wind crosses the land, it’s easy to understand why the wind is so variable along the coast.

Headlands and other topographic features can have a significant effect on wind, that high-res GRIB files may not always pick up.

This is why we need higher resolution models that can take into account the variations of land temperature and the effect on the wind. How good these high-resolution models are depends on how much information is fed into the models. Not only where the coast is, but also its height and the geology of the land – rocky hills will heat and cool quickly, as will cities and towns, while heavily vegetated areas will heat more slowly.

Adding all this extra information into models means that running high resolution models is expensive and there’ll be a cost for the user.

Wind forecasts are for a standard 10m height; at 10m the effect of the surface plays a big part causing drag which slows and backs the wind (veers in the Southern Hemisphere). Any tall mast will read a greater wind speed than that felt at 10m or deck level, but as the relationship between wind speed and height is not fixed – but depends on the stability of the atmosphere – a certain amount of estimation is involved.

The most extreme case I have experienced was sailing on the Baltic in very cold water. This cooled the air and made it very stable at low levels; it felt calm at deck level yet the anemometer at the masthead at 25m was reading 15 knots.

What forecasts don’t tell

Forecasts tell us an average not a maximum. On a ‘normal’ day gusts are likely to be around a one third greater than the average. Some forecasts will warn of gusts half as much again as the average.

A catamaran on the ARC rally reefed for an approaching squall. Photo: Paul Laurie/Point Photography

A squall is a longer increase in wind and usually associated with precipitation. As these are generally associated with showers and thunderstorms they are unlikely to be picked up in a forecast for a specific area. We sometimes get a percentage chance of showers in a forecast; this helps give a general impression but does not tell you whether you will actually see a squall. Boats sailing just a few miles apart can experience quite different conditions.

GRIB files may indicate 20 knots of wind but in reality we will get some gusts and lulls; this could easily give gusts into the mid-20s and a small squall could increase the top end of the wind range further, while a thunderstorm could produce squalls of gale force intensity.

There has also been a profusion of spot forecasts on various apps. These can be good for general weather but for wind forecasts they’re not so accurate as they will also be greatly affected by land features. While giving a flavour for the weather they are not as useful as a marine forecast as other sources.

To generate an accurate forecast needs time and a certain amount of knowledge. The more time we spend adding value to them the more accurate they become. Most apps are purely computer generated and they are not a substitute to a marine forecast which will cover additional variables, for example visibility which can be hard to forecast from limited information.

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It’s only really developments in sail handling technology that have allowed the size of boats to increase so much: we’ve been building yachts of 60ft for decades, but they often needed a full crew to sail them.

The move towards sloops and away from cutters and ketches means that any single sail is likely to be bigger too. But thanks to furling sails, electric winches, asymmetric spinnakers and snuffers, a crew of two can handle a 60-footer in largely the same way they’d handle a 40-footer.

It’s not just the boats that have got bigger. The upwind sail area of the new Swan 48 is 22% bigger than that of the 1971 S&S of the same length. Although technology has allowed us to build far more power into our rigs, the fact that we can reduce that power at the push of a button masks how big the loads are.

These increased loads need to be treated with enormous respect. If you’re hit by a flogging jib sheet on a 60ft yacht it feels like you’ve been knocked down with a crow-bar (I learned this lesson the hard way).

A flappy sail is not just unhappy, it’s lethal. Emily Bower runs Skyelark II, an Oyster 62, with her husband, Dan (adventuresailing.com). She points out that big headsails are fine when they’re up and you can use the furling gear to control them, but if you need to raise or lower them, perhaps because a halyard has failed, they become a hazard.

“You can get yourself in a mess handling big sails short-handed, especially if a big gust of wind comes along.” They impress on their guest crew to always ask for help with sail handling. As a charter yacht they often have novice sailors on board, and emphasised how important it is to give people something to monitor while winching. “Make sure they know what to watch, and know when to stop winching,” said Dan. He also found that being gentle with the commands translated into more sympathetic use of the power: “We ask people to ‘tickle’ the button now, it’s so easy to be heavy handed otherwise.”

A snuffer allows a crew of two to handle a large asymmetric spinnaker with relative ease. Photo by: Christophe Breschi

Weighty Work

Moving heavy sails is also challenging. Rather than brick them, which makes them really dense and awkward to handle, leave them in a long flake with plenty of sail ties on.

These can be used as handles so that multiple people can help lift and drag it to where you need it. When reefing, it’s not advisable to let the mainsail flog to depower it: the sail and boom might have a combined weight of a quarter of a tonne.

Traditional sailing techniques offer today’s skipper seamanship techniques to draw from and scandalising the main for reefing is one example. Rather than allowing the sail and boom to flail around, raise the boom on the topping-lift or vang while keeping some tension on the mainsheet.

This will open the leech allowing the wind to spill while keeping the boom under control. With increased loads, gear failure becomes more serious. As a teenager I was deckhand on an ageing Whitbread maxi. We were storming along at 12 knots when a genoa sheet parted. It sounded like a canon had gone off and the line snapped back instantly, fortunately no one was in the way.

Because it’s so expensive to replace, there’s a temptation to keep old gear going past its ‘use-by date’ on larger yachts. I’ve never liked having anyone stand near a loaded sheet since. Good winch and line handling technique is essential for sail handling on larger yachts.

Unfortunately degloving injuries are not uncommon and even experienced sailors have lost fingers in a moment’s inattention. Emily Bower also pointed out how dangerous power winches can be if they fail. “I was putting someone up a mast one day and when I took my finger off the button the winch kept turning,” she recalls. “I had to ease the line continually to prevent the person being winched into the block while someone else went below to isolate the batteries.”

Maintenance

Although the sailplan often stays the same despite the increase in boat length – a mainsail and furling headsail remains a pretty standard set-up for boats from 20-80ft – the systems involved in managing that sailplan become exponentially more complex and more critical as does the sail handling. If the roller furler fails on a large yacht there’s a lot of sail wrestling to do.

From windlasses to electric winches, gear failure isn’t just inconvenient, it can be downright dangerous when sail handling. I’ve had to retrieve 80m of chain and a 40kg anchor by hand, and it took 10 crew the best part of half an hour to do it. Fortunately, we weren’t on a lee shore at the time or it could have been a different story. If we’d been short-handed we’d have had to drop the bitter end and buoy it, to return in better conditions.

If you rely heavily on any system, service it and inspect it like you would your engine. Replace worn deck gear and running rigging on the advice of your rigger. Before it fails, think through how you could cope without it, especially if doublehanding, and bear in mind that no piece of kit is 100% reliable.

Winch Handling Skills:

• Load the winch fully with four or five turns before grinding on: use the whole drum
• Keep hands a safe distance from the winch by sliding your hand down the line as you load the drum, and work at winch
• level – holding hands too high can cause the rope to spin off
• Make sure you know how to do a rolling hitch to take the load off a line if you’ve got a riding turn

Line Handling Skills:

• Don’t put your hand between a line and a cleat – if load comes on the line it will crush everything in its way
• Beware of ‘snap-back’ zones on loaded lines and avoid standing in their apex
• When coming alongside, surging a line around a cleat will help slow the boat down, but don’t snub it too abruptly.

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After sailing a brilliant qualifying series during the Tokyo Olympic Games earlier this summer, a moment of indecision put Anne-Marie Rindom’s grip on the gold medal in jeopardy. But the Dane managed to put her mistake into perspective, keep calm under pressure, and did what she needed to do in the medal race to secure the Olympic title. That moment when it all looked like her regatta was unravelling, she now refers to as ‘Black Friday’.

However, Rindom had worked hard on her mental processes going into the Games, and her resilience against setbacks, not least because she’d lost the European Championships in similar circumstances a year earlier.

Few of us will ever know the kind of pressure that Rindom was feeling at Tokyo, but the mental processes she uses are applicable to any racing at any level of the sport. Her first tip seems almost counterintuitive. But when you think about the pressure of measuring the whole of your Olympic campaign, possibly eight or 12 years or your life, against the final day of a single competition, you can see the sense in what Rindom is saying.

Her advice has echoes of another great Dane, the four-time Olympic Champion Paul Elvstrom, who once said: “You haven’t won the race, if in winning the race you have lost the respect of your competitors.”

Prioritise values

The further you go in your career, the more you can end up putting pressure on yourself to achieve the results you have worked so hard for. In the Danish team we talked a lot about values.

A good exercise is to ask yourself: what do you want people to say in a speech about you when your career is over? Do you want to have them to say, ‘She did this and that result, a gold here and a world title here?’ Or do you want to have people say, ‘She won the respect of her competitors. And she was able to take some decisions that nobody else was able to take.’

If you can define those values and work towards honouring them, that can help take the pressure off the relentless focus on results.

Routines are important in all forms of boat racing

Simple routines

When I started sailing, I didn’t pay so much attention to my mental preparation. It’s easy to tick all the boxes on physical preparation, because you can measure your strength and fitness at the gym.

Mental preparation is a bit harder to quantify, but to have some routines is very important. I work with my sports psychologist on doing small exercises, every day doing five to 10 minutes of mindfulness practice using an app on my phone.

It’s basically noticing what kind of thoughts I have, what kind of feelings I have, and then practising releasing those feelings, and coming back to refocus. A helpful way to refocus is by concentrating on your breathing.

You’re in charge

One of the pictures I hold in my head is imagining I’m the driver of a bus. The passengers are all your thoughts and feelings. It could be other sailors are sailing really fast. So you start thinking ‘Oh no, why are they sailing so fast? Did I train hard enough, or am I strong enough?’ Or it could be if you’re on the start line and you’re thinking it’s a bit scary to start at the pin end, because all the good sailors are down there.

So all these negative thoughts – along with your positive thoughts – are the passengers on the bus. And you have to just say to them, ‘You’re welcome on the bus, I’m not going to push you off, but I’m driving this bus and I’m deciding where we’re going.’ You have to be strong enough not to be affected by them.

Rehearse scenarios

At the end of ‘Black Friday’ my coach and I talked through what happened, what went wrong. We pointed fingers at each other, we screamed, we cried. We even laughed.

And then on Saturday, we just ran through all the scenarios. So if Marit [Bouwmeester] does this, if Josefin [Olsson] does that, if they do this, I should act like this. I think we came up with seven different ways to respond. And that helped me be a little bit more calm in the medal race.

I knew exactly what the plan was going to be. Rehearsing scenarios in your mind is almost like doing it for real. The more often you rehearse before the event, the better prepared you’ll be.

There is always a winner in every race, but losing can be valuable too. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi / Rolex

Nobody’s perfect

At the 2020 European Championships in Poland, I was leading with 22 points going into the final day. We had two races, so I just had to finish above 14th place, and I would win. But I didn’t manage to do that. It was windy, it was wavy – my favourite conditions. But I just saw myself completely falling apart.

I learned a lot from that day. I was happy that it happened last year because it set me up to be able to respond to the big setback of ‘Black Friday’. I helped me to see that even if my situation was not as good as it could have been, it was still pretty good. After all, I was still going into the Tokyo 2020 medal race with a seven-point advantage.

The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and take the positives away from the experience. Don’t beat yourself up about your mistakes, take them as learning opportunities.

Anne-Marie Rindom

Anne-Marie Rindom won the Olympic Gold Medal in the Laser Radial at Tokyo 2020. The Danish sailor also won Bronze at Rio 2016 along with world titles in the Laser Radial and Europe. The 30-year-old is currently studying for her Masters in Sports Science.

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Carolijn Brouwer is a top talent, having been to the Olympic Games in three different classes (470, Europe and Tornado catamaran), and more recently raced extensively offshore, there are

Carolijn Brouwer is a top level professional sailor who knows a thing or two about downwind sailing

few people better placed to offer their advice on sailing downwind fast.

As a proven talent, Brouwer was an obvious pick for the all-female crew on Amer Sports Too for the 2001/02 edition of the Volvo Ocean Race. The Volvo 60 was a responsive planing boat that rewarded good instincts at the helm.

Brouwer found the Southern Ocean a challenging but fun learning ground for how to handle the wheel of a powerful 60-footer.

She went on to crew in two more round the world races with Team SCA and the winning Dongfeng Race Team. “I think I’d only ever been a couple of nights at sea when I went off to do my [first] Southern Ocean leg,” Brouwer recalls.

“I was trimming the main at the time. I remember when we dug the bow into a wave and the boat was basically underwater. When we popped back up again, I got washed to the back and ended up with my head through the spokes of the wheel. At that moment a big turn of the wheel really could have ended quite badly.

“There was so much water gushing over the deck, with so much force, I had to wait for it pass and hope that the helm didn’t change angle too much. Fortunately it ended up okay, I wasn’t hurt, and mostly I enjoyed the Southern Ocean and what it taught me about sailing downwind.”

Here are Brouwer’s five best tips for fast and safe sailing downwind:

Sailing downwind is all about feel

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You can’t do everything yourself, the helm is just part of the system. You also have to get used to sailing to the numbers on the back of the mast. But even now I go with what I feel first, and use the instruments as a reference point for what I’m feeling.

The polars should give you a range to steer within, and then I like to let ‘feel’ determine the final details.

Use trimbooks

While ‘feel’ is important, so are trimbooks. These documents help you replicate the ideal setup from times when you know it’s worked in the past.

In the build up to an important race we test our sails, we test all the different set-ups, and so if we are sailing at a certain angle and we have a disagreement about how the A-sail is set, then instead of getting into a discussion about it we can fall back on our trimbook that will say, ‘under these conditions, and with this angle, this amount of breeze and these waves, this is what has proven to be fast when we were in training.’

Work with the trimmers

When sailing downwind, the trimmer will feel the changing pressure through the spinnaker sheet before you feel anything in the helm, so it’s important to have constant communication about how much pressure is going through that sheet.

Some helms like to receive ‘head up’ or ‘bear away’ instructions from the trimmer. Personally I’d rather just get information about the pressure and then decide what I want to do, especially when steering on waves, when you might want to stay down or up a little more because of what you feel and where the boat is on the wave.

Work the waves

When you’re going slightly slower than wave speed, you’re obviously trying to catch that wave; you’re looking for the wave to pick you up so you can keep going with it as long as you can before it rolls underneath you.

And then you set yourself up for the next one.

Photo: Elio Stichelbaut/Dongfeng Race Team

Steer up a little bit at a higher angle so you increase your speed to catch the wave. But of course whenever you’re sailing VMG downwind you’re also looking to gain depth, to come down as low as possible. So then you bring your bow down again when you’re on the wave, and the trick is that you don’t want to come down too far. Just before you feel like you’re about to cut the back of the wave, you need to steer back up again, to hopefully stay on it.

Don’t try to ride one wave as long as possible, use the speed from that wave as the launch pad to get you on to the next wave – you’re looking for a good average speed.

When you’re sailing boats that generally travel faster than wave speed, it’s more a case of looking for the path of least resistance through the wave in front of you. Still, the important goal is a high average speed rather than trying to win the competition for highest peak speed.

Throttle back

When sailing downwind is turning into a matter of survival, the first option is to start reducing your sail area. But once you’ve reduced it as much as you can, and you’ve got crew and equipment as far back in the boat as possible, there’s not much more you can do.

It’s inevitable that sometimes you’re going to lose control. Just bear in mind that if you have any choice in the matter the consequences of a Chinese gybe are usually way worse than a broach.

When the bow digs into the back of a wave, you don’t always have much control through the wheel at that point, but do everything in your power to luff the boat up to avoid a Chinese gybe.

A broach is the lesser of two evils.

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The post Sailing downwind: Expert tips to improve your helming appeared first on Yachting World.

Heading the other way? Leaving the Caribbean for cooler climates? Check out our 16 top tips on crossing back to Europe

The Atlantic crossing season occurs every winter. In the months leading up to Christmas, some 4-5,000 sailors will cross from Europe to the Caribbean on one of the biggest sailing adventures of their lives.

In most cases, the crossing is the culmination of years of planning and preparation. But if it’s your first time, are you missing something? You might be.

Here is a list of my top 15 tips for an Atlantic crossing, which I’ve drawn up both from my own ocean passages in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and from talking to hundreds of transatlantic sailors over the years. So what do you really need to consider when planning your Atlantic crossing…

1. You don’t need a special boat

Time was when a proper offshore cruising yacht had chines, a ketch rig and self-steering gear at the stern. That was a perception, and perceptions change. Numerically, the most common transatlantic yachts these days are ordinary production cruisers with standard kit.

There’s no black art to sailing 3,000 miles downwind. Generally, the toughest part of an Atlantic crossing is getting across Biscay. So whatever boat you have right now, the chances are that with a bit of extra prep she’ll be fine for an Atlantic crossing.

As for a watermaker, generator, SSB radio, etc: they’re all useful, but every additional item adds complication and service cost/time. Apart from a sound boat, all you really need is water, food, fuel and a (paper) copy of ‘North Atlantic, Southern Part’.

2. Keep it simple

A smart crossing is all about consistent speed, 24 hours a day. The key is not to have downtime.

There’s no need to fiddle around with twin headsails, Twistlerig or expensive new asymmetric spinnaker; a main and poled-out genoa ‘barn doors’ set-up will do fine. In fact, me and my other half won the ARC rally overall one year after sailing wing-and-wing almost the entire way.

Just keep an eye out for chafe, and be sure to set up a preventer on the boom and a foreguy topping lift and downhaul when poling out the headsail so you can furl in quickly when that night-time squall hits (which it will).

3. Revise your energy equation

Whatever power you think you’ll use on an ocean crossing, add on another third. Nav lights, radar, radio scheds, autopilot, watermaker, fridge, freezer, computer, fans – you name it, they all add up.

Increase the means of generating electricity with a diesel generator, larger alternator, solar panels and/or a towed turbine and look at means of making savings, such as fitting LED lights.

The post 15 things you should know when planning an Atlantic crossing appeared first on Yachting World.

1. Keep the downwind sailplan simple

What’s the best sail configuration for a downwind crossing? Actually, the chances are you already have sails that are perfectly suitable: a robust genoa and your mainsail. Goosewinged, you can reel off some good, consistent days’ runs without any of the downtime or extra crew on deck required by a spinnaker. You can keep the pole triangulated in place with a foreguy, a topping lift and an afterguy. An advantage of fixing the pole in place is that you can easily reef the headsail or furl it away if you need to with the pole left in place.

Downwind sailing tips: in praise of the Simbo rig

However, when the wind drops, or if you want the fun of squeezing out a bit of extra speed, it’s time to play with spinnakers. “They’re great in light winds and can considerably cut the rolling of the boat,” says ARC weather expert and Yachting World columnist, Chris Tibbs.

James Anderson agrees: “Carry a spinnaker and don’t be afraid to fly it. It’s the best downwind sail there is.” Make sure the preventer is taken from the end of the boom, preferably led to the bow and back to the cockpit to avoid breaking your boom.

2. Check and double-check your rig

Before any and every long passage, check your rig – everything from rigging screws, shackle mousing, chafe points to spreader ends and roots. Consider paying a professional rigger to check it for you. At sea, do a daily walk round the boat looking at everything that moves or runs.

Rig failure narrowly avoided: six of the most commonly seen ARC rig check failures

Professional charter skipper Mike Kopman says: “I make walking around the deck part of sunrise and sunset routines, inspecting blocks, turnbuckles, shrouds, lines and sails. Look for chafe, and look up too. If you’ve got a calm spell, send someone up the rig and pay particular attention after rough weather.”

3. Make safety your No 1 rule

It never ceases to amaze us how many yachts arrive in Las Palmas for the ARC missing key safety gear or with lifejackets and harnesses still in the original wrappers. Quite aside from a skipper’s duty to them, nothing earns a crew’s confidence and respect more than seeing that safety has been meticulously attended to.

How much does safety at sea cost?

All your safety gear should be in good working order and flares, fire extinguishers, EPIRBs and liferaft in date. “I always give the job of checking these to new crewmembers so they get familiar with the location and use of all this equipment,” Mike Kopman says.

“I also get new crew to fit jackstays and check all bilge pumps, float switches, high level alarms and smoke alarms. Poking around in the bilges gives new crew a good opportunity to see parts of the boat they might otherwise ignore, but could well be the scene of an emergency.”

Everyone on board should know and respect the rules for safety. Don’t be afraid to ask crew to wear lifejacket/harness in all conditions – then there’s no confusion – but always use them at night, if you’ve got a reef in, and certainly in bad weather. If in doubt, don’t hesitate to go for the safe option.

Establish standing orders, such as not leaving the cockpit to go forward if there’s no one else on deck and not peeing over the side.

Regarding equipment, James Anderson has one specific piece of advice: “At around £200, passive AIS (receiver only) is probably the best value technical safety at sea device there is.”

4. Practise, practise, practise

Having the safety gear is one thing, using it in anger quite another. Let your crew know what the safety procedures and plans are and have a practice run with your Atlantic crew of a man overboard manoeuvre. That way there’s no confusion about what is to happen and who is to do what if it happens for real, and how you’ll stop the boat if you’re trucking downwind with poled-out headsail or spinnaker.

“Assign roles to each crewmember for different emergencies (for example, fire, flooding, abandoning ship) and post these in a prominent place,” advises Mike Kopman. “Then practise these procedures so everyone knows what’s expected of them. This is especially important if you’ve got new crew aboard.”

5. Know the medical situation and history of all your crew

Make sure you are aware of any medical conditions and medications of all crew and their medical history. Your medical kit should include something to sedate a crewmember should that ever become necessary. If you have to administer any medication on passage, note the times and dosages carefully in your written log and have it witnessed by another crewmember.

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What is the secret to a happy crew that bond at sea as a team and can go on to win?

All good skippers try to form a harmonious team but not all succeed. One sailor who has a reputation of taking groups of complete strangers, of widely varying levels of sailing experience, and turning them into race winners time after time is Philippe Falle.

Falle, a round the world racing yachtsman and past winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race, has over 200,000 miles of sailing and racing experience. He a founding director of Sailing Logic race training company and has won the RORC’s Yacht of the Year with a race team so is very well versed in getting teams he didn’t select himself to gel – and be highly competitive.

We asked him for some thoughts on what he’d learned over the years. The answers may surprise you because at no point does Falle mention anything about technical abilities or race strategies; it’s all about managing people.

Here’s what he had to say at the finish of the ARC transatlantic race. He had just finished 2nd in the racing division in Grand Soleil 43 Quokka, racing with a crew of nine people who had never met each other or sailed together before they left Las Palmas.

The post How to be a winning skipper – the surprisingly simple secrets to forming and leading a great crew appeared first on Yachting World.

It has been a tight race in a building breeze, but you’ve maintained the lead on this last beat and now just a loose cover on the boats behind should be enough to seal this race. “Make it a good one!” is the helmsman’s plea as the tactician calls the final tack for the pin end.

But as the sails fill on the new tack fate has other plans, the jib halyard parts and the No 3 is now wrinkled and fluttering down the forestay. The bowman is rushing forward with the second halyard and now it’s a race within a race to get the sail up again as the following pack closes in for the kill.

Just a single oversight can jeopardise a whole weekend’s fun for a keen crew. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that boats with a regime of post-race checks and job lists are often seen regularly at the front of the fleet and picking up the silverware.

Professional advice and maintenance will be needed when things go wrong, but it does not always require an expert to give your yacht the once over. Some regular commonsense checks might save the day, and a good time to get some useful tips is when you buy new sails and gear.

While the pro and semi-pro boats will have the advantage of sailmakers and riggers sailing on board, being as well organised as them will cost only a few minutes after the race. It’s a habit that pays off in the long run.

It might even attract more experienced crew to sail with you. So stepping up the maintenance regime to match those annoyingly consistent boats in your fleet could see you join their ranks sooner than you think.

While maintenance is a big and ongoing task, here are five tips for key areas that could avoid a costly breakdown.

1. Eyes on the rigging

Signs of corrosion or friction in halyards or control lines should be investigated immediately. Parts located by a pin such as a gooseneck or a sheave should fit snugly. Spreader inboard ends located by pins should be checked for movement; if the spreaders can rock on the spreader bars they can move out of column and collapse.

Worn sheaves cause point loading. Illustration: Jonty Sherwill

To check if fastenings have moved (excluding shackles) clean the head and surrounding area with alcohol and draw a line from the centre out to the surrounding area with white Tippex – this way you can quickly see if they are on the move. Shackles can be fixed with a small cable tie – any movement and the tie will break.

Fibre rigging should be checked frequently for chafe. Backstays or runners can have heat shrink or electrical tape to protect them.

2. Inspect your sails

Remind crew putting sails away to inspect as they go – any issues can be sorted before the next race rather than trying to patch a hole before the start. It is always a good idea to have a roll of spinnaker repair tape and ‘sticky-back’ on board, along with a good pair of scissors, some paper towel and even a small bottle of acetone all in a dry bag. The acetone and paper towel can be used quickly to dry and remove salt from an area of sailcloth before applying the repair tape.

3. Chack the steering system

On boats with wheel steering most of the systems are hidden from view so check that the cabling (wire or rope) is sound and has no evidence of chafe. If you fit new cabling it is a good idea to force the wheel against each stop, taking the stretch out of the system to help prevent the cables dropping off the quadrant or sheaves. Steering blocks are under significant load so increasing wear is a sign of trouble ahead.

Illustration: Jonty Sherwill

4. Look after your electronics

For a 12V system, 12.6+V is 100 per cent capacity while 12.1V represents a drop to 50 per cent. If after a few hours of charging or motoring you are not seeing 12.6+V on your battery monitor with no load (current draw) your batteries are losing capacity and will continue to decay as they work harder and harder to supply current to your systems.

Clean battery terminals and waterproofing will help a lot with ensuring your batteries charge well and hold capacity. Inspect all electrical connections for signs of corrosion and act early, move the connection, get a better waterproof box, find the source of ingress and seal.

Although not a show-stopper if they fail, wind instruments rely on mechanical bearings. At least twice a season inspect your sensor for corrosion, and check the vane and cups for smooth movement. Also the speed paddlewheel is exposed and prone to damage so always remove it before yard lift-out and carry a spare.

5. Taking ownership

By giving each crewmember a specific area of responsibility they will take ownership and check it over pre and post race.

They should use the boat’s equipment better as well as making sure they have any essential spares or tools on board. If all this is done well, your yacht should end a racing season in better shape than at the start.

Here is a suggestion of crew positions with most common areas of responsibility:

• Helmsman – steering systems/interior
• Tactician/navigator – electronics, electrical, interior
• Main trimmer – sails, mainsheet, blocks, traveller, vang, backstay, outhaul, cunningham
• Jib trimmer – winches and sails
• Pit crew – jammers and other deck gear
• Mast/sewer – running rigging/interior
• Bowman – mast and aloft rigging

Campbell Field ran racing yachts for seven years in the 1990s and has raced professionally for 20 years. He has managed race teams and run the technical management of builds, as well being a yacht racing navigator inshore and offshore, from TP52s to superyachts.

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The sails look great and you’ve just spent money on having the keel faired and the bottom sprayed, but today the boat is off the pace, so what’s the issue?

Rather than fiddle with the backstay tension perhaps you should be thinking ‘weed’. It only takes a small clump to get caught around the keel or rudder to slow the boat and with races often won and lost by less than ten seconds, a 0.1 per cent hit on your boat speed is all it takes.

Unless it’s a lobster pot and you’re stationary, detecting that something is caught on the foils is not always easy and some basic rules are needed to prevent loss of concentration and even more time wasted. Weed and plastic bags caught low down can sometimes be spotted by looking over the side, but judging how serious it is further up is a tougher call.

Photo: Getty Images

Prevention is better than cure so making sure the boat is clean before the start is important, and during the race the helmsman and forward crew can work together to spot and avoid weed and debris, including lobster pots, lurking to windward.

For each of the techniques outlined here safety must always be considered. For example ‘backing down’ – ie reversing the boat while head to wind – will be done under sail alone in sportsboats without inboard engines, while on larger boats it’s more likely to be with engine power. Finding space to do this safely in a busy starting area is important as other boats may not always spot that your boat is moving backwards. Hang on tight to the helm to prevent the rudder slamming over, and leave time to run the boat forward to close the propeller.

To stop or not?

It’s a judgement call. The shorter the race, the less likely you are to stop, the longer the race, the more important it is to get debris off quickly.

If you are under spinnaker, put up a headsail, drop the kite and very aggressively slow the boat down. The better you get at the back down technique, the more comfortable you will be in getting rid of the debris.

Knowing your target boat speeds is important to be able to judge whether you have weed or not. We don’t carry gear for removing weed on the TP52 or the IRC72; both boats are very fast so a weed stick will do more damage to the rudder even if you were to get rid of the weed, but always ‘back down’ before the start.

We have a routine on Rán of doing it eight minutes before the starting gun. We combine this with the final jib call and hoist to get us out of the back down. It helps to concentrate the minds of all the crew.

Fluorescent paint on leading edges of the rudder and keel can help. It can make it easier to spot weed or debris.

2. Flossing the keel

Using a length of line that you throw off the boat and sail over to floss the leading edge of the keel is a popular way of removing debris.

A flossing line does not have the same effectiveness with modern T style bulb shapes as on the older L shape keels where the line can slip over the bottom of the keel with the weed.

There is no hard and fast rule over the line length, but it needs to get to the bottom of the keel and have enough slack on deck to hold on. Putting knots every 1-2m will help. Make sure you tie on one end of the flossing line to the guardrail near the shrouds, take the remaining line and, choosing your moment, throw it in front of the boat.

As the boat sails over the line it will wrap itself around the keel. Then saw the line up and down as it works its way down the keel fin to dislodge the weed. People have tried adding a small amount of lead shot to the line, but this could cause damage.

3. Making a rudder weed stick

A weed stick is a useful device for removing weed from the rudder and is quite simple to make. A weed stick needs to be stiff – when we made them for 40-footers the best ones were built around the hull.

We used to wrap the back of the boat in plastic and then bend the batten around the hull down to the centreline so it was formed to the shape of the boat. We then glassed it so it held its shape and built it up so it was nice and stiff.

You have to put a lot of padding around the bottom and give yourself a handle as there is a reasonable amount of load, and then add a rope tail to the bottom. To use it, dangle over the back and try to get the weed stick to hit as high up the rudder as possible. Then saw your way down the rudder and the rope tail will flick off any weed.

4. Offshore routine

Offshore we will have a routine of checking the foils with the endoscope every watch and particularly at last light and first light. These come from the medical world and are about 5mm diameter with an eye-piece at the top.

A through-hull fitting is required for each foil and you insert the endoscope through the fitting to see what is happening below. You can’t use them at high speed, but they are very good in normal conditions.

I would say that any boat offshore racing should also carry goggles and fins. You just have no idea what debris you might pick up in the water so you have to be ready for any eventuality. If we have to send someone over, the boat is slowed down to around two knots, the swimmer will jump in from the bow and as the boat slowly goes over him he can clear the debris.*

We have a line on the swimmer, but we will also trail a line over the stern for him to grab if necessary. It is always worthwhile discussing before the race who the swimmer(s) will be.

5. Lobster pots

If we are going into an area of potential lobster pots, such as around headlands, we will try to get some extra eyes forward, but generally the helmsman has the best view.

Hopefully there won’t be many fishermen reading this, but the easiest and most reliable way of getting rid of lobster pots is to cut them off. If this is not an option, then you have to back down and most likely send someone over the side. As soon as you back down you run the risk of getting extra wraps around the foils, so having someone in the water is probably wise.

* Editor’s Note: Putting crew over the side is a procedure with obvious safety risks that needs careful consideration, including an assessment of wind, wave and tidal conditions, as well as crew experience and fitness.

Tim Powell is a veteran of four Whitbread and Volvo Ocean Races, helmsman of the Mumm 36 Barlo Plastics, top boat in the 1999 Admiral’s Cup, Tour de France winner and now team manager/mainsheet trimmer on Niklas Zennström’s Rán, a TP52 world champion.

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For the leading boats clear air comes free, but for those locked in the middle of a competitive fleet this essential commodity is in short supply.

Whether it was a poor start, taking the wrong side on the previous leg or a sloppy spinnaker drop, it’s all too easy to find yourself in traffic and with extra work to do.

“We need to find a lane out of here” is the message coming from the rail, but will a rushed tack away help the situation or just put you straight back into more dirty air? Your boat speed is now quite low and you know a tack could put you at the mercy of approaching starboard boats so maybe keeping going even with those boats close to windward will be safer.

This scenario will be a familiar one to most club sailors – just part of an average day – but it is noticeable that when the hotshots drop back into the pack they are seldom there for long. That may leave you wondering how they have the knack of salvaging a result from what to you seemed a hopeless situation.

So what is the best strategy for recovery, and where was that mythical clear lane that could have helped you grasp a chance of recovery, or even fast tracked you up to the leading pack? Was it one lane you were looking for or a series of lanes?

Battling it out in the middle of the fleet is always hard so trusting your judgement and going round the outside is worth considering, but avoid panic decisions and stick to your tried and tested system of crew roles and responsibilities. That way you can enjoy the team game of digging yourselves out of trouble in the knowledge that there will be others making far bigger mistakes than what got you where you are right now.

But if arriving at the top mark near the back of the fleet is getting too hard to bear, it’s time to get some expert advice.

1. Finding a lane

Lanes are areas of relatively undisturbed air that are not being decelerated or disturbed by sails. The skill to develop is finding a lane that won’t be taken away from you by another boat, or at least not for a while.

Lanes move across the course depending on where boats are going and become blocked when another boat to windward tacks and takes that lane. That boat will now be in clear air and you will now be in their dirty air and looking for a fresh lane on the other tack.

2. Don’t just sit there

Finding yourself down the pan is tough, but the first thing is to be aware of whether you are in a lane of clear air or in dirty air. Half the calls about being in dirty air are incorrect in my experience so look carefully at the windex of the boat or boats to windward to see if you are being affected by them, before speaking up.

If the effect is only slight and those boats are going the right way on the course, staying with them may be a lot better than tacking away. But if you are in heavy cover get out of there fast – there will be opportunities elsewhere.

3. Visualise where you want to go

Decide who in your crew will be tasked with picking lanes – ideally it should be the person in the best position for good visibility. In the J/24 I do that job from the helm, but it depends on the type of boat you’re sailing.

Visualise what the boats ahead will be doing and keep looking for the best wind and windshifts. On downwind legs keep a watchful eye astern to stay in a clear lane, and if you are behind you will have a better overall view to help you decide your tactic for the leg.

4.Think strategy

Think as far ahead as possible and plan where you would like to be. Stay in phase with the leading pack by tacking below them in clear air. That way boats crossing on the other tack are less likely to tack on you as they will be dirty air themselves.

If that happens stay calm and assess whether sailing fast and free or tacking away will give you the best position to make the next gain.

5. Light and heavy airs options

The lighter the breeze, the lighter it gets in the middle of the fleet, so getting out to the corners should give you stronger, less disturbed air to sail in.

There will be other boats ahead of you doing the same thing so sailing well beyond the layline for the weather mark can avoid others tacking on you and allow you to sail fast for the mark.

In a stronger breeze it might well be better to tack somewhat short of the layline to give you more options to find lanes as you approach the mark.

Ian Southworth recorded numerous titles in the Enterprise, GP14 and Lark dinghy classes between 1976 and 1982 and won the Champion of Champions Endeavour trophy three times. He also raced in the 470 class, was 3rd at the Nation’s Cup in 1991, European 18 foot Skiff Champion in 1997 and was 3rd at the Worlds a year later. In the J/24 class he was three times British Champion, European Champion and in 2015 won the J/24 World Championship

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This image should be entitled ‘Get into That’. Bernard Stamm had 120 miles to go to the finish line – to the north of Great Barrier Island – when he was faced with 50 knots of wind and a huge sea.

He appears to have elected to heave to, which is considered a safe position to maintain. This could have been for a number of reasons. Maybe he had to slow down, or the seaway was too much with the increased sea state, or he had a problem to fix below decks, maybe even with his autopilot.

Heaving to is actually quite tricky to do in a light, non-displacement boat such as an IMOCA 60. The canting keel has to been dropped to the centreline to reduce drive and power, and help put more boat in the water to give a better ride in the waves.

The smallest jib, the ORC, or staysail, is backed and the windward jib sheet is left trimmed on. The deep-reefed mainsail is eased slightly and the helm secured to help try to turn the boat to weather. If these are all balanced out, the boat will sit quite nicely riding the waves and not moving forward or trying to turn into or away from the wind. This allows the solo sailor time to do other jobs or get some rest from the elements.

The fine balance is between the helm and the mainsail ease to ensure the boat does not try to bear away and accelerate, or try to tack again. If this balance is not achieved, there is a risk the boat will turn away from the wind and gybe, then continue to sail in violent circles with the helm lashed.

The hazard in lying in this position is that the boat will heel and there will be a significant drift to leeward, so it is not advised if there is not enough sea room. When adopting the hove-to position, ensure there is no risk of hazards to leeward and there is no danger of drifting onto a lee shore.

Caffari’s advice on how to sail free

To get out of this position of relative safety requires some room to manoeuvre, so ensure there is space to move. The helm will need to be released and then the windward jib sheet will need to be eased, trimming on the normal leeward sheet again.

A slight bear away from the helm and the boat will start moving again. Once you have steerage you can then manoeuvre back onto the desired course. Trim the sails, cant the keel and set the ballast to sail fast.

Being hove-to is relatively uncommon now as it is generally considered that to keep way and steerage on is better in a seaway than stopping, but there are times when adopting this position can make the difference between avoiding catastrophe or ending your race.

Good practice

It is good to practise the hove-to position, and particularly important when on a new boat that each crewmember, especially those who may be helming, know the quickest way to stop the boat and what is involved to make that happen safely.

It is often the first reaction to a man overboard call: a crash tack, leaving the jib sheeted, and therefore stopping the boat in the fastest manner possible. This of course changes when you come to non-displacement and performance boats as any manoeuvre takes longer as running backstays, internal and external stack, and full ballast tanks have to be considered.

Avoiding the situation

While every effort should be taken to obtain accurate information about the weather to ensure the worst of the conditions are avoided, sometimes it is what it is, and escaping extreme weather is impossible. In this case it is a matter of being sensible and seamanlike and making the right decisions to protect the safety of the boat, crew and equipment.

Interview by Sue Pelling

Dee Caffari MBE (43) was the first woman to sail solo non-stop round the world in both directions, and the only woman to do it three times. As well as an adviser to Oman Sail Women’s programme and an Artemis Offshore Academy Alumni coach, Caffari has recently skippered the Sail 4 Cancer boat in the 2016 Three Peaks Race.

If you enjoyed this….

The post Get out of that – heaving to in strong winds. Advice from Dee Caffari appeared first on Yachting World.

Starting at the wrong end of the Squadron line

Get it wrong and you will spend all day in last place with no hope of winning. The core issue is time. You have to make your decision, then motor before your preparatory signal (engine off at the gun) to the desired end. Remember, it can take five minutes to get from the middle of the line to one end.

Getting out early to the start is essential. And watch the starts before yours so you can gauge the decisions they have made.

Pre-start routine checklist:

• Identify both ends of the line.
• Motor or sail directly along the line to help the bowman and helmsman to draw a mental line on the water.
• After your normal pre-start procedures, wait around the middle of the line – this will allow you to switch ends if there is a major change to the conditions and won’t reveal your plans to your competitors.
• Don’t rely solely on the sound signals if starting from the outer end of the line – sound takes seven seconds to reach West Bramble from the RYS cannons.

(These four were compiled with the help of Cowes Combined Clubs and all relate to rules issues. Make sure you brush up on the rules, but take particular note of these.)

• Switch your VHF radio to the correct channel early to be sure of catching the time-check announcement.
• As soon as the course is announced, you will know if you are starting at the north or south end of the line. Use the engine if necessary to get to your chosen end.

There’s a greater area of tidal relief on the north shore, compared with the fast-running streams off Cowes. Extract from Winning Knowledge. (Please note that the names of racing marks frequently change.)

Sailing the wrong course

As the Cowes Week courses tend to be quite complicated it is vitally important to note the correct course. The courses get texted to a registered mobile phone so there are no excuses for mistakes –although they do happen!

Some crews swear by having a second pair of eyes check over the planned route to ensure the course is being followed to a ‘T’.  It’s also important to know the signals that indicate a shortened course for your class – it’s surprising the number of boats continue ‘racing’ after they have been finished at an earlier mark.

Running aground

Tidal curves are essential and can be found free on www.easytide.co.uk. These will help with calculating the rise over chart datum. Knowing when to push your luck is essential.

Isle of Wight shores are rocky so they’re not the place to be yachting with 0.5m under the keel, while the mainland is sand or shingle so has a flatter, more consistent profile. Falling tides are also a bad time to push your luck, as you could be there for hours.

See our 5 tips on going aground and how to get off again

Staying in the tide for 30 seconds too long

You really should be hard-nosed when cheating the tide. Sailing into the tide for even a few metres is bound to cost you dearly. It’s important to make the inshore route yours – it may be hard work, but those who grow tired of repeated tacking will make big losses. Rather than duck a competitor, putting you into tide, consider tacking, then calling for water.

Disobeying the sailing instructions

Cowes Week has quite a few navigation restrictions. Those most commonly broken include Black Group boats sailing south of Snowdon and the SM. Make sure you mark up a chart to place in the cockpit as a reminder. Also, after your start, don’t pass between Alpha or Beta and Royal Yachting Squadron (RYS) flagstaff unless it’s your last leg to finish.

Making a downtide leeward mark rounding

Very common and so expensive on elapsed time. A wide mark rounding loses a huge distance over the ground due to the tide. A boat that goes round behind you perfectly will be three lengths ahead and, just to make things worse, they now block you from tacking. Drop your kite early and focus on your rounding – wide in, tight out.

See our 5 tips on leeward mark rounding

Failing to give water at a mark

With numerous marks and multiple headlands, at some point everyone will have to face rule 18.2 when racing in the Solent. A common mistake comes with the difficulty in judging the overlap from two fleets approaching the same mark from different angles, or a large fleet stacking up trying to round a mark.

The standard rule of thumb is for Brown to head for the back of the third boat from the mark; in this way, she is on the right side of the rules. Brown almost has an overlap on Red, but she shouldn’t really push it because part of Rule 18(e) states: ‘If there is reasonable doubt that a boat obtained or broke an overlap in time, it shall be presumed that she did not.’

There is a very important difference, though, when it’s land or a large container ship that you are calling for water on. Rule 18.5 reads: ‘While boats are passing a continuing obstruction, Rules 18.2(b) and 18.2(c) do not apply. A boat clear astern that obtains an inside overlap is entitled to room to pass between the other boat and the obstruction only if, at the moment the overlap begins, there is room to do so. If there is not, she is not entitled to room and shall keep clear.’

Failing to avoid contact

Rule 14 ‘A boat shall avoid contact with another boat if reasonably possible.’ Yacht racing is not a contact sport. But, if you keep clear too early, your protest will not stick. Overall, it’s best to sail around the infringer and get on with your race. Avoid contact at all costs to stay out of the protest room, where your chances of success are only likely to be fifty-fifty.

See our 5 tips on taking a penalty

Not being aware of shipping

This tip is two-fold, there are the strategic reasons for keeping an eye on shipping, it gives you higher chance of rectifying your route without altering your time in a big way. The second reason should be obvious. Remember the incident with the tanker in 2011?

Not keeping clear when the windward boat

Rule 11 ‘When boats are on the same tack and overlapped, a windward boat shall keep clear of a leeward boat.’ If you are a small boat, don’t luff a larger faster boat. Encourage them to move through you as quickly as possible. It’s a battle you simply cannot win, from an elapsed time point of view. In fact, your best route is to sail deep and even ask them to sail high.

For an even greater understanding of this rule, you have to read Rule 16.1, which states: ‘When a right-of-way boat changes course, she shall give the other boat room to keep clear.’

You can’t simply turn your boat into another without giving them time to avoid you. However, the windward boat be aware: you must keep clear even if the leeward boat doesn’t have rights (you can argue that later). But rights or no, as windward boat you MUST make all efforts to keep clear.

Not giving way

Rule 10: It sounds quite simple – ‘port gives way to starboard’ – but, of course, each boat certainly has its own perspective on the situation, placing Rule 10 at No 1 as most common error at Cowes Week. Make sure you know the RULES!

Forgetting to declare

A busy day on the water, tiredness, hunger and the smell of beer all make it easy to forget to sign off. It’s not so difficult now that you can do it online or by text, but give yourself a reminder.

Failing to pace yourself

Following on from failure to declare, failing to pace yourself can have disastrous consequences in the final push. Keep the crew hydrated and ensure they have sufficient energy levels to keep up the momentum right through the finish line.

Giving up too early

The nature of Cowes Week racing means there’s always to potential to gain places, right up to the finish line – indeed many races are decided in the final mile. This means there’s no point in getting despondent and resigning yourself to a lacklustre result; if you keep pushing right to the end there may be several good opportunities to recover places. However, don’t be tempted to take a big risk for a marginal gain. If you wait for the right opportunity, the chances are you will get one.

This advice also applies when you’re at the head of the fleet – there are plenty of cases where the leading boat has become complacent, or her crew has become tired and therefore let other boats through just before the finish.

The post Common Cowes Week mistakes – and how to avoid them appeared first on Yachting World.

Excessive heel is your enemy when sailing upwind, and with no hiking crew this is something the double-handed sailor needs to consider. To sail upwind well you must learn the optimum angle of heel for your boat and then stick to it, adapting your style to allow for the lack of readily available righting moment. Over time you will get the feel of when the angle is not right, even down below.

A short-handed helmsman needs to think about and feel the whole boat; it’s not just about driving, but actively trimming with the traveller and/or mainsheet to maintain a continuous, smooth angle of heel. The backstay can also be a very effective upwind trimming tool so don’t just set and forget.

Helming position

Spend time setting up your helming position. Can one person easily steer and reach the relevant controls with the other hand? If the traveller is rough and hard to pull with one hand eventually you will give up using it and just sail badly. On boats with larger wheels the helmsman may need to sit either astride or in front of the wheel to reach the mainsheet controls.

Can you reach all the controls from your helming position?

Try twisting off the headsail in larger waves to give a smoother ride. This will often help if you are not able to control gust response with the traveller, but will require a different style of helming, ‘feathering’ the boat in gusts so the inside jib telltale is lifting more often, but the boat is flat. This technique requires practice, but is particularly useful in big waves at night.

With no crew on the rail, helming is definitely a wetter experience for the short-handed sailor. There is no way around this. Use it as an excuse to buy a really good set of foulies – consider dry seals if your boat is really wet – then get out there and get on with it.

Use the autopilot

As helming is a much more active experience for the short-handed sailor you will get tired more quickly. We know it is easy to go slow when sailing upwind so keep a copy of your target speeds in view and constantly refer to them. If you are struggling to keep up then let the autopilot take the strain.

The autopilot is a great tool upwind, but don’t just turn it on and walk away. Set it to steer in apparent wind mode and one or two degrees lower than you would normally helm; sit by the helm and trim the traveller to give the smoothest ride, watching the size of helm corrections the pilot is applying as a guide.

Try twisting off the headsail in larger waves for a smoother ride

Tuck in a reef if the pilot looks to be struggling. But if the pilot is coping well, you can use upwind time to carry out maintenance, eat, sleep and plan.

Reefing

Reefing short-handed should not require two on deck and is relatively straightforward, but do adapt your safety controls if doing it alone. Drop the traveller to depower the main before releasing the halyard and double check your pilot is still coping with the course under the new balance of the boat before you go forward.

Before night falls mark your sheets and jib cars with electrical tape when you are confident the boat is sailing well. It is really easy to mess up your sail trim on a dark night and if it all goes wrong you will then have a good base setting to return to as a last resort.

Quick tips

• Splice marks into your main halyard so you know exactly the point to which to lower the main for each reef.
• Practise feeling your angle of heel for night-time helming by sailing upwind with your eyes closed or even facing backwards.
• Put small elastic hoops on the gooseneck fitting to hold reefing rings onto the ram’s horns until the main halyard tension is
  back on.
• In conditions that challenge your speed, consider shorter watches to help your concentration and remember to keep food and drink to hand to avoid long periods away from the deck.
• Talk to your sailmaker about re-rating the boat for non-overlapping headsails; without a crew on the rail you may find the wind range for your No 1 becomes too small to be worth it.

Single-handed ocean sailor Pip Hare has clocked up thousands of miles racing and cruising. Among her achievements are five solo transatlantics, including the OSTAR and two Mini Transat races. She also works full-time for the RNLI on sea safety and is Consulting Editor on Yachting World. See her gear test on weather routeing packages

See also Pip’s fascinating series on advanced sailing techniques: SAIL FASTER SAIL SAFER

The post Sailing upwind when short-handed requires different techniques appeared first on Yachting World.

Before you decide on the best way to run watches double-handed, answer this question: are you sailing double-handed or single-handed in shifts? Successful double-handed teams pushing hard together have often beaten fully crewed entries. To make the most of sailing two-up you both need to be sailing.

Consider at what times over the course of the race will having two people on deck actively sailing make the biggest impact on your speed and when will it make less difference? What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? How will predicted weather conditions affect your performance over the upcoming days?

Watch patterns

How you manage watches and sleep will depend on adapting to conditions, who you are sailing with, any damage to the boat, where your competition is and just how competitive you are feeling. Everyone is different and we cope with physical and mental exertion at different levels and in different ways.

If one of you needs less sleep than the other, then play to that strength, spend more time with both on deck together.

Don’t be afraid to change your watch patterns over the course of a race, and on longer races ensure you are considering your sleeping strategy as an integral part of navigational planning.

Match sleep to the weather

Matching sleep patterns to the weather ensures you don’t miss out on golden opportunities to make miles. Look for the times when having both of you alert and awake, driving the boat, will make a difference. Push yourselves hard to make it through those times: think pumping the main or trimming the kite while one of you is helming, both being on deck for a sail change at the exact moment a front goes over or having the confidence to push on with the spinnaker in those extra three knots of wind because you are both on deck to take it down if things go wrong.

Sailing upwind is often the time to bank some sleep. Autopilots are good at steering upwind and reefing the mainsail is a job easily handled by one. This is a time I would switch to longer watches (sleeping on the high side, of course) to get rested, eat well and save your energy for harder times.

Temperature may also affect the length of a watch: in low latitudes the heat and lack of shade can be difficult, you may choose to run strict short watches during the day, but both push overnight when it is cooler. You might also choose shorter watches in extreme bad weather with the off watch co-skipper sleeping fully kitted up ready to run on deck.

Running a strict watch system allows both of you to have the same – decent – amount of sleep, while other duties such as routine maintenance and navigation can be split between co-skippers to do off-watch.

I choose to fall back on this system if both crew need to recharge their batteries or if having two people on deck would make very little impact on the overall boat speed. Consider the length of your watches, taking into account that it takes around 90-120 minutes to complete a full sleep cycle, and the average time anyone can sustain a high level of concentration is four hours.

Set up your watch system around the maximum time you are happy for your co-skipper to stay on deck, agree to include changing, ablutions and making the tea in off-watch time to ensure no one person is left on deck alone for too long.

Be honest with each other

Extreme tiredness and lack of energy can creep up on even the most accomplished ocean sailor and being honest with yourself and also your co-skipper about injuries, tiredness and performance is crucial to success. Always check your performance against the boat’s polars, if you are alone on deck and struggling to get the boat going, then call up your co-skipper and work on it together.

Be honest with each other about your levels of motivation and how hard you are prepared to push before the race; pushing someone else outside their own acceptable levels of discomfort can be counterproductive. Understanding what these levels are before the start will help to manage conflict on the water.

Learn to nap

Napping is not just for single-handers; learning how to do this will really help your performance. A 20-minute nap will significantly increase your alertness and short-term energy levels. However, sleeping for more than 30 minutes may lead to sleep inertia, making it very hard to wake up.

If you are both struggling with tiredness consider taking alternate short naps until one of you feels alert enough to stay up for a full sleep cycle of 90-120mins while the other crashes.

Quick tips

• If sleeping in foulweather gear, invest in a fleece and Gore-tex blanket to wrap yourself in; your body temperature drops around 1° when you sleep.

• Tuck a mobile phone with a vibrating alarm inside your mid-layer against your collarbone, this can rouse you from deep sleep when a sound alarm may not.

• For most people 0200-0400 is the time in our circadian rhythms we most struggle to stay awake, so consider managing this time with alternate short naps.

• Dehydration will make you sleepy. If you are starting to feel tired, drink water or an electrolyte drink. This should help boost your alertness in the short term.

Single-handed ocean sailor Pip Hare has clocked up thousands of miles racing and cruising. Among her achievements are five solo transatlantics, including the OSTAR and two Mini Transat races. She also works full-time for the RNLI on sea safety and is Consulting Editor on Yachting World. See her gear test on weather routeing packages

See also Pip’s fascinating series on advanced sailing techniques: SAIL FASTER SAIL SAFER

The post How to plan watches and sleep when sailing short-handed appeared first on Yachting World.