ONE DESIGN
Above left
Plenty of mainsail
twist downwind
keeps the boat
tracking and the
slot between
spinnaker and
mainsail consistent
Above
Communication
will help keep
the boat surfing
Below
Ensuring you set
up for power is
vital in wavesoten than not, teams cross the inish
line, have a tidy up and then take a break
for a drink or some food. But we try to
do the opposite. We inish the race, have
a quick chat about set-up, and change
it if we need to for the next race there
and then – based on the forecast and
how we went in the previous race.
“Ater we have changed our set-up
(or decided to keep it the same) we will
do some upwinds, maybe a few tacks
and see how the boat feels with the new
set-up. If we are then happy with how
the boat is going, and we are tidied
away and completely ready to start
another race, that is the time we allow
ourselves a moment to eat something.”HOLD YOUR LANE
Most racing sailors should have a
procedure by which they prepare forracing: get out early; do a full upwind;
track shits; take a transit, etc. It is
an unfortunate fact, however, in this
sport that no matter how much time
is put in before the race, should you
fail to keep a decent lane immediately
out of the start, your chances of
getting to the windward mark in, or
near, the lead are very slim indeed.
“It’s really important to practise
lane holding of a startline,” Charlie
elaborates. “In particular if you don’t
manage to create enough gauge
between you and the boat to leeward
then you will very quickly ind your
speed dropping of and you will fall
behind them in dirty air and/or be
rolled by the boats to windward.
“Typically if you need to build height
you can wind a little bit of kicker on,
inhaul the jib a touch and use someofthespeedyouhavetogaugeofto
windward – even on boats without a
jib inhauler it is oten possible to run a
little bit of windward jib sheet tension
to bring the clew closer inboard.
“he trick that some people miss is
that you have to be very dynamic when
doing this as it is easy to lose all your
speed. Before that happens, loosening
the kicker, cracking the jib back of and
fractionally dropping the bow should
help you build a bit of speed before using
that to, once again, re-trim and create
ground to weather. he really good
teams will be able to understand just
before the boat is about to stall out in
high mode and drop a little bow down
to build speed almost instinctively. It
takes quite a lot of practise to understand
the feel of a boat just before she stalls,
but it is well worth practising as it
is something that can make a huge
diference to your overall result.”
Charlie adds that training days with
another boat are instrumental when
working on this sort of dynamic trim.
Find another team that is willing to
spend some time outside of racing
and take turns to be the leeward or
windward boat and see how much of
a gap the windward boat can generate
without dropping back. “To get this
right requires the whole crew to be in
sync as you will be sailing on the edge48 Yachts & Yachting July 2018 yachtsandyachting.co.uk