Male Speaker: In mix fleet races where you have boats of all different sizes and classes on the race course at the same time, the reach leg can be tough. Bigger or faster boats may try to pass you to windward and there is not much you can do about it unless you’re the biggest, fastest boat.
In cases where one big boat is trying to pass you, it’s not worth fighting for the windward position, let the big boat pass, take the momentary bit of dirty wind and continue your race.
Yes, however if there is large group of big boats trying to pass to windward, fight to send them to leeward. A long line of big boats will blanket you and cause you dearly in position. Don’t head out farther than you have to, and don’t assume every boat that sails the course higher than you is automatically an attacker.
Another boat may set a higher course, but may not actually be correctly positioned to take your wind. In this case, head up a little, but less than the would-be attacker. Everyday you head upon a reach at distance sail to the next mark. If your opponent heads up 10 degrees and you head up just 5, he has just added twice as much distance to the next mark as you have, you’ve extended your lead.
The only time you want to compromise the clear air of your outside position is as you prepare to round the gybe mark. When you are close, you want to position yourself for an in wide out tight approach. Coming around the gybe mark with a high finishing position will ensure you clear air on the next leg.
Remember to establish an overlap on any boats ahead and to the outside of the rounding before you reach two boats lengths from the mark. This over lap entitles you to receive room at the mark from the outside boat, often they will leave you enough to go in wide and out tight. If you don’t establish the overlap, the outside boat can take the inside of the mark and there is nothing you can do about it.
If you are unable to gain the inside on the gybe, it could be better to sail very wide around the mark. You’ll make up for the extra distance sailed with speed and clear air, the result of not being in the middle of the fleet as it rounds the mark. Reaching is fairly simple, put up all the sail you’ve got and sail fast, because all boats are sailing on their fastest angles. There aren’t many opportunities to pass.
This tends to make reaching legs accelerated in terms of speed, but boring in terms of racing. As a result, many race committees are shifting to windward leeward courses because the running legs offer more tactical opportunities and more racy action. At first the running leg of a race may seem like the easy leg; the lazy leg. You just put up the sail and wait to reach the mark, right? wrong. You still have to worry about wind shifts and current, opponents and course position.
Downwind legs tend to bunch fleets up and present opportunities to gain a lot of ground. In light wind we want to sail angles that are nearly as wide as our upwind angle, say 80 to 90 degrees. This means that each gybe carries us through 80 to 90 degrees and they were always sailing at 40 to 45 degrees to the mark. As wind speed accelerates, we can shrink that angle, how much depends on the wind speed and your particular boat. Once, the wind picks up above 50 knots however it’s time to head straight for the mark.
Every boat is different. While this is good rule of thumb for keelboats many planning boats will have far different numbers. You’ll need to experiment with downwind sailing angles in varying conditions until you find the right mix of speed and sailing angles to maximize your downwind performance.
James Chapin: The tactics of the downwind leg are more complicated than just on a reach, because you have to think a little bit more about where the wind is coming from and if there are pops on either side the leg, because suddenly you have a much longer leg than reaches and everybody – there’s a wider variety of angles for people to sail as oppose to just going on one reach over to a mark.
Male Speaker: While there are technically lay lines for downwind as you always eventually fetch the mark, we can use our sailing angle to determine theoretical lay lines. Based on the wind speed you have an optimum downwind sailing angle. Strain outside these lay lines will cause you to sail more distance than is necessary. It’s a good idea to stay away from the lay lines during the middle part of the downwind leg.
Letting yourself get pushed into these corners increases the chances that you’ll be pushed outside the lay lines as we’ll see later. If one side of the course is favored because it had better wind than the other side, that side is obviously still favored. If one side of the course is favored going upwind due to current, the other side is now favored because the current that helped you go upwind will slow you down going downwind. Something to keep in mind with currents, if you have a favorable current pushing you toward the leeward mark, you’ll have some constant leeward movement. This means you can turn early for the leeward mark. If you don’t take this into consideration, you’ll be pushed farther leeward than you need to go and you’ll have to sail extra distance around the mark.
Likewise if the current is against you, you’ll need to sail farther than seems necessary so that you can gybe around the mark. Otherwise the current pushing you back to windward will prevent you from rounding the mark. The downwind leg of a race presents opportunities to extend a lead for to catch up to and pass boats ahead of you. So don’t kick back and relax on the run, attack.
Since you are heading downwind, your wind shadow extends in front of you, use it to attack opponents ahead of you. The farther ahead you are in the fleet however the more time you’ll need to spend looking over your shoulder watching for boats that are trying to steal your wind. If you do find someone has moved in to take your wind, you have two options; head up or gybe. If you are already on the favored tack, you want to head up to remain on the favorite tack. If however the other tack doesn’t present a reason for not sailing it, you could always gybe as oppose to attack the gibers and almost no loss in speed.
Because the gybe lets you maintain your speed downwind, the reason is much calculated that has to be done when determining whether or not to change tack downwind. Whereas upwind minimizing tacks was a good practice. Downwind, you want to chase every wind shift and puff you can.
Terminology and response to wind shifts downwind may seem backwards at first. Being headed is a good thing while being lifted is a bad thing. Headed tacks are once were the apparent wind moves forward. While this is a bad thing going upwind, because it meant we had to fall off or sacrifice speed. Going downwind, we want to fall off. Falling off will take us closer to the mark so we want to sail the headed tack and gybe on the lifted tack. Because your boat and the wind are now moving in the same direction, the closure rate between your boat and puffs and wind shifts is diminished.
Upwind, you are sailing into the wind so you past the puffs and wind shaft faster. Downwind, it’ll take longer for them to reach you so it will seem like there are fewer wind shifts going downwind. This also means that their durations will be longer. So if you see a puff, gybe immediately to riding.
As we mentioned before, you want to avoid the corners when you’re sailing downwind. If an opponent were to come along and try to blanket you with his wind shadow, you got nowhere to go except outside the lines. At this point, your opponent has effectively passed you as you’ll need to sail more distance or at a higher angle and thus slower speed to reach the mark.
If you find yourself behind the fleet approaching the leeward mark, here is an idea. Most of the fleet will be approaching on the lay line, on port tack. If you at a windward of the fleet, sail to near the opposite lay line and approach on starboard. Right away, rules require the other boats in the fleet give way to you, allowing you to force your way in and around the mark. This maneuver is best on before the two boat length circle is reached. So as to avoid the confusion between the starboard port right-of-way rules that apply on the course and the mark rounding rules that apply inside the two boat length circle.
Be sure to get yourself inside the room even if you have to gybe to the fleet to get it. This maneuver will pay dividends when you round up and start the next upwind leg, you’ll have clear air and good position. As with any mark rounding, you need to have a strategy for the next leg before you round the mark. Remember to take into account cold wind straight and anything strange you notice on the last upwind leg.
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