Connecting the Lulls

I watched my team have some very frustrating races in a fleet racing regatta on Saturday.  The wind built through the day from about 5 knots to 14 knots, but conditions remained shifty and puffy all day.  Everyone had some trouble with the shifts, finding themselves on the wrong side of them way too often, but the best teams seemed to do a good job of finding the puffs.  Sailing in the puffs was routinely 10% faster and occasionally 50% faster than sailing in the lulls.  Although it was difficult to stay in a puff for very long, even downwind, those who connected the puffs the best were consistently ahead of those who didn’t.

As I watched our best skipper and crew have two uncharacteristically bad races, I wondered how they could be in the wrong place at the wrong time so often.  We’ve all had races like that, but twice in a row? – particularly after 4 solid races at the top of the fleet.  Like most bad races, they began with a poor start.  With as little as two feet to as much as a whole boat length off the line at the gun, there was a guarantee of sailing in dirty air for the first minute or two.  With few opportunities to find clear air, our sailors were stuck in disturbed air until those ahead eked out bigger leads or got a puff and took off. 

I always try to be optimistic about eventually getting clear air, but the truth is there is always a lot of work to do after giving the others a head start.  Fortunately, in lake sailing, the shifts and puffs provide opportunities to gain back the distance lost with a poor start.  Unfortunately, those ahead have the best chance to get those shifts and puffs first.  I’m not sure what our sailors were thinking, but they seemed to forget the concept of “connecting the puffs.”  Even the mid-fleet boats were getting some of the puffs while our team seemed to remain in the lighter spots.  At one point, a mid-fleet boat capsized in a big puff, righted the boat, and remained ahead of our team.

I do not always keep my cool in these instances, and in our post-race debriefing, I told the kids they “did a remarkable job of connecting the lulls.”  I added, “With all the puffs out there, it’s hard to believe you avoided so many of them.”  They thought I was mean.  I thought I failed to give the needed encouragement in a difficult situation.  I could have at least offered the cliché, “Keep your head out of the boat,” but all concerned were just too disappointed to think clearly.

How did it all go wrong?  With a little time to reflect, I think connecting the lulls was caused by a combination of impatience and confusing lulls with headers.  When other boats were sailing higher and faster in the puffs, it was hard to accept that their puffs might soon subside or their wind might shift and remember that the best we could do was sail to the next puff within our own reach.  The lull started to feel like a header (a boat going slowly can’t point as high as a boat going faster), so there was an irresistible temptation to tack.  That subsequent tack in the lull was very laborious and after completing it, the sailors found themselves still going low and slow.  Having completely lost sight of finding a puff, they thought, “It must be another header!” and they desperately tacked again.  Instead of sailing through the lull toward more wind, they ended up spending needless time in the lull.  With a little patience and clarity, they might have spotted the next puff and sailed toward it.  Instead, by doing a couple of lengthy tacks in the lull, they insured that the only puff they would get would be one that found them.  The puffs did not find them.

yarg

Varsity Letters in Sailing

Since sailing became a varsity sport, I get to deal  with the absolutely silly notion of varsity letters.  It’s just so high school.  One more thing to establish bragging rights over others.  One more thing for the college resumé.  One of the benefits of being a grown up is that I shouldn’t have to play high school anymore.  One of my grown up skills is avoidance of uncomfortable situations, so on our sailing team we just award varsity letters to everyone. 

At best, I think about it like awarding Super Bowl rings to everyone associated with the team - everyone contributes in some way to the success of the team.  Making distinctions between degrees of accomplishment or degrees of value to the team seems more often to create bad feelings of inadequacy than good feelings of achievement.  The kids at the top of the pecking order or depth chart know where they are and do not need a varsity letter to feel a sense of accomplishment.  The kids not at the top need encouragement and focus on continued improvement, and do not need an awards banquet that ignores or minimizes them in front of their friends.  They’re teenagers for God’s sake.  Are there any people more vulnerable to feelings of inadequacy than teenagers?

Aside from that sentiment, I can't come up with criteria that are really fair.  First, the different levels are fluid on our team.  Rather than have a so-called varsity sailor sit on the bench for a varsity event, I prefer to give him/her sailing time at the JV level.  (We hold both varsity and JV head to head meets at the same time.)  Some kids sail mostly in JV meets, but do a couple of varsity ones.  Does one varsity event make a varsity sailor?  If not one, how many?  For those who decide to be crews, the pairing up with skippers is more a matter of personalities than skill.  Some pair with a steady varsity skipper and get to sail in varsity events regularly.  Others pair up with a lesser skipper, but the chemistry makes the skipper much better than he or she would otherwise be.  The pairing does not necessarily represent meaningful differences in skill or overall value to the team, especially when considering the long term.  Some freshmen decide to be skippers and almost always sail JV all year.  They are usually more accomplished sailors than the crews who might be sailing in varsity events, but I want them to have that year as a skipper because in their overall development, that extra year at the helm can make a lot of difference by senior year.  For skippers who do events at both levels, who sails at what level depends mostly on the overall talent level of the team, not on the skills of an individual sailor.  We currently have 11 skippers and crews who would have been among the top 4 on the team five years ago.

Our mission as sailing coaches is to help the kids improve their skills and learn about the hard work and sportsmanship associated with sports.  If varsity letters are supposed to be a measure of accomplishment, they miss the mark on every important thing we are doing.  The harm in that is that it sends the wrong message to the kids.  When the measurement is useless, give everyone a prize.  The kids who are stars throughout their high school career are great, but a kid who progresses from just learning how to sail as a freshman to the number one or two sailor on the team by senior year is the bigger success story.  Similarly, the kid who matures into a leader on his team is achieving one of the big picture goals of high school sports, even if he is not the best sailor.  Varsity letters and the lack thereof have nothing to do with the important stuff.  It’s just so high school.

yarg

21st Century Chalk Talks in High School Sailing

When there is no longer enough time in the sailing day to teach sailing in the preferred format, what is the best alternative? Can you take a little time from each part of the universally accepted “best practices” structure – direct instruction (chalk talks), rigging, sailing, de-rigging, and debriefing – and make it work? Call me skeptical, but after years of trying, I don’t think I can make kids rig or de-rig noticeably faster. I also don’t think I can take much time from my 5 – 10 minute debrief. If I could explain any of the things I cover in chalk talks any quicker, I would have done it by now. That leaves shortening the sailing time…. Really? To shorten the sailing time significantly seems tantamount to giving up on the idea of a quality program.

How did I get into this mess? A little background……..

I have been coaching high school sailing for a number of years now and have always enjoyed the freedom to structure our schedule of practices and events in whatever way seems to work best. There has always been a need to strike a balance between how much time (and fun) we are allowed to have sailing and the academic and other demands of students’ schedules. Until now, the coaches, students and parents have been able to work out a schedule that works well for the overwhelming majority of those involved. No more.

Now, the principal has imposed limits on the amount of time devoted to sports. Two years ago, he and a certain faction of the school community succeeded in changing the schedule of the school day, pushing the start and finish times almost an hour later. The idea is that the late schedule may be more in sync with natural teenage circadian rhythms (sleep cycles), thus getting them more sleep. Dinner time has not changed in most households, so after school time has been the part of the day that has been truncated. While those involved in sports could see the writing on the wall and voiced their concerns, the late start faction promised cooperation in making things work. Turns out, year one worked well enough for sports programs shortened by 0 - 20 minutes but other after school/before sports activities were hit harder. In year two, the pendulum (axe) is swinging the other way and time for sports is getting cut even more, with the same mandatory time constraints being imposed across the board for all sports. Doesn’t matter what happens to the sports programs. Doesn’t matter how the kids feel about it.

Why does modern life so often come down to choices between the lesser of evils?

After thinking carefully about the specifics of our program and our collection of kids, my approach is to eliminate the standard chalk talk from our standard sailing day. That should allow the other parts of the day to remain intact. But I can’t really live without the content covered in the talks, so I have to provide it in a variety of other ways.

The first thing I have done is explain the schedule restrictions, and my adjustments to them, to the team, and ask for their cooperation in reducing the usual chaos that comes from dealing with a group of 30 teenagers. In lieu of daily verbal explanations to the group, boat assignments and the day’s activities are posted before practice begins. Three minutes after report time, boat and crew assignments are adjusted for any unexpected absentees. There is no more waiting for late comers, and those who are tardy may lose their boat or crew or both.

Sailors are expected to handle rigging and getting out on the water on their own. Boats are assigned to the same skipper every day and hardware issues are dealt with after the previous day’s practice, not during rigging time. Freeing myself from the boat mechanic role allows me to communicate with individual sailors about the drills or other special concerns. We do this as we rig.

We are lucky that we have a good balance between skippers who were on the team last year and new freshman (most with some sailing experience) who can crew for them. Experienced skippers give me confidence that each boat can be handled with enough skill to ensure safety in all but the most severe conditions. The experienced skippers can also serve as teachers and mentors for their freshmen crews. Another advantage of veteran skippers is that they have done most of our drills before and therefore require little or no explanation.

For teaching new skills, I have two options. On days with no wind or too much wind and there is little or no sailing time, I will do a long chalk talk. Hopefully kids can connect that talk to the sailing despite the separation in time and space. The other option is to communicate electronically with whatever material I can produce or find. So far I have used Youtube videos, US Sailing videos, documents scanned from books and other paper handouts, sailing websites, original text, original Powerpoints, and photos. I would love to use some of the CD ROM and DVD material I personally use in a classroom setting, but I think there are copyright laws to discourage this. I also haven’t quite mastered the technology required to do it. I feel like I’m teaching at Phoenix University.

I have several first impressions of this methodology. I am very impressed that the kids have embraced the demand for more personal responsibility. Tardiness has all but vanished and they have been very good at advance notification of absences. (It seems that telling them they absolutely cannot practice before a certain time causes them to show up early and start rigging.) Kids are doing a better job of taking care of their boats and fixing things before they break. I have relinquished the job of crowd controller and cat herder and focus far more on giving individual attention to those who follow all the instructions and work at developing the skills. The vast majority of the kids are taking advantage of this.

On the other hand, I still worry that the freshmen are not getting enough basic instruction. This methodology would never work with a preponderance of new sailors. I worry that many people do not absorb the material as well when presented this way. I worry that questions aren’t being asked. I worry that some may simply ignore the electronic presentations and therefore, that I have little sense of what they know and don’t know. And lastly, I worry that the “go go, hurry up” version of sailing reduces the social connections between sailors.

Much of the time we used to “waste” was spent making friends, and that, after all, is what keeps most of us sailing.

yarg

Nothing 1000 Tacks Can’t Fix

I recently returned from a terrific four day Laser sailing clinic at Sailfit in Clearwater, Florida. I went with four of my regular sailing buddies, and all of us agree that we had a great time and learned a ton about laser sailing. It’s hard to say what the best parts of it were, but here is a list of choices:
• Small class of 6 people
• Entire group at more or less the same skill level
• How-to instruction from a bone fide expert and great teacher, Kurt Taulbee
• Individual, on the water coaching, one skill at a time
• Coaching to match our skill level and needs
• Video tape review of our sailing showing what we do well and what we do poorly
• Instruction on fitness and nutrition from another bona fide expert, Meka Taulbee
• Expert answers to every question we could think of
• Camaraderie with sailing buddies
• Warm water
• Escape from New England weather

Like many adult sailors and racers, I have attended my share of sailing seminars, heard one to two hour talks on the nuances of sailing a specific type of boat, and purchased a bookshelf of books and videos from experts and champions. Also like most adult racers, I have raced regularly, but practiced infrequently. I have sailed in some big regattas, trying to pick up tips and tricks from the experts, but I have not had any real coaching since the first “how to sail” lessons.

It’s amazing how much different getting some real coaching, especially from an expert, is from trying to improve sailing skills in the other ways. It is one thing to watch the champion on a video tape, but quite another to do what he does. Monkey see, monkey do has its limits. How do you know if you are doing what the champion did? Most of us can be pretty sure we’re not doing all of it, but what parts are we doing right and what parts are we doing wrong? What do we have to change? Kurt at Sailfit was great at sorting that out, and he has saved me years in trying to figure those things out myself.

I think he did the same things for all the other members of the group as well. His individualized feedback identified different strengths and weakness for each of us as we went through various skills. We each surprised ourselves a little in some of the things we did well. One of us could stand on the side deck and sail the Laser like an experienced surfer. The rest of us - not so good at that. Two others loved blind tacking. The rest - not so good at that. One could comfortably sail down wind, healed 45 degrees to windward right at the point of capsize. The rest looked more like old geezers. The process also revealed for each of us tendencies toward our own particular set of bad habits. We came away with individual lists of things to work on and Kurt’s voice in our heads telling us what we need to do to complete each skill better.

The last thing I came away with is Kurt’s response to fixing a bad habit or developing a new technique – “It’s nothing 1000 tacks can’t fix.” I don’t know if this line sticks with me because it appeals to a Midwestern hard work ethic or because it appeals to a high school coach who blows whistles through seemingly endless tacking drills. Whatever the reason, I know he’s right. But it begs the question “Are we willing to do the 1000 tacks?” Most sailors never really do them. We tend to read books and watch videos and “understand” it in our heads, but never really train our bodies to automatically execute the skills. We are also smart enough to realize that after the 1000 tacks, there are 1000 gybes, 1000 mark roundings (I suppose that’s really 1000 upwind and 1000 downwind), and 1000 starts (2000 in my case). Who’s got the time? It’s enough to make me really tired. Maybe 500 tacks are enough. Maybe 250. Oh god, I need a beer!

As soon as the weather is warmer and the wind is right and I have the time and……….., I’m going out and start those 1000 tacks. No, really. I’m going to try.

Gumption

Last Saturday was the final day on the fall sailing season for the high school team I coach. Actually Thursday was the last official day, but four of them wanted to drive two hours to get in one last day and one last regatta. You gotta love those people who can’t get enough of the things they are passionate about and respond to each last time or last day with a plea for “just one more.”

Maybe a coach shouldn’t be happy after his team finishes seventh in an eight boat regatta, but after silencing the Vince Lombardi voice in my head, it occurred to me I was proud of my very young freshman and sophomore sailors who thought nothing of going head to head with the best varsity junior and seniors from other schools. It took me a while to really pinpoint why I was so proud of them, but out of the blue, despite years since I have heard, read, or spoken the word, the perfect word came to me – gumption. Gumption is a word that seems to be out of fashion, but it sounds great and is enthusiastically positive without being syrupy or trite.

Dictionaries offer many definitions for gumption – initiative, resourcefulness, courage, spunk, guts, common sense – but the definition I like best comes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.

“A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.”

It took gumption just to get to this regatta. When the event was first discussed, it was explained that it was two hours away, that the school would not provide transportation, that the school prohibited the coach from driving students in his own car, and that kids therefore had to provide their own transportation. None of the varsity skippers was prepared to hurdle those obstacles, but the future star freshman, and head gumption-eer immediately responded with “I’ll go. My mom will drive.”
“Has she agreed to that?”
“Not yet, but she will.”
The very talented out of town sophomore who sails with us, but is usually prohibited from competing in official school competitions, said he “would clear his schedule” for some outside competition. The freshman’s regular crew, our team captain, responded with her usual “I have no life outside sailing; I’m available.” And a few days later the volunteer for everything sophomore who always wants to go “even if I’m not sailing” offered to crew. The plan was hatched. We committed to the regatta.

It took a little more gumption to stick to that commitment after a series of setbacks. Future star freshman sprained her ankle the weekend before the regatta. She couldn’t sail all week, but swore she would heal enough and tape up the ankle sufficiently to sail on Saturday. On Wednesday the very talented (best kid on our team) out of town kid thanked me for a great season and said he now had a family obligation on regatta day. A call for a volunteer replacement elicited only one sophomore who was a crew and not a skipper. The only solution was to elevate the volunteer for everything sophomore from crew to skipper, and although he just started to drive the boat this year, and is about ninth on our depth chart, he was our man. None of the kids thought of any of this as an obstacle; it was just an adjustment in the plan.

When it came to the racing, there were six races in the A fleet for future star freshman and her crew, and six races in B fleet for volunteer for everything sophomore and his crew. In the first five races, future star freshman was averaging sixth place out of eight and volunteer for everything sophomore was averaging seventh. But in the final race for each, things started to fall into place. Future star freshman advanced from sixth at the windward mark to first on the last leg and then lost one boat to finish second. Volunteer for everything sophomore put together a good first leg to be fourth at the windward mark and gained one boat to finish third.

In our own gumption based scoring system, we threw out the first five races, counted only the last race in each fleet, and won the regatta by one point.

My sailors impressed themselves with what they accomplished in those final races, but they really impressed me with the gumption that it took to get them that opportunity for success.

As I think about it, maybe one of the things I like most about sailing is the gumption of the sailors. High schoolers are frequently willing to risk repeated capsizing and challenge themselves to sail in strong wind that the coaches know they can’t handle. Blue water sailors, long distance ocean racers, and solo single handed round the world racers all possess incredible knowledge and skill, but they are all the more admirable because of the gumption they demonstrate in pursuing their challenges.

And a final shout out goes to a couple of my friends who had the gumption to fly to England, compete with world class sailors, push the limits of their aging (and in one case, sick) bodies, and test the limits of their small boat sailing abilities in overpowering wind and massive waves. You have my admiration.

Autobailers- Part One

Keeping it simple?

Autobailer side view - open

Some time ago, Paul Elevstrom came up with a simple solution for removing the water that accumulates in the cockpit when sailing small boats in big wind and waves. He used the fundamental Bernoulli principle (low pressure created by moving fluids – you remember) to invent the autobailer. In Lasers, 420’s, and other small boats I have seen, the autobailers all have the same basic design. A chute that can open and close is mounted at the lowest point of the hull and depends on suction caused when the boat is moving rapidly forward to remove water from the boat. It has “a wedge shaped venturi that closes automatically if the boat grounds or hits an obstruction, and a flap that acts as a non return valve to minimise water coming in if the boat is stationary or moving too slowly for the device to work.” (Description from Wikipedia, with British spelling of minimize.) Mr. Elevstrom’s autobailers have been bailing small racing boats for a long time now.

But wait! Autobailers have also been letting significant amounts of water leak into small boats for a long time now. Maybe cutting a hole in the bottom of a boat to let the water out is not such a simple solution. Isn’t that how boats sink?

I think many of us have had love/hate relationships with autobailers over the years. Sometimes they seem to work, and sometimes they cause annoying leaks. My experience is that they work well when they are installed, maintained, and used properly, but when those things are done poorly, the system breaks down quickly and the water flows the wrong way, sometimes in copious amounts. I suspect Paul Evelstrom was very good at care and maintenance. I certainly try to be good about those things with my Laser, but don’t always live up to his or my own standard. However, many small boat owners don’t believe in maintenance. They hate autobailers.

Among those who abhor maintenance are all of the sailors on the high school sailing team I coach. They not only abhor maintenance, they are inclined to practice abject neglect or worse on all of their equipment. Fighting these instincts in upper-middle class American teenagers is a tilting at windmills kind of exercise. Apparently, it is one of my callings.

We have a fleet of twelve old 420’s, no maintenance person or budget, and our boats, which are shared with the town recreation department, are heavily used. Despite ever improving preventative maintenance (done mostly by me), things still break – frequently. Although problems run the gamut in older boats, the overwhelmingly most frequent failure is leaking, nay, hemorrhaging autobailers. These devices depend on two different gaskets and a silicone or 3M5200 seal - three opportunities for water infiltration. For two years now, our favorite solution has been to tape over bailers with a 4” wide, waterproof tape which obviously also eliminates any possible benefit from autobailers. For several reasons, this approach has had various degrees of success, but it seems the “coach, my boat leaks” complaints never stop.

In fairness to the kids, some of the boats had seriously flawed autobailers by the time we got them. On top of that, we launch from a beach. Raising the main and putting on the rudders while standing in the shallow water stirs up the bottom enough to create an insidious slurry cloud that exposes all underwater parts to as much sand as water. Sand on the sailors’ boots also gets deposited inside the boat when they hop in. Rubber gasketed autobailers are just no match for sand that can penetrate the smallest of crevices. I can’t imagine the perfection in care and maintenance required to keep a bailer opening freely and closing tightly in these conditions.

With all due respect and deference to Paul Elevstrom, autobailers demand a high level of care and maintenance that is just not possible for us (and many others I suspect). A device that uses simple mechanics and physics turns out to be not so simple when operated by teenagers in a sandy environment. For us, a hole in the bottom of the boat is just a leak.

We won’t miss having working autobailers. They really don’t work well in the 420 anyway until the boat is going fast. Our courses are always short and don’t offer long fast straight-aways where the self-bailers work best.

The solution for us is a bleach bottle bailer and no hole in the bottom of the boat. Since all our boats came with an autobailer, the problem became how to remove them and plug the holes (twelve times) with a minimum of cost and effort. Necessity being the mother of invention, we came up with a way.

I haven’t heard a leaking boat complaint in six weeks, so I’m cautiously optimistic we may have found a relatively simple and definitely cheap solution for the hole in our boats.

Part Two will attempt to explain and illustrate our approach.

Yarg

Windward Gates

Maybe I get bored easily. I know that high school students get bored easily. We’ve done the drills. We need to keep doing the drills and keep building the skills, but after two months, enough is enough. So after eight weeks of sailing four days a week, what can I do to make the last few days of the season interesting? The last week should be about fun.

The day planned for “Poag Ball,” a version of Ultimate Frisbee played on the water with a soccer ball, had absolutely no wind and was a complete bust. The other days had too much wind for a game where collisions were likely, but they were ideal for racing – racing that was some how different than it had been all fall.

At the end of every season, we have an intramural regatta with formal scorekeeping and a perpetual trophy for the winning pair (double handed boats). In all honesty, the competitiveness of this event is limited. There is usually a fairly clear pecking order of sailors, so the regatta is more of a jostling to swap positions with the guy just ahead of you than it is a wide open contest. Two may challenge one, but six won’t. Similarly, the new freshman will not seriously challenge seniors who are still in the middle of the pecking order. The final results for a day with many races are usually fairly predictable.

This year, my goal for the event was to make each race as competitive as possible within this framework of highly varied skill levels. My solution was to borrow an idea I have seen only once before. At last year’s 25 boat state championship regatta, Fran Charles, the sailing master at MIT, set windward leeward courses with gates at both ends, leeward and windward.

Leeward gates are becoming commonplace. I suppose they are intended to prevent massive pileups and reduce fouling and protests. They also change the dynamics of the race. A single leeward mark rounding rewards the winner of the contest for inside room by increasing his lead as the other boats round wide or fall a boat length or more behind each other to stay close to the mark. It also allows boats ahead to use boat on boat tactics going upwind to maintain the lead. But by having a gate, a boat that is essentially tied can remain that way by choosing the other mark. Perhaps even more important is that the two boats are now heading different directions, sailing in different wind. Boat to boat tactics are eliminated here. Each boat is sailing against the course more than against the other boat. Choosing the favored gate may be more important than getting inside room, if one has to choose. Gates give the boats behind far more opportunity to challenge the boats ahead.

A windward gate has the same characteristics, but occurs much earlier in the race. This keeps those behind much closer to the leaders as they go down wind. It also makes each sailor think about where she should be on the course to maximize wind shifts and puffs. Overall, the use of gates tends to make racing more about playing the wind, and less about tactics and raw boat speed.

I actually tried this out twice. The first was our intramural regatta, where there was a gate at the windward end only. I reasoned that the fleet would spread out so much by the leeward end of the course that a gate was unnecessary – wrong! The course was successful enough that we built on the idea the next day in a “mixed doubles” regatta. This teamed crews who had not sailed together (or not much) this fall, and put freshmen with seniors, sophomores with juniors, and girls with boys. This time we used a leeward gate as well and a closed start finish line in the middle. The first time we finished with the expected pecking order, but 8 of 11 boats has at least one top three finish for the day. The second time two edged out one, four advanced to three, a freshman (with one of the best crews) vaulted from eight to four, and 9 of 12 boats had a top three finish.

I really like that so many kids had that one good race. I love it when the newbies beat the cocky seniors once in a while. It builds confidence and motivation. If they can do it once, they can do it again! I like finding a way to emphasize the importance of reading the shifts and puffs, even in short course racing. I like mixing things up a little in a way that the kids had lots of fun. And I like that coaches and sailors alike found the windward gate made for competitive, interesting and entertaining racing.

It looks like I’m saying that I like windward gates!

RAD Sails

Thanks to the support of my Athletic Director and the town Recreation Director, my sailing team has a great new toy to play with - Intensity’s new RAD (reduced area design) 420 mainsails. In combination with a standard jib, these are a cross between storm sails and full size sails, with most of the virtues of both.

These sails are a solution to a host of problems from both the coach’s and the sailors’ perspectives.

For the sailors, there is always a upper wind limit beyond which their performance diminishes rapidly. For newer and lighter weight sailors, this limit is reached pretty quickly. For experienced sailors, the limit is higher, but there are still several days each season that excessive wind causes us to sail badly or not at all.

From the coach’s perspective, repeated capsizes by the less experienced sailors undermine or prevent other organized group activities. Leaving some sailors on the shore makes running a practice or a meet manageable, but denies opportunities for the land-bound to expand their skills in the very conditions where they can move up to the next level.

RAD sails give us an opportunity to deal with all of this. We have now used them on several occasions, and I love them! They give us just the opportunities I was hoping for. The freshman can use RAD sails while the other sailors use full sails, making many of those questionable days very productive. We had one day with a weather forecast of gusts to 40 (they were actually never above the high 20’s) in which everyone used RAD sails. We only had one capsize, and the team got some much needed time in heavy and very gusty conditions. We now choose our sails to match the wind conditions and don’t miss any sailing time.

Intensity spent some time developing these sails and seems to have gotten it just right. They are small enough to keep more boats upright but don’t just function as a survival sail. The main is still large enough to use with a standard jib without throwing the boat out of balance. They are naturally a little slower than full sails, especially downwind, but they are not dogs. All of the same sail trim techniques used for the full sails apply when using RAD sails, but they are simply easier to handle and more forgiving. I think they will be very useful in the teaching process. Kids can develop skills of ease-hike-trim, feathering, and heavy air gybing with a little more margin for error, but they are also rewarded for successful sail handling. We have found that the sails are plenty powerful enough to get the boat on a plane.


The whole team is excited that we now have so few limitations on when we can sail, and the kids love that they can have the fun of sailing in the big breeze with fewer negative consequences. The coaches love that we have the flexibility to maximize sailing opportunities for everyone, while maintaining safety and managing the potential chaos. I think Intensity did a great job of developing a product that opens up sailing opportunities to newer, lighter sailors and to all sailors in heavy conditions. RAD sails are a terrific asset to our sailing program!RAD Sails

Resume *’s

On the way to a high school regatta this weekend, my best sailor was beginning to write a resume he wanted to submit to college sailing coaches. He was reviewing his personal accomplishments and those of the team over the last couple of years. As we recalled our final standings, he kept asking the same question – “Can I explain that I would have finished ….. if it weren’t for…………?” I explained to him that there are no footnotes in resume writing – just the facts, usually simplified.

Upon reflection, I wondered what a resume would look like with a bunch of asterisks explaining the details of the basic facts. It would surely be silly. The writer would appear to be an excuse maker, amplifying his shortcomings and revealing his less than perfect accomplishments as failures.

But for a coach, the series of asterisks could serve a positive purpose. If each asterisk represented a lesson learned, the resume would become a list of really important things discovered about how to improve sailing performance. If from each of our mistakes, we found out how to avoid repeating the mistake, we would be very successful indeed. To a college coach, what is high school sailing but a place to make a few mistakes and learn as much as one can?

Here’s what the asterisk part of my sailor’s resume for last year might have looked like:

* At state championship, would have finished second in division instead of fifth if I had not protested another boat who claimed inside room at a mark and then been DSQed myself. Apparently, you have to give him room and protest, not hit him and protest. Team would have finished third instead of fifth.

* At post-season team race regatta, beat the team that won, but finished third because our team sailed the first two races before really waking up. In one of these races, all three of our boats gave away the start to a very good team, and in another, we failed to capitalize on opportunities we routinely take advantage of, and then we sailed poorly to lose boats we were trying to cover.

* At post-season team race regatta, I held onto the 1 in a 1,4,5, as conventional wisdom suggests, only to watch the other team hook a teammate on the downwind leg and take him to 6; thus we lost instead of won. Repeated this losing strategy in next race. Lost regatta by virtue of these two races.

* At fleet race regatta, my team finished first on the water, but third after protests when a teammate was DSQed for tacking too close to the one sailor we had seen protest everything possible over the course of the season. (The team that was second on the water ended up fourth after a protest with the same protest everything team.)

* At fleet race regatta, finished second, both individually and as a team, after blowing away the field because I grazed the committee boat, and the RC said nothing at the time, but protested later. RC’s don’t have to notify competitors of their intention to protest. If I had taken my penalty spin, I could have finished last in that race and still won the regatta, but in high school a DSQ is everyone plus 4.

Writing this kind of resume is a good way to reaffirm lessons learned the hard way. I hope it served that purpose for my sailor.

If I were a college coach, I would love to have a kid who could sail fast, team race well, and never make the above mistakes again!

Can’t Worry Today

At the request of the author, I reviewed his new book, Saving Sailing, in my last post. I like the book, and overall recommend it, but I have to comment on the supposed decline of sailing.

The book begins with an important statistic: Participation is down more the 40% since 1997 and 70% since 1979. Hmmm……. Maybe you can’t argue with statistics. I suppose according to some methodology these numbers are correct. But do they match your experience? They don’t match mine.

In my humble experience, I did not observe any declines in the 80’s. As the 80’s turned into the 90’s, there was some reshuffling of the fleets at my local club, where one fleet would shrink and another grow. If the 90’s saw a decline, it was very small. I think I see some signs of decline recently, but there are other growth areas countering the declines. It’s hard to keep score overall. All my evidence is personal and anecdotal, but it does not add up to the dire statistics.

Just today, I ran across some more anecdotal evidence. I opened up the latest copy of Sailing World and found several stories suggesting growth or rebirth in sailing. In this single issue, there are stories about the following:

• The birth of a laser fleet in Utah where there was none. They get 20 boats racing on a Tuesday night!
• The rebuilding of the Southern Yacht Club after it was obliterated by Hurricane Katrina
• A “discovery” of a great regatta in Barbados
• An article on radio controlled sailboat racing
• An article about the first kiteboard course-racing world championship
• The never ending new boats reviews
• A blurb about the president of the Thistle class who promised to style his hair into a purple Mohawk if both the Junior Nationals and Women’s Nationals could attract 15 boats each. Many sailors helped with the haircut and dye job.

I’m sure there are some things to worry about, but I’m too busy today reading Sailing World and coaching my 26 sailor high school sailing team.

Saving Sailing - A Review

As a response to my post Sailing: The Reports of Its Death Are Exaggerated, Nick Hayes asked me to review his new book, Saving Sailing, examining the dilemma I discussed, the apparent decline of the sport and the contrary instances of wild enthusiasm for it. So here goes.

It is obviously difficult to make generalizations about sailing because it takes so many different forms with so many different relationships between sailors and their sport. Nicholas Hayes takes on this “mission impossible” in order to find some general truths and come up with some specific conclusions. The major virtue of the book is that it explains and advocates ways in which the quality of the sailing experience can be improved for current sailors and transmitted to prospective and future sailors. Hayes’ interesting and insightful analysis and conclusions offer some solutions for protecting the core quality and values of the sport. The implication is that improving and guaranteeing the quality of the sailing experience will translate into more overall participation.

At the very heart of both the lack of participation problem and the solution is a very interesting discussion about the use of time. Hayes makes a distinction between “time choices” and what he calls, “time charters.” A time choice is “a slice of time that we take into our own hands, that we give shape to.” A time charter is “made for us by other people,” a thing we consume, subscribe to, or are entertained by; it is a product and something we buy. Movies and theme parks are example of time charters. They deliver a pre-packaged experience. A time choice requires some personal investment, big or small, and “becomes a source of pride and personal and community growth” when it succeeds and becomes a lesson when it doesn’t meet expectations. In our current culture, time charters are becoming more popular and time choices less so. Hayes suggests that we collectively and personally re-examine our behavior to spend time in more rewarding and valuable ways, and that this leads us to finding meaningful “Life Pastimes.”

Hayes believes that the future and value of sailing depends on personal relationships. Aside from the pleasure sailors take in sharing their experiences with each other, they must share their enthusiasm across generational lines to ensure the future success of the sport. He cites some encouraging statistics showing that 92% of all sailors are willing to facilitate the learning of others in some way. But he also explains a multitude of ways in which it is very difficult to pass on a commitment to a “Life Pastime” to other people and to the next generation. He claims that leaders and teachers, as valuable as they are, are not enough. What is required are mentors.

Hayes has some strong opinions about how kids can be brought into the sailing community in such a way as to develop a “Life Pastime.” He speaks harshly of sailing programs where kids are dumped off and picked up by taxi driver parents who want to expose their kids to a variety of activities, without really being committed to or involved in any of them. Too many of these kids never become sailors. Sailing programs, he says, are not typically very good at developing the mentoring relationships that are required to make a kid into a sailor.

Unfortunately, the mentor / mentee relationship is complicated, and there are not enough mentors. He says mentoring “requires a commitment from the mentor that is usually reserved for one’s own offspring.” From here, his focus turns to families where an older generation family member is a successful mentor to a younger person. Youth programs should find ways to involve parents, and parents should work both with programs, and independently from them, to develop mentoring relationships. This requires the parents to make time choices for their families via “Life Pastimes” which span a time continuum across the generations.

Hayes’ weave of time choices, personal relationships, sailing education, mentoring, and family choices presents an undeniably powerful vision for becoming and developing life long sailors.

But in keeping with the job of independent reviewer, I have a few quibbles with the book. The first is that I find the focus on the family as the primary way the love of sailing is transmitted a bit limiting and hardly a big enough solution for something as grand as saving sailing. I think most, or at least many, of the people I know who I would call real sailors have not gotten their love of the sport through families. Second, that while I totally agree that mentoring is incredibly valuable, I think relatively few sailors have had true mentors, in the strict sense of the word. However, I feel quite certain that they have benefited from a variety of relationships with teachers, coaches, peers, and organizations. I would have liked Hayes to discuss the ways in which this assortment of relationships might add up to mentoring or something very close to it, or even how he thinks they might be inadequate.

I hate to sound like a former English teacher, but I think the problem – solution structure of the book does not really do justice to its virtues, but instead does some undercutting of them. The “problem” is defined in a statistical, quantifiable way as the declining participation in sailing (40% decline since 1997 etc.), but the “solution” focuses almost entirely on improving the quality of the sailing experience. The connection makes intuitive sense, but the book never demonstrates (even anecdotally) the connections between “time choices” and mentoring to the quantitative decline or potential quantitative improvement of sailing. The structure sets up an expectation (perhaps an impossible one) that the “problem” will be solved on the same terms in which it is presented, but I don’t really think that is really the author’s intention.

Nor do I think it is necessary. The insightful things Hayes has to say about more meaningful ways to invest time, the value of mentoring, the potential for better family relationships, and building “Life Pastimes” are important whether or not sailing is in statistical decline. They are really solutions for quality of life problems, and they apply across a broad spectrum of activities. They may help lead us to more satisfying lives, which is, after all, more important than what percentage of the population goes sailing.

Is Discretion Really the Better Part of Valor?

That question was certainly being asked by prospective sailors in New England last Sunday. The New England Laser Masters in Newport saw wind of 17 – 28 with rain all day, and in Jamestown, RI, where I was with a high school regatta, the wind was a steady 18 with rain, until the end, when the wind went to about 25.

In Newport, my good friend Eric stuck it out to sail in wind and waves. We don’t really get waves at home, so these were unfamiliar and extremely challenging conditions. He took his licks, had some capsizes, but finished all races to place 15th in a 49 boat regatta. Pretty damn good for a guy who has been sailing lasers for only three years! Pretty damn good for anybody against this fleet!

Over in Jamestown, I was coaching (euphemism for riding around in a support boat getting soaking wet) in a high school laser regatta. There was a fleet of full rigs and a fleet of radials. Conventional wisdom is that radials are appropriate for people that weigh 140 – 165 and full rigs for people at about 180, with a rig switching range in the middle. Obviously, the more weight, the better in big breeze. There were only a few kids 180 and over, and I would guess most were 130 -150. Almost everyone was severely overpowered.

The race organizers did what race should organizers do – make every boat a potential rescue boat and alert all coaches, race officials, and spectators to be aware of the potential hazards. From a coach’s perspective, large numbers of boats in these conditions is a familiar recipe for trouble, and we prepared for the worst while hoping for the best. From a sailor’s perspective, this is a situation of fear. Almost all sailors expressed or revealed some degree of apprehension, but nevertheless, all 43 went out to face the daunting conditions.

I admired the courage of these kids for just getting off the dock in conditions where most adults would belly up to the bar to watch football for the afternoon (a thought that tempted me more than once). Throughout the day, there were a series of drop outs, but sailors continued until they reached the limit of their skill, endurance, or equipment. At the end of the fourth race, some 3 1/2 hours into the regatta, the PRO suggested that the fifth race be the last. One gung-ho coach suggested we hang out to see if conditions would permit a sixth race and if the sailors were up for it. Conditions did not subside. A sequence was started, the wind built up a little, a boat was capsizing virtually everywhere I looked, the race started, and the wind started gusting to 25. Then, thankfully, there was a unanimous acceptance of discretion, and the courageous, but exhausted sailors were sent in. As we towed in a sailor with an equipment failure, we watched at least a half dozen other capsizes, some within fifty yards of the beach.

I salute all the sailors who on Sunday did not let discretion become the better part of valor, but chose instead to display true bravery.

In spite of the eloquence of the phrase “discretion is the better part of valor,” in its original context in Shakespeare (one of the Henry IV plays), it is the suggestion of a coward. The colorful speaker, Falstaff, is ultimately a foil for the hero, Prince Hal, who ignores Falstaff’s advice, and marches into the battle that transforms him from the profligate prince into King Henry V. Courage is ultimately triumphant, as it was on Sunday.

Enough of the English class! Isn’t Falstaff the name of a beer?

Practice Failure

After coaching another practice where my skill drills were a colossal failure, I have been thinking about the value of failure. It always aggravates me when time gets wasted and it seems nothing is accomplished, at least in terms of the skills we were trying to learn. But the appropriate question in the face of every failure is: “What have we learned here?”

I was trying to do an exercise I called “simultaneous tacking pairs”. The goal was for the boats involved to try to remain in synch with each other while executing efficient, offsetting tacks. Two boats start on opposite tacks at opposite ends of a starting line converging towards the middle. They should be tied when they meet and both should tack away. After sailing divergent courses for a while, they simultaneously tack back toward the middle. They should try to meet in the center, still tied, and they should tack away again. The drill repeats heading upwind. It makes a pretty diagram.

I was mainly trying to reinforce basic tacking skills to quantify the gains that could be made by better tacking. Only one pair had any success in duplicating the diagram. Most others had a clear leader at the first crossing and proceeded to tack up the windward leg practicing Stuart Walker’s axiom, “cross em when you can.” instead of meeting each other in the middle and tacking away. We clearly didn’t learn much about the value of good tacking, but did we learn anything?

First, the teacher learned that he had done some things wrong. I did not explain the drill clearly enough – especially the purpose of it. I over complicated the day by describing for the kids such a long series of things we’d be doing during the afternoon that they forgot most of the details of the first drill when we began it. I set up the course wrong, or more accurately the shifty lake winds changed the course from square to silly. And ultimately, I missed the biggest potential virtue of the drill.

This exercise failed so completely that we couldn’t even conduct the post mortem in the end of practice de-briefing. The kids learned nothing that day from this drill.

We started the next day with a discussion of our failure. I began with a confession of my shortcomings, but then we tried to understand why they couldn’t at least set up the first starboard port encounter correctly. “So and so was not on the starting line on time.” “Okay, slow down and wait.” “The line wasn’t square.” “Okay, the boat at the favored end needs to slow down and wait.” “The boat on the right always got more wind.” “Okay, the boat on the right needs to slow down and wait.”

In the refrain, we began to see the light. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor?) Slowing down is the key. Hey this is balancing – a concept key to successful team racing, our favorite kind of racing. The boat ahead has to “balance back” to stay on the same ladder rung as his teammate. This takes skill in both slowing the boat and perceiving the correct relationships between the boats and the ladder rungs. And with every wind shift the ladder rungs change. That causes the relationship between the boats to change. But the goal in this aspect of team racing is to keep the relationship of the boats the same. The speed of one of the boats has to change to keep the system in balance.

So, our drill broke down because the skill that we were working on, tacking, was not the one most required in the shifty conditions. What we should have been focusing on was balancing, perceiving the relationship between boats, and maybe communicating with each other so we could stay in balance. If that were the stated purpose of the drill, maybe it would have worked better, is spite of the very high degree of difficulty of these skills.

Working through this process (or stumbling through it), there is a much bigger, more abstract lesson to learn. Success in this drill required thinking about things in a different way. The whole scenario is a system of relationships between the course, the boats, and the wind. Any change in the wind affects the relationship of the other parts of the system and throws it out of balance. The sailors need to understand it as a system in order to take the correct actions to re-balance it. Both I and the sailors failed to think about the system and a key element in it – the shifting wind. D’oh!!

Thinking about things as a system of complex interrelationships is getting into more heady realms of system theory and ecological thinking. This is the kind of thinking that can understand and solve problems in the complex and interconnected real world. It is the kind of thinking that will be required to solve climate change and environmental problems. It is the kind of thinking that will be required to solve all the big problems.

Maybe it’s a stretch (Ya think? Sailing practice to saving the world.), but I like to think of sailing as being a valuable part of education (not just physical education) and in this respect, it is. Thinking about the world as a web of interconnected relationships rarely happens in school, where the world is sliced and diced into disciplines, and problem solving is conceived in terms of higher test scores. As an English teacher, I thought schools vastly undervalued, if not ignored, holistic thinking embodied in the English Romantics, the American Transcendentalists, and Eastern Philosophy. Now ironically, as a sailing coach, it is easier to offer a little bit about seeing the world in a different way.

Fishy Strategy 2 - The Desperation Strategy

Saturday I had a race much like the one I wrote about in Fishy Strategies last week, except that this time roles were reversed. Instead of leading, I was in third. Instead of losing unexpectedly, I won unexpectedly. Instead of being disappointed and confused when perfectly logical strategies failed, I was delighted that my desperation strategy prevailed.

Upon rounding the leeward mark (to starboard) it was clear to all that there was a big left hand shift. The lead boat went about seven boat lengths on starboard before tacking to port on what appeared to be a layline. The second boat and I tacked almost simultaneously, also trying to get onto the lifted tack. As I distractedly fiddled with some tangled line, I managed to steer up into the other boat’s wind shadow. I had no options now except to employ a desperation strategy, tack onto the header, and get clear of the opponents. Sailing the header, I noticed a new wind line approaching. I figured that I should wait until I could get into that wind line, then at least I could sail fast, and hope that I could catch somebody.

As luck would have it, the opponents gradually got lulled and headed, leaving them far short of the port tack layline. On the other hand, I had more wind and held my layline. I crossed both boats easily and marveled at the power of luck and the changeability of lake sailing.

(Desperation strategy sidebar: A common scenario on our lake is that the second boat picks which way he wants to go, the boat ahead goes with him to cover, and the third boat splits tacks in desperation, hoping for better puffs and more favorable shifts. The third boat wins a lot of races.)

But upon further reflection, this seems to be the same situation as in the previous post, with the same result. The lead boats did exactly the right thing by sailing the longest tack first, until things changed. As soon as I was in a better wind line, the situation was different, and they should have tacked to cover. It is so hard to do that when you are lifted 35 degrees, almost laying the finish, and would consolidate a loss of several boat lengths. It is especially difficult when you know the boat behind is employing the desperation strategy more than any other.

The common theme between these two posts seems to be that being in the new puff is the wining strategy. This harkens back to the problem of oscillating shift vs. persistent shift. I think the key here is time. When sailing on a windward leg for a relatively short amount of time, any shift has the potential to be the last shift, and therefore it is a persistent shift in the context of that leg of the course. The correct strategy for a persistent shift is to sail the header first and to remain further toward the shift than your competitors.

Well, I have it all figured out now…..at least until the wind shifts.

Fishy Strategies

It’s the last race of a light wind Thursday night, where courses are short (10-12 minute races), no one keeps score, and the racing is casual. It’s the leeward mark rounding and I am 2 -3 boat lengths ahead of the only possible competitor. The wind on the lake has been more right than left all night, but it has become typically less shifty as it lulls toward sunset. I have been protecting the right most of the night even though it hasn’t produced a noticeable boat speed advantage. As I harden up around the mark, it appears that wind has gone far enough to the right that I am on the starboard tack lay line for the finish. What should I do? What strategy do I use for this last 3 minutes of the race?

The wisdom of Dave Dellanbaugh and Stuart Walker offer several maxims of good advice.

1.“Sail the longest tack first.”
2.“Sail toward the favorite side.”
3.“Avoid lay lines so you don’t over stand.”
4.“Cover.”

My thinking is “sail the longest tack first,” and I’m sure it’s a lay line I don’t want to over stand, so I tack and head straight for the finish line. My competitor splits tacks in desperation, and as I watch him sail away without getting any closer to the finish, I think I’ve made him go the wrong way, and I’m adding several more boat lengths to my lead. Six boat lengths ahead, on the lay line, with a 3 minute finishing leg – what could go wrong?

A five degree header and the wind getting a bit lighter – still no problem, right? That fateful gurgling noise as the boat behind gets a little puff and picks up speed – is it time to tack? I ‘m going slow, he’s going fast, I would be on port, if I can’t cross, he will be in control– I decide to stay put and wait for his little puff to fade out. Naturally, it doesn’t fade enough, he lays the finish, I tack weakly near the finish and can’t cross, he wins.

What have we learned here? Strategies 2 and 4 are better than 1 and 3? Although it worked out that way, it could just as easily gone the other way. If I had continued into the header, let him round and tack before I tacked, we would be about bow even with him on the lay line and me over standing. The drag race to the finish would likely be determined by how quickly I responded to his tack. If he got his bow out, which is likely when he tacks first, he would have the edge.

I think the lesson is that even the best strategies, like fish, frequently have an extremely short shelf life, especially on a lake, and in light wind. I think I made the right move by tacking at the mark where I made some gain. But the wisdom of strategies 1 and 3 expired and started to smell as soon as the boats were in different wind – about 1 minute later. At that moment, sailing toward the favorite side and covering became imperative. One set of strategies worked for 1 minute and the other set for 2 minutes. Shouldn’t these things come with a warning label – not guaranteed to work for more than 1 minute?

Any loser in this situation would be disappointed that his perfectly good strategy had a shorter shelf life than sushi in the hot sun on a 90 degree day……. and on that Thursday, I was that loser.

11 Reasons to Love High School Sailing

It seems Tillerman’s list writing project has taken over this blog, so here is another one. I passed along the writing project challenge to my team of high school sailors. They were given the title (with number blank), and this is a “best of” their responses. Photos are my contribution.

1. High school team race sailing is a constant challenge and the most unpredictable sport in the world. Only in HS can a 1 2 3 start keep the coach on edge in fear of a miscue.


2. You can never really get the smell of victory out of your gear.


3. You have to use your brain. Strategy is arguably more important than physique and you can have real life experience as a “lawyer” in the protest room.


4. Only place where the approaching starboard boat tacks out of your way, and mark trapping the entire fleet in a fleet race doesn't get you thrown out


5. Away events aren’t in the town next door, but on a lake, river, or ocean where the scenery is always beautiful.


6. You get to sail in the first event of the celebration for Volvo Ocean Race coming to Boston.


7. Meet so many interesting people who I would most likely not had the oppertunity to meet if it wasn't for High School sailing. (and spelling and grammar don’t count in sailing – coach's comment).


8. Bad jokes linking boat parts to body parts never seem to get old


9. When the wind's heavy, it feels like you're flying on water. When the wind's nonexistent, the team makes up games like Poag Ball.


10. Bus rides.


11. The sailing team becomes your other life. Or just your life.
    

In the process of compiling this, one of my sailors showed me another great high school sailing list, You might be a high school sailor if…

Five Ways to Improve your Regatta Score Without Really Sailing Any Better

This little reflection is prompted by Tillerman’s list project and by having watched my sailing team lose a fleet race regatta for the second time this year as a result of a protest. In years gone by, I have watched us lose to other teams with sailors who consistently start better and sail faster. It’s almost impossible to beat those guys (a problem I share with Tillerman in good, maybe even mediocre, laser fleets). Now, our team sails just as fast as the other sailors, but snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with moves that undermine the 98% of the day spent sailing well.

1. Start where they ain’t. Out of the crowd at the favored end emerges one big winner and lots of big losers. The guy who starts in the clear spot probably will not be first, but he will be among the top few. If he jumps on the first shift he might just be first, but even finishing in the top few all day usually wins a regatta. Even we mediocrities are likely to stay near the front of the fleet as the big losers fight for open lanes and freedom to tack on the shifts for the entire first leg of the race.
2. Avoid close encounters of any kind. Being near other boats introduces the possibilities of fouls, protests, both warranted and unwarranted, and bad air. At least 90% of fleet racing is about racing the course. The other boats are moving obstacles that make it a little more challenging to get around that course. Unlike team racing, in most situations, other sailors are not adversaries who you should challenge to a duel (until the last part of the race or regatta). In fleet racing, duels frequently have two losers.
3. Admit guilt. If you foul, do your penalty. Protests are unpleasant and time consuming; disqualifications are far worse. Debate the rules over a beer (or a coke if under 21) after the race.
4. Avoid that guy. Every once in a while, there is a guy who is a screamer and a self-proclaimed rules expert who protests anyone within two boat lengths of him. If you cross him on port he will say he had to avoid. If you lee bow him you tacked too close. Sailing anywhere near him results in an argument or a protest. He is a distraction at best and a protest at worst.
5. Avoid that poor guy. Sometimes you find yourself in the back of the pack with a sailor or two who has yet to master some of the boat handling fundamentals. (I am painfully remembering a frostbite incident when I was that poor guy.) Rounding a mark outside him can cost you several places as you are trapped outside while he is losing control of his boat, not turning up to windward, and letting all the boats behind get inside and to windward. When you are leeward of him, his inability to point causes him to sail down and pin you out. He also refuses to tack on headers, taking you the wrong way with him.

None of these things requires you to sail any better, but heeding them will make you look better on the results page.

Learning to Embrace the Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS)

After coaching high school kids, watching them struggle with the RRS, and serving on too many protest committees for my liking, I observe a 7 stage process high school sailors follow as they simultaneously develop their sailing skills and try to learn and use the rules. It might be true for adults too, but probably with less yelling (in most cases) and a little more civilized behavior. Girls, with some notable exceptions, also follow the pattern with more civilized behavior.

1. Intimidation. Both the rules and the more experienced sailors are intimidating. There are too many rules to learn, so the kids focus on three right of way rules - starboard port, windward leeward, clear ahead and clear astern. The only goal is avoiding collisions. In most situations the one who yells the loudest intimidates the other and gets right of way. Hollering “PORT” with enough authority is likely to get the starboard boat to forget the opposite tacks rule and to tack away, and the starboard boat is a long way from knowing about Rule 2, Fair Sailing.
2. I’m not gonna take it anymore! Tired of being bullied, sailors figure out when they have right of way, and they have heard something about tacking too close and room at the mark. They are confident in their grasp of a few bits of the rules, don’t back down to loud yelling, and end up in the protest room talking about the rules they don’t yet fully understand.
3. I AM the right of way boat! Empowered with the idea that they are the right of way boat, sailors command other boats to move out of the way while ignoring the sailing realities of clear air and the abilities of boats to change positions in real time and space. One of my favorites occurs on a beat when a boat is being overtaken by another boat slightly to windward. Our stage 3 sailor waits until the opponent is ¾ of a boat length ahead, then hollers “leeward” and comes up hard. Most often the windward boat avoids, letting the screamer sail into a totally blanketed position, and rolls our bewildered stage 3 sailor. Sometimes there is contact, a protest, and a DSQ for Stage 3 for failure to give windward room to keep clear. Another high school classic is the exclamation “don’t go in there” when they have room at a mark. The hollering occurs 90% of the time at this stage, but the screamer leaves so much room for the next boat that he only occasionally closes the gap to shut out the other boat..
4. There’s no justice! Now our intrepid sailor has been in a few protest hearings and has suffered a disproportionate share of DSQ’s. Life is not fair. A few more of the rules come into consciousness, but now racing is to some degree a matter of matching cunning and power with the other competitors. Aggressive or passive behavior is determined by sizing up the other guy, by what he just learned at his last DSQ, and the sailor’s psychological response to stressful situations. Sailor behavior is totally unpredictable. There are a fair number of protests, and lots of discussions about the rules, mostly on an ad hoc basis. Somehow a better understanding of the rules emerges from this chaos, and the rule book as a whole is starting to make sense.
5. We need a team lawyer! Our developing sailor has a decent grasp of the rules but now realizes that the facts according to the protestor are frequently different than the facts according to the protestee. Kids realize that they need to clearly explain themselves and present a coherent version of the incident. Being able to cite the appropriate rules also wins points in convincing a protest committee that one knows what he’s talking about. In the early part of this stage, the focus is on writing up the protest, which becomes a team effort with the best lawyer on the team helping the others. Toward the end of this stage a wonderful thing happens – the sailors start to clarify things with each other on the water! They talk about the overlap several boat lengths before the zone, and they negotiate luffing with statements like “you have to give me room to go up.”
6. Master’s Degree in RRS. At this stage the silly protesting stops. The sailors know the fundamentals of the rules and how they apply in most situations. Protests occur when two boats justify their actions using different rules, each appearing to have validity, thus creating apparent contradictions or ambiguities in the rules. We had an interesting case recently. At a windward starboard mark rounding, boat A is stalled, setting a mark trap. Boat B comes in from port and tacks to windward of A and claims mark room as a result of an instantaneous overlap. How can a starboard boat who reaches the zone first lose mark room through no fault of his own? After the protest committee decided that B didn’t really have the overlap (and got us off the hook), we consulted an expert who said that if B had really done what he said he did, he would have been entitled to mark room. Wow! We all learned something new.
7. Ninja Master. It seems to me this is the pinnacle of team race or match race sailing. Tactics and rules merge. In every situation, certain tactical moves are both allowed and limited by the rules, and sailors have to instantaneously process all information and act on it. I doubt that anything but lots of experience gets a sailor to this point. Maybe this is why I like team racing so much. It is an amazingly complex sport.

It’s a lot to ask of high school kids to evolve through these seven stages and to end at such a remarkably high level. Most adults I sail with are more at stage six than seven. Dave Perry, Dave Dellanbaugh and others write entire books on stage six situations, and readers are infrequently able to process information quickly enough for stage 7 performance.

What is amazing to me is that good high school sailors, college sailors, and the world class team and match racers reach such a high degree of mastery at such a young age.

A Wife’s View: The High School Sailing Coach’s Life

The first thing he checks online each day is not his email, not the news, but the weather… specifically, the wind. In fact, the chart that NOAA produces that shows, by hour, the wind speed (with direction and gusts), the temperature (with wind chill and dew point), the humidity (with potential for precipitation and sky cover), and thunder and rain predictions is constantly on display or minimized on his computer screen. Once this information covering the next several days has been closely inspected, he can attend to other things.

The second order of business is checking his email inbox for communications from other sailors, coaches, his sailing students, or yacht club members that may need a response. He then generates his own email, invariably related to sailing. After that, he reads his favorite sailing blogs and perhaps checks out the news on MSN.

After breakfast, if he doesn’t have any boat repairs or maintenance to deal with, he may type out a post to his own sailing blog or work on coaching plans for an after school practice session or meet for his high school sailing team. There are regatta invitations and van reservations to be made, trophies to be ordered and picked up, students, parents, athletic directors and other coaches to inform, attendance and medical forms to be tracked, and rainy day lessons, student pairings, meet schedules, and practice drills to be planned. Everything must be coordinated with his co-coach, and schedules and meet results must be recorded on the high school sailing website and communicated to the league director. Fortunately, the co-coach handles all the news articles about the team that must be written.

About four afternoons a week and one day most weekends in the spring, his time is dedicated to the business of coaching the team through a practice session or a competition. Many meets are held at other schools and often the kids must travel in vans 30 minutes to an hour each way for an away event. The sailing coaches, unlike the coaches of some other sports, drive the vans themselves. (Because they get qualified to drive the vans, they are frequently asked to drive other sports teams to meets in their vast leisure time.) If they are out at an away meet past 6:30 pm, the team sometimes stops for pizza on the way back to town. It is typical for the weary coach to arrive home between 6:30 and 7:30 pm.

When he isn’t actively involved in coaching, he is sailing in a local yacht club race, he is taking a course on sailing or boating safety, he is sailing in some other yacht club’s sponsored races, he is reading sailing magazines or books by experts on sailing tactics, he is sailing in a regional regatta, he is working on one of his many small sailboats, or he is sailing by himself on the lake across the street.

Golf widows have nothing on me.

Mrs. Yarg

Team Race 2, 3, 5 (or 6) Dilemma

Today we encountered a dilemma which I think is common in team racing, especially in high school team racing. When is it better to chase the front, and when is it better to attack the boats behind to make a stable winning combination?

The specific situation which prompts this posting was a rounding of the windward mark in a 1, 3, 6 and then falling back to a 2, 3, 6 on the first reach of a port triangle course. After failing at an attempt to convert to a 1, 2, the 1, 2, and 3 boats were very close to each other on the entire reach with the opponent eking out an inside overlap on the 2 boat and a boat length lead on the 3 boat.

Conventional rules of thumb say to work on the boats behind once the 1 is lost, but what if there is a wide gap between 2, 3, and the next opponent behind? Should we give up on the 1 when the 1, 2, and 3 positions are tightly contested, and our competitive instincts tell us to fight for the 1, obtain a winning combination, and then have a good chance to convert to the most stable 1, 2 ? Most competitors are going to want to fight for the 1, at least for a while, and I think that is the right move, at least for a while.

At the leeward mark, the positions were the same (we had a 2,3, 6) except that the back of the pack had gotten closer to the front three boats. My team still did not give up chasing the 1; in fact, we chased the 1 all the way to the finish line, forcing the leader to finish before we went back to work on the boats behind. By then, predictably, it was too late, and we just missed converting to a last minute 2, 3, 5. So where were tactical mistakes made? When is it time to attack the boats behind and go for the 2, 3, 4? Shouldn’t we be comfortable enough with our team race skills to forgo our fleet race “go fast” instincts?

So long as there is still time to turn back and convert to the 2, 3, 4, I see no problem with chasing the 1 if her lead is very small. Downwind legs offer a good opportunity for two trailing boats to blanket the leader or execute a high low and decide the race up front. Failing to overtake the leader on the downwind leg, I think a compression trap at the leeward mark should be set to advance the 6. Even if a conversion to a 2,3,4 or a 2,3,5 isn’t accomplished, at least the race will be compressed, bringing the teammate in 6 closer. At the bottom of the final windward leg, the 2 and 3 can then cover, slow, and/or pin 4 and 5 to advance their trailing teammate. They have the entire windward leg to accomplish this.

To my mind, the absolute last point at which the 1 should be contested is half way up the final windward leg. (This is bordering on reckless and should be attempted only when the sailors in 2 and 3 are very confident they can out sail the sailor in the lead). If 2 and 3 insist on trying to catch 1 after rounding the leeward mark, they should split tacks and return to the center of the course no later than half way up. The 1 is likely to cover the 2 who should go to the unfavored side of the course. Hopefully, 3, taking the favored side, will be ahead by the crossing, then slow the opponent and convert to a 1, 2. If not, the strategy should immediately shift to play 2, the 2, 3, 4. It may take some time and distance to set up a cover on the opponents in back, so it is important not to wait too long. If the final windward leg is short, this approach may already be too late.

Just my thoughts. What do you other team racers think? Anyone with lots of experience want to help me out? Are the solutions different at higher levels of team racing?