By Airwaves Writer Clinton Hayes
November 22-24 2013 ~ St. Petersburg, FL
This year I had the pleasure of coaching the Stanford Match Race Team. I got to watch lots of prestarts, tacks, gybes, sets, and penalty kills. What became apparent was that boathandling and boatspeed were very important and got teams a long way on the College Match Racing Circuit. I was impressed but not surprised to see that the top teams at Nationals all had near perfect boathandling and good boatspeed. At a high level, the difference comes down to actual match racing.
Below are patterns I saw time and time again. I probably watched about 80 prestarts and the best teams were better, or got better during the event at doing the little things right. I’m not the best match racer in the world (ISAF says I’m the 433rd best) and I didn’t invent these tactics but after watching so many races I’m willing to go on record with what I think.
Prestart
-With the exception of extremely light wind always force a dial-up when entering from port(blue). Crossing ahead of the starboard boat feels great until they tack into a controlling leeward position and prevent you from gybing. As the event went on, more and more teams realized this and were more successful because of it.
-When dialed up to port of your opponent and not on final approach(usually the initial dial up) work hard to keep your bow right at head to wind so you can quickly tack to port when the opportunity presents itself. To often the port boat would lose flow and fall to starboard tack. A clever starboard boat will then tack and come back to dial up the port boat again. Many times this repeats itself with the port boat never able to recover.
extra tip: If you’re the port boat in this situation, build speed on starboard before tacking back for the second dial up. This way your second dial up is just like the first and you’ll have at least as much flow as the starboard boat.
-If you’re in trouble, stop and sit head to wind. If you’re controlled by the other boat, sailing on starboard early in the starting sequence is almost always a bad thing. Just sit head to wind and wait for an escape route to present itself.
In the final approach to the line…
-When leading: Think low and slow. Who cares if you start late as long as you’re still leading when you cross the line. When the other boat is not pushing you don’t ever sail horizontally toward the pin.
-When pushing: Think high and fast. Tack into the push to create separation. You’re trying to push the leader into the starting box to a point where you can, at the very least, tack and start on port.
-Remember global strategy! If you want the left then don’t get hooked. I saw lots of people accidentally get hooked when the left was super favored. Leave yourself some room for error. Be quick to match your opponents down moves and delay a bit to match their up moves. If you want the right either choose to push or purposely get hooked.
Upwind
-I was surprised to see the lead boat choose to split and not cover their opponent. You obviously can’t always tight cover your opponent but you can choose to stay near them so they only gain distance on you instead of fully passing.
-When in doubt, lead to the right and lose cover to the left. Especially in the fairly consistent winds in St. Petersburg. Sounds simple but too often teams did it the other way and got passed.
Downwind
–Know what gybe is the long one and set up to have clean air while sailing on it. This means gybing before your opponent when its starboard gybe or not getting rolled if its port.
Other
–Keep the protest flag(Y Flag) out of the skippers hand! Bring extra line and tie it inside a crew members lifejacket. Its so funny to watch skippers fumble around trying to grab the flag and lose control of the other boat. Only it’s not funny when it happens to you.
–Do your homework: The team that checked starting laylines and practiced sailing around the starting line the most won this regatta. Congrats Georgetown!
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