1 Kicker:

Make sure its setup on a continuous system. Get an adult to help with the fid-work, its worth the money paying someone for peace of mind (unless you are a geek and actually like hanging upside down poking around under the thwart)…

a) Many people underestimate the amount of kicker you need to use when its windy. See what happens if you keep pulling until the bottom batten starts to invert on the main. This is the kind of tension that should be used when its very breezy – linked with the Cunningham, see next point. 

b) The second point is that many people underestimate the amount that the kicker needs to be let off going downwind. The best way to appreciate this is to pull all the sails up on a light day (important – light day…). Having hoisted and set the spinnaker, go and stand 20 feet from the leeward quarter and look at the shapes of all 3 leeches. The aim is to match the twists in all three – and it’s easy to see how you can choke the “exhaust” off the A-Sail if you don’t let off enough kicker to match its shape. 

 

2 Cunningham:

A much overlooked weapon when it’s windy – especially for lighter crews. Another entertaining shorebased exercise is to see how the top 1/3 of the mainsail changes when you pull cunningham on (“on” being really hard: 2 hands required). Where this really helps is at the top of the rig, where we want the power least of all. So, when its windy, using the kicker as described above, then apply the cunningham to completely flatten the sail with the added benefit that it will solve the inverting bottom batten problem. You’re now ready to sail fast upwind! A good final pointer from Stu Jagger here: once you've reached (ideal sailing conditions!) max kicker and max cunningham, if the bottom of the main still wants to turn itself inside out in the gusts, you need to start playing the jib - easing an inch or two will then turn the main the right way around. 

 

3 Fitness:

There’s no escaping the fact that you do need to have some level of physical fitness to sail the boat properly, whether its sitting out effectively to develop maximum power, or having strong upper body for playing the main or hoisting the spinnaker. The best hiking exercise I’ve come across is the wall sit, which can be easily incorporated into the daily routine. You can do it anywhere without any equipment to help you build endurance in the lower body. Here's how to do it:

a) Stand in front of a wall (about 2 feet in front of it) and lean against it.

b) Slide down until your knees are at about 90-degree angles and hold, keeping the abs contracted, for 20-60 seconds.

 

Special thanks to Fiona Clark(e) for demonstrating during the talk – for five minutes. Apparently sailors at the Laser worlds can do this for 40 minutes - Sad….

 

4 Toestraps:

Linked with the above point is the crucial position of toestraps. These need to be in EXACTLY the right position to encourage the right posture. The most common mistake seems to be too loose which leads to drop-hiking which cannot work in waves and worst of all, leads to knee problems over time. The aim should be that you’re using the same muscles used in point 3 above to do all the sitting out work and not hanging off knee joints as the lazier alternative. There is rumour that RS will be upgrading the design of hiking toestraps in the future, to incorporate a more “sticky” underside that will remove that scary problem of getting a slip from the hiking boots when sitting out. It might only be half an inch of slippage, but you feel like you’re about to go over the side! This extra grip should improve hiking posture and technique no end – can’t wait.            

 

5 Hydration:

A long, long, long time ago, when we in Britain had “sunshine” in a season once known as “summer”, temperatures would occasionally climb into the double figures and sailors on the water would get thirsty and then drink water which is great. In the early part of this season I found a noticeable decline in performance/results during a day on the water. Arguably this was the hangover taking over from euphoria of the previous evening, but whichever way you look at it, the best insurance policy against “drying out” and then suffering mentally is to take much fluids on the water with you. So – Velcro on the halyard pouch stops the pole punching water bottles back into the boat during drops. The bicylcle-frame-type water carriers on the hoop I’ve liked as a personal choice because you can have a good slurp downwind whilst the crew hoists, trims, hikes, does tactics and tells you where to go…..

 

6 Starting:

Nick’s talk on Saturday was stuffed full of gems on this subject. The one practical point I seized on was the handling skills you need as a team in a 400 to execute some of the clever strategies that Nick was describing. The beauty of this point is that you can develop these skills any time you choose and perfect them. You can generate a practice syllabus by recalling the last half dozen “shocking” starts and examine them individually in detail (using the analytical techniques that Howard was describing) E.g. “We didn’t have a gap to bear away into during the last 10 seconds so we couldn’t accelerate, the boat to windward sailed over us and we were forced to tack off having sat in dirty air for 30 seconds…” Breaking this down: you might therefore choose to practice: 1) How to make the boat bear away onto a beam reach without accelerating to protect your gap – so experiment with moving crew weight up to windward, use of rudder when its stalled, use of sails to turn boat at low speeds. How? With a couple of fixed points of reference: buoys, jetties etc. you can check the movement of your boat in relation to this and get some really good cues about how the boat actually behaves and therefore develop greater feel. Still within the scenario described above 2) Acceleration practice 3) Stopping the boat 4) Agreeing with crew how to communicate about a late arrival coming in to leeward. Etc. The best boat handling exercise ever taught to me in a 400 is learning to sail flawlessly round a triangular course with the rudder tethered amidships using bungy cord around the toe straps (borrowed from Adam Bowers, thank you) 

 

7 Never give up:

Races – especially Championship races, are much longer than people think and if you’re not good (yet) at point 6, then you have plenty of time to turn around a bad first beat. Best advice I’ve heard is all about breaking it into bite size chunks. I.e. on the next upwind we will try to overtake sailnumber x who rounded just ahead of us. Much more realistic than being demoralised because you are 60th but you actually want to WIN…. 

 

8 Leave it on the water:

This point applies equally to intensive periods of sailing such as championships where there little “cooling-off” time between races as well as club racing where there is the luxury of more time – perhaps in the bar. Regardless of whether you race as a couple or not, there will be times when friction can spill over and effect performance. Debriefing is the key thing to do. This boils down to open, honest feedback. But, like everything in this day and age there is a fancy way to remember it. In corporate life I manage events and have been lucky enough to work with members of the Red Arrows at conferences who are good at doing this sort of stuff and have a simple acronym to remind the hard of understanding how to do correct debriefing. They call it “LEARN”:Lead by example… it starts with you! Establish the parameters … what are you talking aboutAnalyse the execution … what went well and why? …what went badly and why?Review the learning … capture the key learningNotify the learning …share your learning  

 

9 Do your pre-event research:

But not to the exclusion of all other things. If, for example, you plan to sail the Nationals at Mounts Bay next year, by all means sail a practice beat with your practice-mate. HOWEVER, do not – under any circumstances, attempt to sail the practice beat at the time of the warning signal. You will cross tacks with your practice-mate somewhere near the windward mark and, upon glancing under the boom, notice the entire fleet going through the gate. As sure as night follows day, and no matter how fast you can sail down wind, it is written in the scriptures that the gate boat will drop the “G” flag just as you are about to round its stern and thusly your regatta scoreline will begin with the underwhelming letters of “DNS”…  

 

10 Winning: The learning is not quite complete on this one… As the title would suggest, I’ve only started