The Tactical Mind: Tricky Stuff

We had just come off the line in the second race of the 1979 Soling Olympic Pre-Trials and were in pretty good shape, headed right on port tack. The breeze was around eight knots. All of a sudden there was a loud noise, and the main began luffing. I whipped around from my middle crew position to see the mainsheet ratchet dangling on the sheet. The clevis pin holding it on had come loose, and as it slipped out, the shackle holding the ratchet had bent open. My first idea was to trim in and hold the main while Tucker, our forward crew, fixed the ratchet. But Peter, who was skippering, was way ahead of me. He had already grabbed a pair of vise-grip pliers from the tool bag, and as I trimmed in the main, he tightly clamped the vise-grips onto the sheet just as it exited the block on the boom. It held beautifully, leaving Tucker free to trim the jib, balance the boat, and look around, while I fixed the unit.

Sailing by the book, avoiding the big bummers, and mastering the little things will zoom you to the top in short order, but once there, you begin to notice that the champs have yet another chapter in their repertoire of ways to beat you – a whole collection of tricky stuff. They may have used some of these tricks only once or twice in their career. Other moves and their variations, though, are subtly applied very frequently and are more noticeable once you know what to look for. Here’s some of the trickier stuff I’ve run into over the years.

Around the Start
• If there’s no land or any anchored boats to get a good line site on, sail outside of the right hand end of the line and come in on starboard so the two ends are in line with each other; then read your compass heading. Suppose it reads 090 degrees. Then, when you’re in the middle of the line with one minute to start, and you’re aiming at the pin on starboard, and your compass reads 110 degrees, you know you’re well below the line. Or, let’s say you’re in the middle and want a quick reference to see how close to the line you are. Quickly bear off to 090 degrees. If you are right on the line, your bow will be aiming at the pin. If you’re aiming to the left of the pin, you’re obviously below the line.

• When you’re starting near the left end, and that end of the line has a boat anchored with people sighting the line, it’s helpful to figure out which person is calling the line and then watch their line of sight to get an idea of where the line is. You can figure they’re looking directly toward the right end, so if they’re not looking at you, you’re probably still behind the line.

• If you had a nice hole to leeward of you, but are too close to the line, or if you want to kill time without getting any closer to the boats to leeward, an effective move is to luff your jib, keep your main trimmed tight, and then radically bear off and head up again. If you practice this a few times, you’ll see that the boat can turn quite sharply in a small place, and by reducing your speed you won’t travel too far leeward. To turn this into a killer move, you also have to know exactly how long it takes, how much room you need, and what is the fastest way to accelerate again when you have come to a near standstill.

A wants to go right and wants B to go right as well. So, A tacks, crosses B by about three boatlengths, and then begins a slow tack back in front of B. If B tacks while A is tacking, A can fall back onto port. If B holds on, A completes her tack and tightly blankets B until B is forced to tack.

(End)

Read additional excerpts from Winning in One-Designs by visiting http://www.ussailing.org/member/library/wiodindex.htm.

Order Dave Perry's Winning in One-Designs by visiting http://www.ussailing.org/merchandise/detail.asp?product_id=71019.