Building Better Sailors: Races With a Twist

When you’re coaching, running races is always part of the agenda at some point during your program.  Unfortunately, unless you consistently have at least ten or fifteen boats at your practices, it is hard to keep races interesting and tactical.  Races with small groups of boats tend to get spread out, and the final result is almost completely determined by boat speed.  Starts, tactics, and boat handling are all still part of the deal, but none are pronounced in ways that will challenge sailors enough to take these skills to the next level.  Young sailors in particular are more reticent to do things that are comfortable in traditional races, as the outcome of a race is not determined by a bad tack, a poor mark rounding, or starting at the favored end.  To make races more exciting, interesting, and effective, present simple and unique twists in races that force sailors to utilize more diverse skills in order to win the race.  Speed will still play a large role in races, but you will have started on the road to building a stronger and more technically diverse group of sailors.

There are many fun scenarios that will make races more fun, interesting, and effective in your race program.  For example, the most common twist coaches add to races is putting a small gate in the middle of the upwind leg.  This gets sailors, who will typically sail hard and fast to a corner, to engage other boats in a way that they typically would not.  It also gets sailors to make tactical decisions much more early, making them more comfortable sailing near other boats, as opposed to separating from the group before making any real tactical decisions.  While this is one way to add an interesting twist to a race, there are an unlimited range of setups you can use to get the desired skill set across to your sailors.

Boat vs. Boat

Set up a mark that is upwind, and relatively close to the line.  Force sailors to leave it to port before sailing upwind.  This will get port end starters to pinch off others early to tack, and will force starboard end starters to hold their lane, using starboard tack to their advantage.  You can further twist this setup by using the short mark as a first windward mark, and sail a short windward leeward before doing a long windward leeward.

Quick Hitch:

Set up a mark that sailors must leave to port before going to the upwind mark.  Set it up so that sailors must tack off to port within a boat length or two of the start line, if not immediately.  Sailors will learn to use starboard advantage, and will compete to win the boat end of the line.  This will also teach sailors strong boat handling skills in tough, competitive situations.

Early Lanes:

Set up a mark much further off the line, and have it set up so that a sailor starting at the boat end is laying it right off the line.  Sailors must leave this mark to starboard before sailing to the windward mark. This way, sailors will not have the ability to tack out early, and are forced to hold their lane, or eat the bad air early on in a race.  This will put an emphasis on holding lanes, winning the pin end, etc.

Winning Sides:

As opposed to the traditional gate, where sailors sail through a small line in the middle of the course before proceeding upwind, make a much larger gate that sailors are not allowed to sail through on the upwind leg.  This forces sailors to choose a side early, win it, and approach the windward mark from a side of the course.  This will keep sailors from sailing across the middle of the course, and to think a few steps ahead of their competitors.

Risky Business (Editor's Choice): 

Set up two marks in carefully selected places upwind.  Make sure they are separate, and that one mark is considerably more favored than the other.  When you start a race, have your sailors round one of these marks to port, and then round the pin end of the line to port, before sailing around the regular windward leeward.  To make this interesting, you put a rounding cap around each of the two short marks.  For example, with four boats on the course, I will usually say that only one boat is allowed to round the favored mark, and three boats have to round the other mark.  This is done on a first come, first serve basis, and any boat that fouls to get around first must go to the other mark.

This is really interesting because it forces sailors to choose between sailing aggressively or consistently.  It puts a lot of pressure on great starts, and will teach others to cut their losses early if they realize they won’t be the first to round the favored mark.  I will typically only allow ONE boat to round the favored mark, in order to implement a more extreme risk/reward structure to the drill.

There are an infinite amount of ways that you can modify and tweak this drill.  As long as you are creative, you can set it up to stress whatever skill set you want your sailors to get a better understanding of.  Either way, this drill is guaranteed to pique the curiosity and creativity of your sailors.  Get out on the water and start practicing!

See you on the water,

Zim Coach

Regatta Dieting

Sailing is a physically demanding sport, where you will expend a lot of energy throughout a day of racing.  Not only do you have to have the strength to do basic physical movements such as hiking, trimming, rolling, etc, but you must also have the energy to think tactically and make decisions during a race.  The instant your body starts to run low on fuel, you will start to break down mentally, prior to losing your physical strength.

Every person’s dietary needs are different, but one thing is true for every person: You need more food, when you are sailing, than you typically eat in a single day!  This is true in all wind conditions, but especially true if it is windy.  Furthermore, how you eat when you are on the water at a regatta is different than how you eat when you are off the water at a regatta.

When you are on the water, you should eat many smaller meals every 2-3 hours, or in between races.  These meals should primarily consist of dietary products, such as energy bars, gels, shakes, as well as other small high energy snacks such as fruits and nuts.  The main reason for this is digestion.  It is well documented that your body uses about 10% of its energy simply digesting the food you eat.  Dietary products, like energy bars, shakes, gels, etc. digest much more quickly than normal food, using up less of your energy on the water.  Also, by spreading out the meals 2-3 hours apart, or between races, not only will your food digest faster, but you will sustain your energy levels throughout the day. In other words, you won't run out of energy in the middle of a race.

It is extremely important to drink a great deal of water when you are sailing as well.  This is true no matter how you eat on the water, but is especially true when eating sport supplements or dietetic products.  The reason for this is that they tend to contain a great deal of sugar, which will soak up a lot of the water you have in your system.  Sugar isn't necessarily a bad thing when you are racing, as it will get into your system to provide energy much faster than normal food.  However, you need to compensate for the negative effects it has with much more water than you typically drink.

Off the water, you should eat much larger meals that consist of “real food” packed with lots of nutrients.  Dietary products and sport supplements are missing a lot of the important nutrients that your body needs during the day, so it is important to make up for what you are missing during a day of sailing.  Usually, you will have one large meal before you start the day, and one or two larger meals at the end of the day.
 
Carbohydrates:

Carbohydrates are essential for energy, focus, and protecting your energy stores.  When exercising, carbohydrates are the first energy source your body burns off.  Thus, you need A LOT of them.  Your larger meals should consist of complex carbohydrates with lots of nutrients and fiber.  This includes whole wheat pastas, grainy breads (bagels tend to have the most energy), some cereals, brown rice, beans etc.  Your smaller meals will include more simple carbohydrates that break down quickly.  This will include energy bars, gels, sport drinks, bananas, orange juice, etc.

Proteins:

Proteins help muscles recover, improve muscle function, and sustain the release of energy to your muscles.  Protein should be consumed throughout the day, not just at night.  Your body will only take in about 40-50 grams of protein in a single meal, and you need MUCH more than that to recover during a regatta.  Thus, you should have plenty throughout the day.  I personally like to include a lot of protein in every meal.  The best proteins come from fish, chicken, flank steak, protein shakes, Greek Yogurt, nuts, etc.

Fats:

Many people have huge misconceptions about fats throughout the fitness world.  They are the greatest source of energy, and not including them in your diet will leave you far short of what you need to maximize your performance on the water.  For example one gram of carbohydrates or proteins has four calories.  One gram of fat has nine calories.  Thus, not having them will likely leave you well short of your needed caloric intake, and you will break down much more quickly on the water.

Instead of avoiding fats, eat plenty of the healthy fats that your body can use.  Thus, you want to eat a lot of unsaturated fats (Polyunsaturated Fat and Monounsaturated Fat), and not eat a lot of Saturated or Trans Saturated Fat.  Unsaturated fats are much easier for your body to break down to use for energy.  The saturated and trans saturated fats are much stronger and harder to break down for energy use.  Thus, it is harder for your body to actually use them.  The best sources of the good fats are nuts, seeds, oils, and fish.  The bad fats are found in most red meat, ANYTHING with chocolate or candy coating (seen on some energy bars), butter, and peanut butter that uses hydrogenated oil (solid at room temperature).

Sample diet for four hour long races with short breaks:

Breakfast 
- 12-16 oz. of Greek Yogurt (Protein)
- Whole wheat bagel (Carb) smothered in NATURAL peanut butter (Fat/Protein)
- Grapefruit or Orange Juice (Carb)

Meal 2 (Prior to Race 1)
- Energy Bar or Protein Bar (Carb/Protein & Carb)
- 16 oz. Water

Meal 3 (Prior to Race 2)
- Energy Bar or Protein Bar (Carb/Protein & Carb)
- Energy Gel (Carb)
- 16 oz. Water

Meal 4 (Prior to Race 3)
- Nuts or Banana (Fat & Protein/Carb)
- Ready to Drink Protein Shake (Protein)
- Sport Drink (Carb)
- 16 oz. Water

Meal 5 (Prior to Race 4)
- Two Energy Bars (Carb)
- 16 oz. Water

Meal 6 (Just off the water)
- Protein Shake
- 16 oz. Water

Dinner
- Salmon (Protein/Fat)
- Broccoli (Carb)
- Black Beans (Carb/Protein)
- Whole Wheat Pasta with Pesto (Carb/Fat)

EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT!  What works for one person may not work for another person.  The important thing to take away from this article is to eat plenty and often when you are sailing!  The amount of races you sail in a day, the length of each race, the wind strength, etc. is always changing.  There are also many substitutes for any of the foods on this list.  Experiment with different things, and find out what works best for you!

See you on the water,

Zim Coach

Tracking Upwind in Waves

Have you ever gone over the top of a giant wave, and felt the boat slam down violently as you crossed over it?  It happens all the time in boats of all sizes, and is called hobby-horsing.  No matter how big or small the wave is, not having the ability to prevent your boat from doing this is will slow you down significantly.  The opposite of hobby-horsing is called tracking.  Tracking is the act of keeping your fully in touch with the water at all times, with no bow slamming or vibrations moving through your hull.  The smaller, lighter, and less stable a boat is, the more important tracking through the water is, as these boats will slow down much more quickly than large, heavy, and stable boats.  By keeping your speed up, helm neutral, and using precise steering and/or trimming movements, you can increase your ability to track through the water, and put miles of boat speed on your competition.

Steering & The Boat’s Ideal Path Through a Wave:

Waves are your best friend downwind, and your worst enemy upwind.  Upwind, not only does a wave serve as a roadblock, but is also a strong natural force that pushes your boat sideways.  The more the wave moves toward your boat from the side, the more susceptible your boat is to a sideways slide.  This makes you generally slower, and crushes your ability to point or hold your lane.  However, with the proper technique, this is something you can use the waves as an asset when sailing upwind.

When trying to track effectively through the water, each wave you sail through has an entry phase and an exit phase.  The goal in the entry phase is to minimalize the amount the wave can push you sideways. The goal in the exit phase is to keep the boat from hobby-horsing, and to power up again for the next wave.

Entry Phase

As you are about to enter the face of a wave, you need to steer up, and into the face of the wave.  The amount you steer depends on the size of the wave.  The smaller the wave, the less you turn the boat.  The larger the wave, the more you will turn the boat.  This will align your bow more directly and head-on with the wave in order to punch through it, effectively reducing the amount the wave can push you sideways.  Ultimately, you want to give each wave less direct surface to push sideways.

Exit Phase

When you turn into the face of a wave, you will reduce your speed at the top of it, making you much more susceptible to hobby-horsing.  To correct this, you must turn hard and quickly down the back side of the wave to keep the boat in touch with the water, and to increase your speed before the next wave.  Depending on the wind and waves, you may even want to exaggerate the turn over the wave, steering slightly past a close hauled course.  You should only do this for the most brief instant, and then return to a close hauled course to get ready for the next wave.

Steering:

One of the first racing principles sailors are taught, is that using the rudder is slow.  While this is true, hobby-horsing is much slower than using some tiller to steer through waves.  An alternative to using tiller is changing sail trim during the entry and exit phases.  Some sailors will trim during the entry phase to steer up, and ease during the exit phase to steer down.  In all boats, you will see some combination of steering and trimming to effectively steer through waves.  The exact ratios will depend on the conditions, your relative weight range for those conditions, and the type of boat you are sailing.  As a general rule, steering with the sails is more effective in doublehanded boats, while steering with your tiller is more effective in singlehanded boats.  Again, usually there is a mixture of both.

Neutralizing Your Helm:

Having a neutral helm will make your boat much more receptive to changes in steering or trimming.  Let’s consider a boat’s ideal path through a wave.  There is actually a relatively large amount of steering that is necessary to keep the boat tracking through the water, regardless of your speed and power.  If your boat is heeled to leeward at the top of a wave, giving you weather helm, then you must use a good deal of rudder, or ease the sail significantly, to turn the boat down the backside of a wave.  Thus, keeping a boat flat with a neutral helm, at the top of a wave, is critical to keeping the boat tracking through the water.

Maintaining Your Speed/Power:

Speed and power are essential to tracking through the water.  When you encounter a wave, slowing down, or entering the face of that wave with little speed or power will make it difficult to get over the top without getting pushed sideways, causing your bow to slam down on the other side.  When you move from wave to wave, the goal is to maximize your speed before the wave, use that speed to reach the top of the wave, and then quickly build it up again as you descend and move on to the next wave.  This takes a lot of intense focus and practice to perfect, so go out and start practicing!

See you on the water,

Zim Coach  

Brad Adam on Club 420 Racing

Photo by Grace Adam Photography

Name: Brad Adam

Sailing Accomplishments:

2011

1^st 420 Falmouth Regatta

1^st 420 New Bedford Regatta

6^th 420 US Sailing Youth Champs

2012

1^st 420 Brooke Gonzalez Clinic Regatta

4^th 420 New Bedford Regatta

1^st 420 North Americans

5^th 420 Chubb Double Handed Championships

4^th 420 Orange Bowl

What is the biggest adjustment you have to make moving from an Opti to a Club 420?

The biggest adjustment is definitely working with another person.  You have to get into the habit of not doing everything yourself.  If you are going to be successful in the Club 420, responsibility, for everything that happens, has to go to both sailors equally.  As much as you think you are capable of doing everything on the boat, you can’t do it as well as two separate people doing their individual jobs on the same boat.

I struggled with this a lot early on. I sailed with the same person for three years, but we had issues from time to time in our first year.  When we were in our second year together, we started working as a team.  Knowing what the other person needed to do was really helpful, and we improved a lot.  In our final year, we knew how to help each other out when the other was down, and did very well in some big regattas.

What are the biggest mistakes you see a lot of young sailors make when sailing the Club 420?

Honestly, when they first get into the Club 420, many of the younger sailors coming out of Optis are too serious.  They spend a lot of their time yelling and screaming around the course, when they should just calm down and sail.  Later on down the road, the good ones realize that this doesn’t get you anywhere.  They end up calming down and sailing, which helps them see the big picture.

What do you like about the boats? The class?

Initially, my size was a big factor for getting into the boats.  I was too small for many of the other boats available to me at the time.  Also, getting to use a spinnaker is really cool, and it prepares you for downwind sailing in a lot of other boats.  Most important of all, the Club 420 is the most competitive class in the country, especially at the top regattas like Youth Champs.

What is your training program like?

Just going out and getting in a lot of sailing is really important.  We did not have a coach this past year, so we would try to sail for at least half an hour after school.  We used a Go Pro® to get footage, and analyze it after sailing.

For the most part, there is not much structure to the training sessions.  We do a lot of long upwinds and long downwinds to improve on speed and boat handling.

What are your top 3 drills to improve upwind and downwind speed?

The best drills for this are tacking and jibing on the whistle, rabbit starts with grinds, and just going in a straight line for 15 minutes at a time.  These are all really simple, but they get the job done.

Do you have a fitness program? What do you recommend for a young 420 sailor?

I try to go to the gym for 30 minutes or so every week night, regardless of what I have done that day.  When I go to the gym, I like to do everything in one session.  For example, I will do cardio, legs, arms, and abs while I’m there.  I try to switch between exercises with as little rest as possible.  This way, when I switch between machines, I get a cardio workout as well.  I aim to do sets of ten, and pick a weight where I have to work hard to get that tenth rep.

If you could redo your youth sailing career, what would you do differently?

I would have gotten more involved in my actual high school, and encouraged more kids to join the sailing team.  I wish I had learned more about things like team racing, and it’s just not possible without more sailors getting involved in my school’s program.

You have done a bit of crewing as well.  What is enjoyable about crewing for you?

It’s nice to get the perspective, and see firsthand what the crew can and cannot do.  This way, you don’t expect more than is possible from the person you sail with.  It’s important to experience the learning process firsthand, and you will learn how to teach it more effectively.

To develop fast in the 420 class, what are the best regattas to do each year?

First of all, the most important things to evaluate for any regatta are size and location.  You want to sail at regattas with a lot of boats, and the location will often dictate that.  Make sure the event is a place that is easily accessible to a lot of groups of people.  East coast regattas will typically draw a larger number than west coast regattas.  West coast sailors are much more likely to come to a regatta out east than vice versa.  In the northeast, it’s not uncommon to get 100+ boat fleets in the summer time. 

Year in and year out, the best regattas are Youth Champs, Midwinters, Orange Bowl, North Americans, Buzzards Bay, Hyannis, Nationals, and Bemis.  Youth’s, Midwinters, and Orange Bowl are the most competitive.  How competitive regattas like Nationals are, will depend more on location.  Bemis is a great event to do, but because of the ladder structure, many of the qualifying events are more competitive than the final regatta.  Finishers outside the top five at Bemis would have struggled to finish in the top fifteen or twenty in our district’s first round qualifier.

There are a lot of clinics that are really helpful as well.  Brooke Gonzalez is where I learned how to sail the 420 correctly, the Neal Clinic is great, and the CISA Clinic is where I learned how to sail in breeze.  Brooke Gonzalez is also really great for college recruitment, as a lot of coaches come to the event to teach, and look at up and coming sailors.

Brad Adam

Taking Your Starts to the Next Level

Whenever coaches talk about starting, the conversation typically covers picking the favored side of the starting line, setting up to get to the favored side of the course, starting with a hole to leeward, and accelerating before the horn.  While all of this information is really important to understand initially, sailors reach a certain point in their development where they need more technical information in order to take their starts to the next level.  In many instances youth sailors from Optis through the upper levels of high school do not learn how to properly execute a start.  The reason for this ranges from not understanding certain concepts, to disparities in competition and bullying, masking poor starting technique.  Eventually this is corrected, sometimes at the highest levels of youth sailing, and certainly at the top Collegiate Regattas, where the races are too short, and the sailing level is too high to for sailors to make an error on the starting line and still succeed.  Let’s take a closer look at the techniques used by the best dinghy sailors in the world.

Forgetting for a second the most basic mistakes someone can make on a starting line such as starting on the wrong side or inches from a leeward boat, one of the most common starting mistakes made by sailors is in their acceleration.  Many sailors are taught at a young age to put their bows inches from the starting line, and to accelerate at five seconds to go.  As the final seconds of the starting sequence tick away, sailors using this technique swing their boats to a reach in order to accelerate, and then turn the boat approximately 45 degrees to windward at the sound of the final horn.

While this technique is easy for sailors to understand, it ultimately does not teach the appropriate lesson for racers who want to excel in the sport.  Sailors like to use this technique because there is a distinct and clear timeline for accelerating, and they know that they are always near the starting line.  However, by accelerating horizontally down the line at full speed for 5 seconds, you are guaranteed to eat up most, if not all, of the leeward hole you have hopefully created prior to the start.  Additionally, sailing in a horizontal position down the line completely exposes the leeward side of your boat, exposing you to leeward boats who can legally force you over the line as they accelerate beneath you.

To make matters worse, if you were fortunate enough to take away a hole from the boat immediately to windward of you, that boat now has a hole to accelerate.  So, even if you get off of the line free, clear, and at full speed, there is now a boat to windward of you that can pin you and keep you from getting to the right side of the course.  This is important to avoid if you get into trouble early and need a way out, or want to cross in an early wind shift.

The second issue with this method is the amount and extent of rudder movement that happens as you accelerate.  With the boat making a large turn at the final horn, it will lose a great deal of speed, and will also slide considerably to leeward, costing you both leverage and speed.

Fortunately, all of these habits are easy to correct.  If you ever watch someone who is really good on the starting line, you will notice that they accelerate from below the line and sail through it already trimmed in on a close hauled course, rather than accelerating horizontally down the line on a reach and turning hard to windward at the horn.  The advantages to this method are that you eat up next to none of your leeward hole, your hole is easier to defend against other boats, and that you will not lose any speed at the sound of the horn.  The issues sailors typically run into in the execution of this method are a combination of not having the ability to accelerate in such a narrow lane, and not knowing where the line is.

Knowing where the line is at any given time is as simple as getting a line sight.  This is a really simple thing to do that will separate you from your competition.  Simply line your boat up with the flag that the Race Committee is using to call the line.  Look down to the pin end of the line, and line the pin end up with a point on land.  This land mark is your line sight.  Remember, because you take your line sight from the center of the boat, you are actually slightly over the line when your boat is lined up with your line sight.  Even though there is a little bit of room for error here, you will have a much better idea of where the line is, and will start counting your distance away from the line at the horn in terms of feet and inches instead of boat lengths.

Fixing your ability to accelerate is a slightly more advanced concept, but with a little bit of practice, it is not difficult to understand and execute.  If you are luffing your boat completely on the line and try to accelerate to a close hauled course in five seconds, not only will you fail to reach full speed, but you will also slide sideways significantly before crossing the line.  By completely stopping with luffed sails and trimming in suddenly, it will take a few moments to generate flow over the sails, and your apparent wind will move aft, pushing you sideways.  To correct this, the best dinghy starters do not actually bring their boats to a complete stop, starting a slow forward movement fifteen to sixty seconds prior to the horn.  Depending on the boat that they sail, these sailors utilize certain techniques that enable them to generate some flow over their sails while moving forward almost imperceptibly until the final few seconds of the countdown.  Keeping even a small amount of flow over the sails keeps your apparent wind more forward, and dramatically cuts down the time it takes to generate complete flow over the sails.  Thus, you will merely have to jam the tiller once or twice till you are at or slightly below close hauled, and can accelerate at full speed through the line without sliding sideways or eating up your hole.

Generating flow over the sails while moving slowly takes practice, but is typically a function of trimming in the sail(s) to a certain extent while keeping the boat very near head to wind.  The sails will typically bubble instead of fully luffing, and the leech will not luff at all.  Here’s a quick guide to the technique for a few of the most popular dinghy classes:

420 – The main should always stay trimmed in on the starting line so that the leech has flow over it while pointed near close hauled.  It is critical that the crew trims the jib just enough so that by either pulling it in one more inch, or by bearing off a degree or two will get the jib to pop full.  Thus, the jib is bubbling instead of luffing and flow is already moving across both sails when you start to bear down to close hauled.

FJ – This is almost identical to the 420.  With a smaller rudder and centerboard, it is even more important to execute properly in the FJ because the boat is much more susceptible to sliding.  You may need to start your acceleration a little earlier to get to full speed.

Optimist – Your main should just bubble enough to keep your boat moving forward slightly.  The leech should stop flapping and have some flow over it prior to acceleration.

Byte CII – The technique is very similar to that of an optimist.  The sail plan is much flatter, so you can get the boat much closer to head to wind while generating flow over the sail and moving forward.  This boat accelerates and reaches full speed with very little effort.

See you on the water,

Zim Coach