Racing in a Headwind

dlochner · May 3, 2017

One of the shortcomings of sailing as a sport is that the feedback loop on performance is deeply flawed. This leaves all sailors and especially new sailors without a reasonable way to tell if they are improving or if changes really made a difference. Sailboat races are scored and 2 metrics are reported elapsed time and position. Because each race is different, these 2 measures apply only to that race. Losing today's race by 3 minutes may be a much worse finish than losing tomorrow's race by 10 minutes. This ultimately adds to the frustration of new sailors, as it is impossible to objectively compare performance in one race to another with just these 2 pieces of information.

I think there is a better way to provide valuable performance feedback by using a ratio of the median elapsed time for the race to a boat's elapsed time. The resulting ratio can be used to compare performance across races and between boats. Doing this won't solve the frustrations of learning to compete well, but, it will help to answer the omnipresent question, "Am I getting better?"

If interested you can read more at this link: I. Towards a Fair and Equitable Handicapping System Comments are appreciated.

rgranger · May 3, 2017

jon hansen said:
bypass the rumors, forget the tidbits, ignore the misinformation. buy this book. read this book. start sailing well.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/hig...d=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP2715&k_clickid=3x2715

It looks like he has a later edition

https://www.amazon.com/High-Perform...s=High+Performance+Sailing+by+Frank+Bethwaite

jon hansen · May 3, 2017

the update edition has all the old edition info plus the new thinking for boats that sail in the 15 t0 45 knot speed range. thats boat speed. does not really apply to displacment vessels . great reading though

Bill Roosa · May 3, 2017

As a general starting point after reading all your posts I'd recommend you do some research on weather/lee helm. best speed is made when you have approximately 3 degrees of weather helm. This configuration has the keel and rudder both contributing to the resistance of leeway and provide the least drag to forward progress (aka fastest). Sail upright with less than 10 degrees of heel (any method by which you accomplish this is acceptable)(fat inexperienced crew are almost as good as skinny experienced ones if you use the fat ones a toe rail meat ;-) ) As a way of thinking about it, if you set the helm at 3 degrees of weather helm and the boat turns downwind, the mainsail is underpowered. If you turn into the wind the head sail is under powered. Alternately you could consider the main or head sail over powered but we are racing here and overpower is what we want.......sail trim is complicated, try powering up first and if the tale-tells are not flying right depower both to get a faster speed.
I can't tell you the number of times I've let the crew set the sails on a Friday night sail (office folks sailing boats for fun) and they ALWAYS over trim the sails resulting in lots of side slip and excessive heeling. I let them play for a while and then after they get tired let a youngster take the helm and tell them to hold it a t 3 degrees weather helm (you do have a 3 degree marker on the helm right?) and I let out the main and jib and the boat magically starts moving faster and stands up! He looks like a pro and may become a candidate for future crew........ begin with the end in mind!!!!
Good luck and keep the faith

markwbird · May 3, 2017

There is a whole lot more to winning than just upwind performance. I am a racing nerd and have read lots of books on the subject. My favorite is Getting Started in Sailboat Racing by Adam Cort and Richard Stearns. It is very comprehensive and easy to read and understand. It covers everything from starting tactics, upwind performance, downwind performance, sailing the shifts, reading the weather, rounding the marks, boat handling, sail trim, you name it.

jon hansen · May 3, 2017

richard sterns' sister Peg is Hot. she runs a good race too. ................................. oh, sorry. thats another thread, my bad

shemandr · May 3, 2017

I'll second Stu's affirmation of your statement that you shouldn't follow your mentor's boat. PHRF is about getting your boat up to speed and trying to beat faster racier boats by the correction. To get the most from your correction you need to prep your boat as dlochner posted in post #7. If you can't afford good sails, then at least do what you can. Clean bottom, lighten up, tuned rig, know the rules, know the course, start on time with boat speed in as clean air as you can find. With a wing keel you are not going to point with the fin keels. So you need to keep the speed up and hope your rating will make up the difference.
About crew: On a non-racing boat you are not going to attract the most competitive crews. What you need is crew who are regular and which will sail the boat well enough to allow you to get your head out of the boat and look at the race course like a game board. There is a point where most boat owners need to decide if they want to call tactics or drive the boat. Good boat driving takes devout concentration and doesn't lend itself to looking around. So if you don't like how the boat feels you should tell the crew to change this or that, but you should never ignore the helm, or worse, leave the helm, to correct whatever. The boat will stop and the PHRF clock is still ticking. Oh and in PHRF avoid pissing matches as much as possible. Tick ... tick ... tick ...

weinie · May 3, 2017

Get the polars for your boat (sabre 362) should be available somewhere.
Try to hit those numbers.

DArcy · May 3, 2017

Iriegal said:
I'm going to have to revisit my course strategy on windward sailing, for sure. Especially since my boat needs so much leeway that I need lots of room around the buoys or else I get pushed into them! I've learned that the hard way more times than I would like to admit.

This is the real clue! You are pointing too high. I'm going to re-iterate what others have said about not trying to point too high. You will absolutely kill your boat speed. Have a look at this polar diagram for a C&C 27 http://cc27association.com/pdf/iii_polar.pdf

The C&C has a PHRF rating, around 190 compared to an O'day 272 of around 222 - and I suspect that is mostly upwind performance due to the wing keel - but it gives you an idea of where the tipping point between speed and pointing is. Each one of the curves is for a given wind speed (3, 5, 7, 14, 20). Read the potential boat speed (semi-circle) where the wind speed crosses the true wind angle. You'll see that in 20 knots of wind, at 45° you should be sailing at 6 knots. If you head up by 5° you'll feel like a champ because you are out pointing everyone but they get to the weather mark before you. Foot off and go for speed. Crack the sheet, open up the slot. Play around with your halyard tension, outhaul, sheet tension, car position, traveler etc. while you are heading up wind with other boats and see what works for you. If you are out pointing anyone, you are probably pointing too high.
Oh, and never try to pinch up to the mark from more than about 2 boat lengths out. That is always slow.

Sandy Stone · May 3, 2017

I'll add my vote for probably pointing too high. Remember, in a sailboat you are rarely actually moving in the direction you are pointing. Upwind with a wing keel, that goes double. It looks like you are going almost straight to the mark, but in reality you're going off to the side, and slowly at that. Like Darcy says, crack your jib sheet a little, trim your main to follow, (you DO have telltales on both sails, right?) foot off and go for boatspeed. In reality, you should be tacking through about 90 degrees, no less, except maybe when it is blowing hard enough to need the #3 jib. And it is nice to have somebody on board who can trim the sails while you concentrate on driving.

jon hansen · May 3, 2017

i gave you THE book to answer all your questions. if you want all the answers to all your questions, bam, done. that being said: what is way more important is time at the helm. it's all about the feel. sail trim, hull trim, reading the weather both near and far. just like your car driving becomes a feel. so, sail, sail, sail and then do some more sailing.

Daveinet · May 3, 2017

Iriegal said:
My sails are quite old, but my racing nemesis/good friend will never accept that as an excuse. I've beaten her before, but never in a headwind.

Will your friend accept it as fact?? Sails must be flat to sail up wind, otherwise they scoop and have a ton of drag. If your sales are baggy, the exit angle is so bad, the leach is pushing your boat backwards. My previous boat had really baggie sails and wouldn't sail up wind worth two hoots.

LeeandRick · May 3, 2017

jon hansen said:
i gave you THE book to answer all your questions. if you want all the answers to all your questions, bam, done. that being said: what is way more important is time at the helm. it's all about the feel. sail trim, hull trim, reading the weather both near and far. just like your car driving becomes a feel. so, sail, sail, sail and then do some more sailing.

I wished I could find my autographed copy of High Performance Sailing that Frank gave to me years ago (circa 1992). It's in a box somewhere. Half the book is spent discussing what the wind is going to do vs terrain, cloud and water. It was my go to when I raced at a new venue. Anyone (Frank) that flew into thunderstorms in a glider for research has to know a little about weather. The sailing side of the book is spot on considering the accomplishments of his children through his coaching.

I'm not saying it's the only great book out there on sailing and racing but it is a fine start. A new person to racing could learn a lot just from the Tasar manual he wrote.

Did I say he gave the book to me, I think it was in one of the containers of Exocet/B-14 (fore runner to the 49er) that I imported from him. $$$.

Jackdaw · May 4, 2017

OK yesterday I wrote my reply from the boat. Here's some more thoughts.

First, lets not use the term 'headwind'. I assume you are talking about sailing 'upwind', which means that you cannot sail directly to where you need to go (mark, marina, etc). In this case AT LEAST one tack will be needed.

BTW - all other sailing (to destinations you CAN sail directly to) is called 'fetching'. Only at a point where it is more faster to gibe at angles to get there sooner do we call it 'downwind' sailing.

To be good at going upwind in a race, you have to be good in two things. Boat speed and tactics.

Good upwind boat speed (actually VMG, or Velocity Made Good) means optimally sailing through the water, fast and at the best angle to maximize your windward gain. Too many sailors sail too wide, going 'fast' but not making nearly enough windward progress. They usually only find this out when racing. This VMG sailing requires very good trim, and good sails. Good trim means active trim. You simply cannot set your sails and go upwind well, because upwind trims requires an ease of the sails in puffs. I coach sailboat racing, and most of my (new) teams are shocked to see what upwind trim REALLY looks like. They undertrim. And if you undertrim, your tell tails will not tell you your optimal upwind angle. And then you will lose.

Good upwind tactics means sailing the shortest distance in good pressure. It means watching your compass and tacking when you get headed, so you sail the majority of the time on the lifted tack. But to do this, you have to 1) be in good trim, and 2) know how to sail to your tell tales. Also, you also have to watch out for pressure, and know your boat. If your boat needs more wind to sail fast, often it helps to forgo the some of the lifts and 'connect the dots' to stay in good pressure. Do not worry about making too many tacks, while tacking does cost some boatspeed, all else being equal, the number of tacks does NOT effect the distance sailed. Indeed tacking is usually done to minimize sailed distance. Tactics.

So what part of this are you missing? Probably some of all of it. That makes it harder to just point at your sails or your this or that, or tell you to 'go read a book'. No one gets good at racing 'reading a book'. Hopefully some of this that you read here will help, but you really need someone to come on board and see what is happening.

agprice22 · May 4, 2017

Honestly, without pictures of your rig, sails, your crew in bikinis, etc, it would be difficult to say exactly what you are doing wrong.

My advice: get one of the sailors who has been kicking your A$$ to come out on your boat and show you how to sail upwind! Also, listen to all the other very good advice here from all these other great sailors!

LeeandRick · May 4, 2017

agprice22 said:
Honestly, without pictures of your rig, sails, your crew in bikinis, etc, it would be difficult to say exactly what you are doing wrong.

Last weeks crew.
http://cdn.smosh.com/sites/default/files/legacy.images/smosh-pit/092010/man-bikini-11.jpg

Jackdaw · May 4, 2017

dlochner said:
One of the shortcomings of sailing as a sport is that the feedback loop on performance is deeply flawed. This leaves all sailors and especially new sailors without a reasonable way to tell if they are improving or if changes really made a difference. Sailboat races are scored and 2 metrics are reported elapsed time and position. Because each race is different, these 2 measures apply only to that race. Losing today's race by 3 minutes may be a much worse finish than losing tomorrow's race by 10 minutes. This ultimately adds to the frustration of new sailors, as it is impossible to objectively compare performance in one race to another with just these 2 pieces of information.

I think there is a better way to provide valuable performance feedback by using a ratio of the median elapsed time for the race to a boat's elapsed time. The resulting ratio can be used to compare performance across races and between boats. Doing this won't solve the frustrations of learning to compete well, but, it will help to answer the omnipresent question, "Am I getting better?"

If interested you can read more at this link: I. Towards a Fair and Equitable Handicapping System Comments are appreciated.

Interesting thoughts. The challenge is not to bake it down so much that nothing is learned. As you note, each race is different. A sailor who looks that that, and sees that that do better (for instance) in light airs vs heavy, random legs vs W/L, crew of 3 vs 5, etc etc is going to get better than someone who looks at one boiled down number.

dlochner · May 4, 2017

Jackdaw said:
Interesting thoughts. The challenge is not to bake it down so much that nothing is learned. As you note, each race is different. A sailor who looks that that, and sees that that do better (for instance) in light airs vs heavy, random legs vs W/L, crew of 3 vs 5, etc etc is going to get better than someone who looks at one boiled down number.

Data in the absence of context are just numbers. Without some way of comparing performance across races the analysis completely subjective. There is room for that, we've all come off the race course and felt good (or bad) about how we did. Data that can quantify how good or bad we did can be helpful. The real value for a new sailor is to collect the data over a season, plot it, and draw a trend line. If the trend line is rising, then the skipper knows she/he is improving. If it is flat or declining, it's time to make some changes. It is also useful, as you suggest, to determine what factors seem to be affecting performance, i.e., crew size, beer brand and quantitiy, weather conditions, etc.

If the data is collected across the whole fleet, it can also answer a simple question, "Did I win because I sailed better than usual or because my competition sailed worse than usual."

If you have read the other articles on my website you see that I think we've been barking up the wrong tree on handicaps. PHRF is close, just not quite close enough. There is a better way, the problem is that it is based on someone else's work and I'm not comfortable sharing it without permission (but we're working on getting permission).

Johnb · May 4, 2017

I have found my knotmeter to be helpful because it gives quick and direct correlation between trim adjustments and boat speed, better than a GPS because where we sail the tidal currents and wind are all over the place. I figure it helped me learn a lot about connecting sail adjustments and speed through the water. After that you figure out how to make speed through the water translate to speed over ground/course made good.

What others have said about condition of sails etc is so true. Sailing home after a haul out at which we got a clean bottom, new sails and a folding propeller all at once and it was as if we had a different boat. Friends who race a J24 report they improved their position by fairing their keel.