Andrew Campbell

Monday Morning Tactician: 5 May 2008

May 5th, 2008 in Monday Morning Tactician.

With the routine so set in place in France last month you might think I was ready to stay. You would be wrong. After a couple of crazy connections and having a bag lost somewhere between Dublin and Philadelphia as I write, I made it back to America safe and sound. Rain greets my arrival in DC, but I’m looking forward to a bit of rest and relaxation this week before ramping up the fitness training again before Holland Regatta mid-May. Hyeres ended up being a successful event and I’m keen to capitalize on the efforts in Europe over the last six weeks as we get into the dog days of the European spring season. At most European events the racing is very intense. The Laser fleet is especially unforgiving in the individual attempts of a hundred and fifty sailors to get around the same marks as fast as they can. Often times those sailors hold little regard for minor rules and other boats. They see an opening, weigh the consequences (and perhaps more often don’t) of their potential actions and then go for it. For this week’s Monday Morning Tactician column I think it needs to be stated and explained that the fastest boat does not always win. Yes, I said it.There are many examples through the course of any given race where it is absolutely critical to be a fast sailor in order to win races and regattas. Off the starting line: if you are not up to speed quickly and cannot maintain that speed, you will not win the race. Any time that you transition out of a mark rounding or a location on the race course known for heavy traffic you need to be going as fast as possible. Moreover you need to be going as fast as possible in the right direction. There’s the beauty of boatracing: just because you’re going fast doesn’t mean your going the right way. With a racetrack that is largely undefined, unlike that of track & field or NASCAR, we have many options up our beats and down our runs to pursue the best course around the track. Where NASCAR drivers have about fifty feet of track width that can maybe run three cars wide at best. The sailing race track can be as wide as a mile between boats on the right and left sides. On top of that we can stack our course twenty, thirty, or fifty boats wide on the same ladder run of the racecourse. Being fast is critical, but in that kind of traffic correct decision making is as critical if not more important than speed. Smarts without speed is a frustrating endeavor, but speed without smarts is a futile existence. Perhaps the best example to use for when it is beneficial to hold up and not go as fast as you can is when approaching the leeward mark in traffic. Although the use of gates to replace leeward marks has improved the ability for a lot of boats to turn from the run back upwind onto the beat without as many penalties and incidents as in the past, there is still plenty of opportunity for pile ups. Regardless of fleet size whenever more than one boat chooses to round the same mark there is going to be an incident involving a rule. Someone wrote into the Scuttlebutt last week complaining that they were frustrated when they went to a rules seminar and all the seminar talked about was how to use the rules as a weapon and how to take advantage of other people by use of the rules. Well in any case where you are within hailing distance of another boat, you are probably taking advantage of some standard set by some rule. Going into leeward marks there are a whole slew of rules that dictate the actions of boats telling them to give room, sail their proper course, and the like. Say that there are three boats overlapped to your left looking downwind, and you have the only option to go around a leeward mark ahead to port. If you continue at full speed and follow all the rules, then you will sail around the outside and after the rounding you will likely be directly downwind and in the dirty air of all three of those boats. It seems oversimplified to say that you would always be better off rounding right next to the mark rather than two lengths directly to leeward and in bad air, and yet at almost every leeward mark in history where there is a large group involved there are boats in exactly that terrible position.Where in the general sailing consciousness does this poor tactical handling of these situations hide? It hides in the realm of impatience and the simplistic desire to get around the racecourse at full speed instead of as efficiently as possible. When you are ahead, sailing in clear air and open lanes, it is easy to go as fast as you can around the course at all times. Sailing is very much a sport where the rich get richer as races progress. Once you get into the top ten in a race on the Laser circuit races are relatively easy to finish within a couple boats. On the other hand, if you are stuck in the melee of 15th through 35th place, there are far fewer lanes, more boat on boat decisions to be made and tactical decisions to be made because of other boats actions. All of those things make the larger group go relatively slower than if each boat were sailing around the course in some sort of time-trial format. Slipping from 15th to 35th is as easy as making one bad duck on a beat compounded by all the action of being in a bad lane in a Laser gold fleet race. However going from 25th to 15th can just as easily be done by holding up your speed for a split second and having the patience for ten boats to mash themselves together at a leeward mark and then slip inside of them and head up the beat in a new lane of clear air.When you are approaching a leeward mark with three boats inside of you, often times the best thing to do is to stop and wait. Set yourself up for the beat a little bit earlier and let the other guys duke it out and hammer on each other in the last four lengths into the mark. Put your centerboard down, pull on your outhaul, prep your cunningham, take down your spinnaker a little bit early and wait for the other guys to make mistakes. As soon as your bow reaches the two boat length circle, hail to boats astern “No Room,” acknowledge to the boats already inside that you will give them any room they need, and then pull up and wait. As they rush and scramble to get there gear set up for the beat while they are making a difficult boathandling maneuver while yelling at the other two boats, you will likely see a hole open up right beside the mark into which you can accelerate and start the beat in clear air with the ability to clear out and tack if you wish.We got into a little mess like this one while I was crewing for Jacqueline at Georgetown’s Alumni regatta this weekend. While we were waiting she became preoccupied with new boats entering the circle behind us and started to hurry our rounding and almost ran into the boat ahead of us as we turned upwind. Luckily and thanks to great crewing on my part (I’m kidding, far more likely due to sharp helming skills on her part) we made it away from the mess unscathed. As we sailed away I asked “What happened, we had that situation totally under our control?” Her response was common for sailors in a situation where their tactics are put under pressure by other boats: “I felt rushed, like we had to do something because the boats behind were starting come into the situation.” It is so important to have faith in your tactics and your controlling position on the racecourse. Once you have entered the two-length zone, only the boats with overlap inside you may take room. You can sit there as long as you like and go as fast or slow as you like regardless of other boats coming in from astern. By taking control of the situation and then asserting yourself over those other boats, you have not only used the rules as a weapon to give yourself the best possible position with the hand you’ve been dealt, but you also deal the other boats around you a surprise hand of cards that now they will have to adjust, likely throwing off their game.Monday Morning Tactician Says: Don’t let the other boats around you throw your game off. When your tactics get put over the fire by the pressure of the fleet, remain patient, calm, cool, and collected. By slowing things down in your own head, anticipating the actions of the other boats and having confidence that your actions will not only be right tactically but also within the rules you set yourself up to be a powerful player on the racecourse. Sometimes taking a bite in your speed, holding up and waiting for a scenario to play out ahead of you is the best possible tactical decision you can make. Look at it as though you are going to cut your losses and start fresh with a new hand of cards. Waiting for a moment and getting a clear lane will always be a better play than rushing into a spot with bad air.Jackie and I took second at the 08 GUST Alumni regatta behind Olympic Coach Bill Ward (the only Pro in the field) and my college crew Caroline Lamotte. I think we’ll take our victory as 1st amateurs and be happy with the amount of fun we had racing against twenty boat’s worth of our former teammates.————————Monday Morning Tactician (TM) is written by Andrew Campbell exclusively for CampbellSailing.com

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