{"id":162369,"date":"2026-03-26T06:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T06:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=162369"},"modified":"2026-04-20T08:57:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T07:57:51","slug":"how-to-win-at-double-handed-sailing-expert-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/5-tips\/how-to-win-at-double-handed-sailing-expert-tips-162369","title":{"rendered":"How to win at double handed sailing: Expert tips"},"content":"Lawrence Herbert loves his offshore racing but he and the Corazon<\/em> crew are campaigning their J\/133 on a tight budget. Necessity being the mother of invention, the 28-year-old and the rest of his 20-something crew have come up with some ingenious cost-saving approaches with minimal or zero compromise to performance.\r\n\r\nHerbert learned a lot about boat maintenance<\/a> and reliability in the Caribbean where he worked for a few seasons on race boats including the J-Class yacht Lionheart. This hard-earned knowledge has equipped him well to run much of his own maintenance programme rather than paying others to do the work.\r\n\r\nHaving been forced to retire from the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race<\/a> due to an injury to a crewmember not long after a stormy start in the Solent<\/a>, for 2025 Herbert was determined to leave no stone unturned in his quest to complete his first Fastnet.\r\n\r\n\u201cI must admit there were one or two stones still unturned before the start, and one was not replacing the main halyard<\/a>. When I heard a big bang, my heart sank as I immediately looked skywards,\u201d he recalls.\r\n\r\n\u201cFortunately it was the Cunningham pinging accidentally out of its cleat, so no harm done. But mostly we worked hard to make sure Corazon<\/em> was ready for anything, even if it ended up mostly being a light to medium airs race this year.\u201d\r\n\r\nHere are five of Herbert\u2019s best tips for bulletproofing your boat on a budget.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_159124\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Faring a keel takes time so plan to sort big jobs like this well ahead of key races[\/caption]\r\n

Plan your schedule<\/h2>\r\nIdentify your next important race and build your preparation schedule back from there. In IRC you want to optimise your rating as much as possible for the route. You need to know when the rating deadline is for your race and make sure you get a rating slot as late as possible before that. For the Fastnet we had our sails<\/a> re-measured two weeks before the start.\r\n\r\nSails shrink over time, and just by re-measuring a headsail we got an improvement to Corazon<\/em>\u2019s rating. Get all the big structural jobs out of the way during the winter<\/a> when you\u2019re not likely to be sailing<\/a> so much. Do your hull<\/a> and keel<\/a> inspection super early in the year.\r\n\r\nWe did ours in January and had our rudder<\/a> bearings replaced at the same time, which took longer than expected. Jobs like fairing the keel and the hull \u2013 all these things take time.\r\n\r\nIf you\u2019re not sailing much for a few months, mouse all the control lines, sheets and halyards out and keep a bare deck while the boat isn\u2019t being used. Even in the winter you\u2019d be amazed how much UV damage can degrade lines. So take them home, put them through the washing machine with a small amount of fabric softener and vinegar (not soap!), and they\u2019ll come out almost as good as new.\r\n

Winch maintenance<\/h2>\r\nElsa Swetenham is our winch maintenance<\/a> expert on Corazon<\/em>. She serviced our winches at the start of the year and again just before the Fastnet. For the early-season winch maintenance you want to put quite a bit of grease in there because it\u2019s going to be there for a few months.\r\n\r\nThe downside of more grease is how much it slows down the winches, so unless you\u2019re doing a really long passage like a transatlantic<\/a>, for your pre-race winch maintenance you want to put in less grease. This means the winches will spin quicker, everything will run more easily, and all those small gains add up to a better performance on the race course.\r\n

Second-hand sails<\/h2>\r\nIf you\u2019re mostly day racing on windward-leeward courses, your sail inventory is fairly well defined. But for a big offshore race like the Fastnet you have to be ready for pretty much all conditions and every angle. It could be blowing 33 knots at the start and three knots at the finish.\r\n\r\nWe can\u2019t afford to buy new for Corazon<\/em>, so we\u2019re always keeping an eye out for second-hand sails. There aren\u2019t many J\/133s around, so we\u2019re looking for sails that are a similar size but might require a bit of recutting.\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n

Find solutions<\/h2>\r\nIt can get wet down below and the last thing you want is for your cushions to get soggy. We could have paid a fortune for properly waterproof cushions, but instead we thought, why not get some waterproof bed sheets like they use in a care home?\r\n\r\nSo we bought a set online, put them over the top of the bunks and any water that comes down the hatch runs straight off and into the bilge<\/a>. If you\u2019re coming off watch you can jump into bed without anything getting soggy.\r\n

Budget electronics<\/h2>\r\nWe bought a Starlink satellite internet unit so we could download GRIB files and weather updates, as well as keep friends and family updated with our adventures out at sea. We didn\u2019t have time to mount it properly so we ran the Starlink off the battery<\/a> from a power drill. We\u2019d get it out once every six hours for GRIB file updates and keep it running for just 15 minutes at a time.\r\n\r\nWe\u2019ve worked hard to keep everything as simple and as low-power as possible. We used to have a clunky old chartplotter<\/a> down below, so we stripped that out and now we have a fanless mini PC which has a really low power draw and integrates the B&G system with Expedition for weather routing software<\/a>. Everywhere we can, we\u2019re trying to make the boat as light and fast as possible \u2013 and save as much money as we can.\r\n\r\n
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The team dynamic in double-handed sailing is very different compared with fully crewed boats, says Pam Lee. \u201cIn your classic IRC team you really need to have a clear hierarchy,\u201d she explains. \u201cYou have the driver, the navigator and the tactician making the big decisions at the back of the boat, and further forward the trimmers and the pit and the bow who are not necessarily integrated into the decision-making process. \u201cWith just two of you in double-handed, there\u2019s still going to be a skipper who remains responsible overall for the boat and crew. But what I\u2019ve found over the last four years \u2013 and put into action this past season sailing with Jay [Thompson] \u2013 is that everything should be a discussion, that two heads are better than one. We\u2019re having a continual, ongoing discussion about all aspects, whether it\u2019s nav and tactics, or trimming or even the setup of the boat. \u201cEven though last season\u2019s campaign was built on my sponsorship, my project, I wanted to bring in a person who has a whole range of knowledge and experience, that\u2019s similar but also different from mine. So they\u2019re going to have interesting points of views. They\u2019re going to have other things to contribute and the advantage of having that team-mate is that you can pick their brain and test ideas and tell them your ideas and see what they say.\u201d Here are Pam\u2019s five tips for getting the best out of the partnership, especially when the going gets tough: Anticipate disagreements It\u2019s good to have some in-depth, honest discussions between the two of you before you set out on the race. How you want to work together on the boat, what the other person feels their strengths and weaknesses are \u2013 and what you feel your strengths and weaknesses are. You\u2019re going to be working in an intense environment where you\u2019re short on sleep and maybe wet and cold, so the more you can work out in advance between you, the better. Talk about when things go bad before they go bad. Obviously you\u2019re going to debrief things afterwards, but if you\u2019ve laid out your objectives in advance you\u2019ll manage the difficult moments at sea with much less conflict and more of a shared direction. Don\u2019t be a hero When you have just two of you on board, there\u2019s very little room for making a mess of things. If things go wrong it can have serious consequences. If something bad happens to you, the other person is completely on their own. On a fully-crewed boat in the worst-case scenario of a man overboard you\u2019ve got many people to help drop the sails and turn the boat around. That\u2019s not the case when you\u2019re double-handed. You need to really, really think about the other person in all situations. On an IRC boat in calmer conditions you might think about running up on the foredeck without clipping on. But you can\u2019t afford to cut corners with safety when you\u2019re two-up. …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5203,"featured_media":162371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[546,975],"tags":[934,1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5203"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162369"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162376,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162369\/revisions\/162376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162369"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=162369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}