Before he specialised in foiling catamarans, John Gimson was long-time tuning partner to Iain Percy and the late Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson in the Star keelboat, playing a key role in helping them win gold and silver medals at the Beijing and London Olympics. Two-boat tuning is a critical part of any serious Olympic campaign, a proven tool that is surprisingly underused outside of the very top echelons of the sport.

“Two-boat tuning massively speeds up your learning curve,” says Gimson. “You get much quicker feedback on your performance compared with just sailing by yourself.”

In an Olympic campaign in a highly technical boat like the Nacra 17, Gimson estimates they spend almost half their time engaged in tuning. The benefit comes not just in improving the technical speed of the boat.

“A big part of the benefit is getting used to living in a ‘thin lane’ and keeping the boat moving at optimum pace even when you’re struggling to live in an uncomfortable place next to another boat.”

The following are five of Gimson’s best tips for getting the most out of two-boat tuning.

Article continues below…

How to win at double handed sailing: Expert tips

The team dynamic in double-handed sailing is very different compared with fully crewed boats, says Pam Lee. “In your classic…

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Get a baseline

It’s good to keep one boat as the ‘baseline’ boat where you put everything on known, standard settings. That boat is effectively the ‘control’ in the test process. Then you start to change settings on the other boat to see how it affects relative performance. Once you get into a tuning run, you’re aiming to sail as hard as you can, trying to beat the other boat. It’s also good to use the same points of reference and calibration points, so you have a common language you can use on and off the water for understanding what adjustments are being made.

Be honest, be disciplined

You need to be honest with each other during the process. If you think you had an easier time because you benefited from a slight wind shift, for example, admit it. You’re not trying to kill each other. You’re looking to learn the lessons from the day and share those learnings with each other. If you discover something that works but don’t share it with your training partner, the process will break down. You need to have mutual trust to make the two-boat tuning programme work for everybody.

Start fair

When it’s flat water we’ll probably start three boat lengths apart, with the leeward boat half to one boat length ahead, so we’re effectively starting on equal terms. The more wavy it gets, the more separation we’ll start with, so the windward boat doesn’t get washed into the leeward boat.

Then we’ll keep swapping sides, from windward to leeward position and vice versa, testing on port and starboard tacks, making these changes for possibly an hour or more until we get a feeling of who’s going better and understanding the reasons why. But if the wind is really shifty there’s not much point in carrying on with a two-boat session. Use shifty days to work on other aspects of your sailing.

Emirates Team New Zealand training on one AC40 and one modified AC40 (officially a LEQ12). Photo: Ugo Fonollá / America’s Cup

Train against the extremes

When I was doing Star tuning against Percy and Bart, I’d sail with two different crews. One was really heavy, and one lighter, and we’d train against Percy and Bart with an inherent weight advantage; heavier than them in the strong, lighter than them in the lighter winds. It was a useful way of putting Percy and Bart under additional pressure.

Also, by nature I’m a bit of a pincher, which is probably because I grew up sailing on a lake, whereas other people tend to naturally foot off. Old habits die hard, I guess! Two-boat tuning can be a way of training on your least favourite mode and improving your weaknesses outside the pressure of a racing environment.

Rudder angles

Upwind, the keel provides the majority of the lift to stop the boat from sliding sideways. But a small amount of weather helm means the rudder is behaving like an extra lifting surface to minimise leeway. In a way, rudder angle is the ‘Holy Grail’ for any fast keelboat setup, the angle that minimises drag while ensuring you can still steer effectively.

The first thing you need to know is the optimum rudder angle for your particular type of boat. In the Star it’s between 1-2°. On hi-tech boats like TP52s you have electronic readouts for the rudder angle you’re operating at any given moment. If you’re not allowed to race with electronics, it’s good to train with them. At a minimum, your most basic reference point should be marks on the aft deck so you can glance at the tiller and get an immediate visual gauge on the number of degrees of deflection.

The same goes for adjustments to the backstay tension and jib lead position: all critical elements for finding the best all-round set-up for any given wind or wave condition.

This is where those commonly shared calibration marks can really help. There’s no substitute for hours on the water.

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The team dynamic in double-handed sailing is very different compared with fully crewed boats, says Pam Lee.

“In your classic IRC team you really need to have a clear hierarchy,” she explains. “You 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.

“With just two of you in double-handed, there’s still going to be a skipper who remains responsible overall for the boat and crew. But what I’ve found over the last four years – and put into action this past season sailing with Jay [Thompson] – is that everything should be a discussion, that two heads are better than one. We’re having a continual, ongoing discussion about all aspects, whether it’s nav and tactics, or trimming or even the setup of the boat.

“Even though last season’s 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’s similar but also different from mine. So they’re going to have interesting points of views. They’re 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.”

Here are Pam’s five tips for getting the best out of the partnership, especially when the going gets tough:

Although there are times when it’s good to hand steer – including race starts – getting really familiar with your autopilot is key. Photo: Jean-Louis Carli/Alea

Anticipate disagreements

It’s 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 – and what you feel your strengths and weaknesses are.

You’re going to be working in an intense environment where you’re 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’re going to debrief things afterwards, but if you’ve laid out your objectives in advance you’ll manage the difficult moments at sea with much less conflict and more of a shared direction.

Don’t be a hero

When you have just two of you on board, there’s 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’ve got many people to help drop the sails and turn the boat around. That’s not the case when you’re 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’t afford to cut corners with safety when you’re two-up.

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In light winds when you think you can manage a gybe without waking up your team-mate, don’t do it unless you agreed on the parameters for a solo manoeuvre beforehand. It’s selfish to attempt complex manoeuvres on your own unless you’ve both agreed to ‘take that risk’, in certain conditions; the consequences of mistakes affect you both.

Self-care – staying warm, well fed, and rested – is also not just a personal matter but a duty to your team-mate. If one sailor ‘crashes’ physically or mentally, the entire project is compromised.

Find your default setting

Jay and I have a default setting where we’ll be prepared for anything. Between us, I’d tend to fall into the role of steering and doing most of the cockpit-based jobs while Jay is pretty much working the mast and bow area. Often I’ll go forward and help him set things up on the foredeck and then go back to the cockpit.

We have our specialities, our skills that we like to put to work. Jay is super-happy going up the mast and doing the climbing, while I’m very comfortable in the water, so I’ll do any of the diving to get something off the keel or whatever’s needed. But there’s a lot of overlap in our roles, and when things are less stressful we deliberately switch roles to get as comfortable as possible in each other’s roles.

I always say that on an IRC boat, everybody should do trimming for a day, and go up on the bow for a day, so that everyone understands each other’s roles. That’s what we do in double-handed sailing too, but when the pressure’s on and you need to get things done as quickly, safely and efficiently as possible, that’s when you revert to your default setting.

Lee and Thompson celebrate finishing the Transat Café L’Or. Photo: Jean-Louis Carli/Alea

Befriend the pilot

When you’re sailing double-handed, the autopilot is your best friend, it’s like your third crewmember. Through the manoeuvres you don’t have enough hands to steer the boat and pull all the sheets, especially in tough conditions or if something goes wrong, so you need to get to know and trust your autopilot. We spend a lot of time experimenting with it, finding the best settings and marking them down so we can get back to those settings easily.

But we’re also sailors and it’s really fun to drive the boat, and it’s good not to get too reliant on the autopilot. You still need to steer the boat manually to work out whether you need to be surfing down the waves slightly differently, or if you need to trim the sails differently.

I always drive the starts because it’s so close quarters with the other boats. But after 40 minutes of concentrating you’re going to start getting tired, and that’s when you need to start relying on the autopilot.

You’re still adjusting it the way that you trim the sails. You’re tweaking the autopilot settings to changing wind strengths or sea states. Jay and I play with the settings until we get it to the point where it feels right. There’s always that last bit of speed to squeeze out of the boat, whether it’s heel angle, trimming the sails, and so on, and tweaking the autopilot is part of that same process of refinement.

Manage the ‘marriage’

I’ve lost count of how many days Jay and I have spent at sea together over the past year. And on top of that, all the preparation for the project as well as all the training and everything else. One thing I know for sure is that we saw each other more than Jay saw his wife and I saw my boyfriend! So of course it’s going to be intense.

Over time there’s a risk the other person’s habits can go from being amusing to irritating, but don’t give in to that. Add a pinch of salt to everything, give your team-mates some leeway (and hope they do the same for you).

Sailing’s not a sport where we’re going to be comfortable all the time; we’re going to be cold and wet and short on sleep, so try to show some generosity and compassion when you’re communicating with your team-mate.

When they do things that annoy you, let it slide, and remember you’re probably doing things that annoy them too. Treat them as you would in a relationship, or a good friend or family. You love them, so you let things slide. This is your team-mate. They share the same dreams and goals as you. They’ve committed a lot of time to do this with you and you’ve committed a lot of time with them, so show each other that mutual respect you both deserve.

Our 5 expert tips series is brought to you in association with Musto.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

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When he’s working up a weather and routing plan for an offshore race, Will Harris likes to build up the information in layers. The work can start weeks in advance for a big race like the Rolex Fastnet Race, but the homework really starts ramping up in the final seven days.

“From one week out we’re looking at the big picture, how the jet stream is moving, how the synoptic charts are shaping up.

“I’m not talking to the rest of the crew at this stage, I don’t want to bother them with a plan that’s got a high chance of changing in the coming days. But I’ll look to get them all involved in the final stages when things are starting to look more certain,” he explains.

The depth of Will’s research is too great to cover in full detail here, but his five tips should help set you up with a good understanding of how to put your own weather and routing plan in place.

Thorough preparation makes navigating from the rail smoother. Here Callisto heads offshore in the 2025 RORC Admiral’s Cup. Photo: Rick Tomlinson/RORC

1. Making a navigation plan: Get the big picture

Studying synoptic charts will help you understand the big picture. If we’re doing a race around the English Channel, we’re in an area of a few hundred miles radius. We need to understand what are the features on a bigger scale, what are the main features influencing us? Is there high pressure over Europe? Is there a low pressure system coming in?

It’s important to understand the bigger picture before we dig into a smaller, more detailed area, because if we don’t understand the bigger picture we don’t understand the dynamics or the factors that might be changing as we’re racing.

For example, if we’re in a high pressure system, we know that can mean you’re more likely to see night breezes as the sun’s going down, or thermal breezes. Whereas if we’re in low pressure situations it’s much less likely for that to happen, and we’re relying more on the gradient breeze.

2. Analyse multiple weather models

It’s too easy to rely on the routing and not do the more in-depth research. A good navigator will never put their trust in just one weather model.

We’ve already talked about looking at the synoptic charts for the bigger picture, and the next level down is to look at the ensemble models.

You should examine at least four or five models to see if they all align. Have they been aligning for the last few days, or do they show big differences? If they’re diverging, what day do the models start showing differences – day three or day five, for example? Then you know until what day you need to start working on your strategy again.

The more the models start to align, the more confidence we can take from the forecast. For the biggest picture overview the key sources are the UK Met Office synoptic charts; the US-based NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which produces the GFS model; the DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst) in Germany, which produces the new ICON model; and Meteo France, which produces good high- and low-resolution models.

It’s important to look at all four of these models, and there’s a good website for quickly flicking between these sources – wetterzentrale.de enables you to compare the models and see the differences quite clearly.

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3. Get a taste for spaghetti charts

Spaghetti charts are really useful for drawing the synoptic charts in a very basic format, looking at up to 30 ensemble models at a time. Each of the weather forecasts or producers already mentioned will create 30 ensembles and from that they develop one model, the deterministic model, which is the one we get when we open up any weather website.

When you see the 30 charts presented together in a spaghetti chart, it really helps you to see when certain big weather features are starting to diverge. So maybe between day one and four, you’ll see that the spaghetti charts will draw the same circles over the same low pressure over the top of each other.

And then maybe you get to day six or day five-and-a-half, and suddenly you see the position of the low, where the spaghetti lines will squiggle over the whole of Western Europe. This is where the forecast suddenly becomes a lot less certain. The spaghetti charts are really useful for highlighting a convergence or divergence of the different models.

Spaghetti chart helps see where weather forecast models are diverging. Photo: Will Harris

4. Dig into the detail

The website Windy is really the Mecca of understanding the weather and getting a really nice, clean picture at a more detailed level. Windy enables you to overlay the pressure and a hundred different variables.

So, for example, with a weather front you can look at the air temperature at different altitudes. This will help you pinpoint exactly where the warm front is or the cold front is because you can see those changes in detail.

You can overlay the wind and you’ll start to see how the wind is likely to shift in that front. Big temperature differences could indicate that it’s a super-aggressive new front that’s likely to bring a very big shift and a big gust of wind with a big, light patch afterwards. But if there’s not really much temperature difference then it’s only going to produce a small shift and the changes in wind strength won’t be nearly so significant.

5. Be ready to change the plan

Racing out of the Solent during the Admiral’s Cup, the weather models were suggesting we’d be beating in 10-15 knots of wind after passing the Needles. Suddenly there were these big clouds developing over the land and we found ourselves in a rain squall, and you had to choose which side of the cloud you wanted to sail in. This was a key moment because these clouds were unexpected.

So, do we stick with our strategy of going further offshore, or do we go towards the clouds? When we looked on the radar, and then the data on Windy, the indications were that as soon as the cloud passed over the land the wind actually went from 15 knots down to 10, or even as low as 5 knots. So we decided to get away from the cloud as much as possible, which proved to be the better move compared with half the fleet who kept on sailing towards the cloud.

British sailor Will Harris has risen to the top of offshore racing. From winning the Class 40s in the 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race, he co-skippered the IMOCA Malizia with Boris Herrmann in the 2023 Ocean Race, finishing 3rd. Photo: Felix Diemer/Musto

The data gave us the confidence to make a move that for some would have been counterintuitive. With everything you do with your race planning, you’re looking to paint yourself a picture of what the race is going to be like so that nothing comes as a surprise.

So when a front is approaching and the wind is going to change, you already know what sail combination you’re going to use, you already know what preparations you need to make, whether it’s to put on lifejackets or take in a reef. Analysing the weather models can be a lot of work, but when it gives you the winning edge it’s time well spent.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

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During the build-up to the 2024 America’s Cup, inside the INEOS Britannia team we came up with a set of team values that we ran our daily lives by,” says Freddie Carr. “Whether you’re competing in the America’s Cup or the Hamble Winter Series, I think there’s a set of core values that can really help bring crews together.”

If you’ve been sailing together for a while those values can develop organically. But if you’re still only getting to know each other, it’s helpful to define those values early on in the campaign.

“It’s good to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the team and tell each other that everything you discuss, however difficult or painful, is ultimately about making the boat go faster,” he says.

Freddie believes the British team’s rate of improvement throughout AC37 was in part due to the team’s buy-in to a set of values that they’d defined about six months before the competition began in Barcelona.

“We had our sailing team mantras pinned inside our lockers, reminding us every day how we were going to work as a team. I thoroughly recommend it, whatever level you’re at.”

Here are Freddie’s five best tips for creating a bomb-proof team dynamic born out of strong shared values.

Feedback and honesty

It’s good to have your team values written down and commonly shared and understood, particularly when you’re about to go into a tricky debrief or conversation where somebody might need to be critical of somebody else. One of our values is that feedback is for the greater goal, which is to make the boat go faster. That gets everyone into a place where constructive feedback and honesty is much easier to share.

We were also encouraged to speak up and to ‘swim against the tide’. When you’re in a meeting with a lot of strong individuals, it’s easy for someone to lead the conversation, after which it can get harder and harder for someone to take the opposite point of view. So we actively encouraged people to throw in an alternative viewpoint, and we called that ‘swimming against the tide’. It’s really useful for avoiding a team lapsing into ‘group think’.

All in it together: Carr gives the thumbs up before an AC37 Match race against Emirates Team New Zealand. Photo: Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty

Learn faster

In Barcelona our main goal was to learn faster than the opposition and we felt we did that all summer. Which is why we went from being maybe fourth or fifth out of the challengers in the Preliminary Regatta to ultimately winning the Louis Vuitton Cup and fighting through to the Match itself.

We achieved that because we did such a good job of learning faster, and the reason for that is because of our openness to feedback. Everybody, from Ben [Ainslie] down to the cyclors who were learning to sail, could sit in a room and debrief with complete honesty. Nobody took offence or tried to defend a position.

Achieving that level of honesty is never easy, and it’s probably harder at non-professional levels in the sport. But if you can instil a culture of learning faster than everyone else, and being committed to always asking ‘What can we do to make the boat go faster?’ the results are bound to follow.

Debriefing without rank

We were very fortunate to have a special relationship with a group from the British military during my time with the British America’s Cup challenge. One of the best lessons I took away from them is the way they debrief their missions.

They’re dealing with real life-and-death situations, and one of their mantras is that they always debrief a mission without rank. So we did the same, which meant that everyone – from Ben down to the rookie doing their first Cup – was heard in equal measure. All opinions were considered equally. In fact, we even went further in that we wouldn’t let the big characters speak first but would encourage other people on the team to kick off the conversation.

Rob Wilson and the coaching team did a great job of creating an environment where they’d throw open the floor to the whole group. It really makes you think about what you’re going to say, because you’re asking yourself ‘What if they come to me first?’. So it gets everyone to engage with the process.

Switch on ‘record’

I’ve been used to operating in an environment where pretty much everything we do is being recorded on video from multiple angles, and our voices are being recorded too.

But what I’ve noticed since coming back into the wider sport over the past year is how much the use of video and audio recording has filtered down to other levels like the TP52s.

Now the helmsmen, the tacticians, the navigators are all mic’ed up, and everything is recorded because you live and die by your communication.

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It’s such a good step forward within the sport because there’s no hearsay, no ‘I said left turn and you went right’ kind of disagreements. It’s all factual and it means you can have an honest debrief.

On training days with the TP52 Gladiator our coach, Antonio, has a live mic playing into earphones, and he can listen to the live conversation of the team as we go around the course. It enables him to home in on the bits of the session where maybe the afterguard had a bit of a barney about something, and he can focus on that area of disagreement. But equally when we’re really locked in to a good period of speed upwind, he can highlight that too.

Recording your training and racing sessions is a really useful addition to the toolbox and I’d recommend trying it.

‘Check the ropes’

We had a phrase in the last Cup which was ‘checking the ropes’. And it was our way of checking in on each other, to keep an eye and ear out for mental health and supporting your teammates.

It’s about remembering that these people – your teammates – are going through exactly the same thing that you are. It’s about remembering that some of us might have wives or partners that are getting a bit grumpy at home because you’ve worked seven days straight and you haven’t seen the kids, or they might have a grandparent that’s ill at home. Everybody’s got these real-life stressors but it’s too easy to walk into a team environment and put the shield up and try to be a superhero. It’s good to check in with your teammates and make sure that their daughter’s first day at nursery went well.

You don’t have to be friends with everyone, but just be kind to them and take an interest in their lives and what they’re going through. That really keeps team politics bullshit at bay.

And it also means that further down the line, when you have to have tough conversations with your teammates about something from the racing, it makes it a whole lot easier if you’ve already built a good relationship.

For heat-of-the-moment situations where it’s all turning to custard, maybe you’ve had a badly executed kite drop and lost a couple of boats at the leeward mark, using a trigger word can be really helpful. It might be as simple as ‘reset’ – as in ‘Okay, lads, let’s reset,’ – to get everyone back into the present and focusing on the next thing. It’s also about keeping an eye out for how each of us is responding to stress.

In the last Cup we had a buddy system where we were paired off with a teammate, and my buddy was Ben Cornish. If I was getting a little bit nervous I had a habit of marching around the foredeck and, hard though it might be to believe, I would actually talk more than usual. My buddy might say to me, ‘“You alright today? You’re wearing a hole out in the foredeck with all that marching up and down. Is everything good?” So Cornish acknowledged that I was nervous or uptight that day and we’d then have a little chat about it.

Once you get that anxiety or anger out of your head and into the open, it starts to disappear pretty quickly. Having an outlet for your feelings is really healthy and it’s the sign of a great team when you can look out for each other like that.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

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The post 5 expert tips: How to make the best of crew dynamics appeared first on Yachting World.

Starting has always played a disproportionate part in the outcome of a race. The shorter the duration of the race, the more this is true. Dylan Fletcher knows this very well from his experience competing in SailGP, where the races often last less than 10 minutes. Even though a reaching start against eleven 50ft foiling catamarans appears to bear little resemblance to a conventional upwind start for a large fleet of keelboats, Fletcher argues there are some fundamental principles that apply to any scenario.

“Time and distance judgement is key to any kind of start and the more you do of it the better you get,” he says. “I think that doing a lot of Moth sailing during the summer really helped my SailGP starting because in the Moth you have to eyeball it.” Fletcher explains that in the Moth, you have no technology to tell you where the line is. Judging that approach to the line and doing it multiple times helps with any other starting, whether it’s SailGP, on a Cape 31, or an RC44. In the following five tips, Fletcher shares not only how to give yourself the best shot at a winning start, but one that puts you in the best place for your overall race strategy.

What outcome do you want?

Which side of the course do you think is paying? Is it an even course or is one side looking favourable? This is the bigger picture that you need to work into your starting strategy. Everything you do in the build-up to the start needs to work back from the outcome that you want.

In a 49er, for example, if there’s just six knots of breeze everyone tends to take their place on the line really early. If I want to win the starboard end, I know I’m going to be at the starboard end potentially nine minutes before the start gun. So, when the orange flag goes up, I already need to be on the line.

Going for a committee boat end start on a right-favoured course can be a winning, but higher risk strategy – here at the 2025 49er Worlds in Cagliari. Photo: Jesus Renedo/Sailing Energy

Understanding your outcome and making sure you work back to the right process is absolutely critical. Identify your ideal point on the start line and where the fleet is lining up. This will show you where the opportunities are potentially going to be. Doing a timed run before the start, particularly in displacement keelboats where the timings are quite predictable, will give you a good sense of how to time your approach with a good deal of accuracy.

Dial back the risk

Some starting approaches are riskier than others. You need to work out the risk versus reward factor of the start you’re considering. Working back from our overall outcome in SailGP, our aim for the season is to make it into the three-boat grand final at the end of the year in Abu Dhabi. We know that if we go around mark one in 5th place (just better than halfway in the fleet) and we overtake at least one boat, it gives us a good enough average to achieve our overall aim of making it into the top three. We don’t need to take massive risks on the start line. So how can you apply this to a keelboat start and your own scenario? We look at how to apply this in the next tip.

Left-hand track

Let’s say you’re racing on a left-side favoured race track where you need to hold your lane on starboard for a long time. Alternatively, there might be a good bit of port end bias to the way the line has been set. Do you really need to win the pin on a port-end favoured start? It’s a high-risk strategy that can go really well or go really badly.

Depending on your overall goal, maybe it’s good enough to let the pack fight for the pin. You can instead start a third of the way from the end where there’ll be more space to get a clean start. Make sure you’ve got the best transits available and/or that you’ve pinged the line as accurately as possible. We’ve already talked about the importance of time runs and the pin-end scenario is where it matters the most.

If you feel like you’re arriving at the pin a little too early, don’t just stay there and hope for the best, or bail out in the last 30 seconds. There’s no time to salvage a good start if you bail out that late. Bail out with at least a minute to go because that’ll give you more time to reset. This allows you to look for a second opportunity to secure a good approach to the line.

In the 49er fleet you need to secure your spot on the line early. Photo: Jesus Renedo/Sailing Energy

Do the ‘dead bird’

What if it’s a go-right race track, like it so often is at Lake Garda, for example? Starting right next to the committee boat as the gun fires is perfect of course, but potentially high risk. This is especially true if you’re starting on a black flag or a U-flag. A lower risk approach but almost as effective is to do the ‘Dead Bird’.

I’m not sure why it’s called that, other than it might have been a favourite of America’s Cup helmsman Ed Baird, and it’s ended up being the ‘Dead Bird’. The tactic involves coming into the line behind the front row, right near the committee boat. As soon as you can tack, you flop over on to port tack and make a beeline for the right-hand side.

Of course, this is sometimes easier said than done. But even a poorly executed Dead Bird could get you into clear air going the right way. This is compared with many boats further along the line who got great starts but just don’t have the opportunity to tack on to port until many minutes further up the track. They might be ahead of you at start time, but you’ll be ahead of them five or 10 minutes later.

Resist the panic-tack

If everything is pretty even across the race course, there’s no bias in the line, and no side is paying particularly, it’s about getting into a clear lane as soon as possible. Your goal is being able to achieve your best VMG speed. In this instance, it doesn’t really matter where you start, so pick what you’re comfortable with.

In the 49er with Stu Bithell, our super strength was starting near the left-hand end of the line, so that was our default setting when there were no other major factors to consider. Don’t underestimate your ‘super strength’. When you’re racing in an important regatta and the pressure is on, lean on what you know works best for you.

Of course, sometimes you’re going to get it wrong and you’ll find yourself gasping for air in the second or third row out of the line. I’ve made this mistake myself a thousand times where I tack out straight away in the hope of finding something better. But it’s nearly always better to wait 10 seconds, take stock of your situation, and choose your moment to tack out on to port. Chances are you’ll make a much better choice if you can resist the panic-tack and, instead, give yourself a moment to think.

See all of our Expert Yacht Racing Tips sponsored by Musto.

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The post Five expert tips for the perfect start: Dylan Fletcher’s guide to time, distance, and risk appeared first on Yachting World.

I was navigating on the 80-footer Beau Geste on the Round New Caledonia Race, steaming towards a reef system when suddenly all the systems went down. We were on a dark ship and were within five minutes of hitting the reef.”

It’s because of times like these that Will Oxley remains so committed to his no-stone-unturned approach to navigation. He’s all too aware that the smarter the technology we rely on, the less smart we become. At least, that’s the danger.

“When I get people coming to me for coaching and training in improving their navigation skills, the first thing I’ll ask is have they mastered the fundamentals?” says Will. “Have you done your RYA Yachtmaster certificate, for example?

That’s where you get to learn the fundamentals of the job – coastal navigation, transits, how tides work, about wave patterns and the fact that you’re not necessarily safe in more water than the depth of your boat.”

Since the arrival of GPS and electronic charts, many sailors have increasingly lost touch with these fundamentals, which leaves them dangerously exposed, according to Will. Here are his five best boat knife tips for making sure you’ve covered yourself for those times when systems go down and the only thing you’ve got to fall back on are your raw navigation skills.

Software skills do not make a navigator

The ability to use software like Expedition and Adrena is obviously critical to being a good navigator in the modern age of offshore racing, but this is not the be-all and end-all. While people come to me asking for help in training them in the best boat knife use of these tools, I’m conscious of my responsibility to make sure they’ve covered the other vital aspects of navigation.

The software tools are the top of the pyramid of skills required, but you can’t call yourself a good navigator unless you’ve studied the fundamentals – the base of the pyramid – in great detail. There are plenty of examples I could draw to make the point, but one that we see in the Caribbean 600 is when someone hits a rock that they say wasn’t shown exactly on the chart.

If you come from the UK where the charts are five- or six-star and every tiny rock is accounted for, it’s easy to fall into the trap of putting the same level of blind trust in the ENCs (electronic navigation charts) for the Caribbean. They are nowhere near at the same level of accuracy and you’ll come unstuck if you place too much faith in them. This is just one of many examples why studying the fundamentals matters so much.

Pro navigators use the latest navigation software – but still rely on paper charts as vital back-up. Photo: Amory Ross/Team Alvimedica/Getty Images

Make backups for the backup

You’ll hear people tell stories about how the boat went aground because the chart was inaccurate or there was a GPS failure. But they’re not really valid excuses because you have to assume that these things are going to happen at various points in your sailing life.

You can get yourself into some pretty complicated situations with a deck screen and a detailed chart. For instance, at night time, you can get inside some rocks that are not very wide, but you’re still happy that all is well. Now, what happens if your GPS goes down? A well-rounded navigator should be able to say: “I know that if I stay between these depth contours, then I’m safe. I know there’s a lighthouse and the bearing to that lighthouse needs to remain at this angle for me to be safe. There’s a transit here…” and so on.

There are a whole lot of other pieces of information, using fundamental navigation, that you should be paying attention to.

I use a mesa rugged tablet as a backup to the main desktop nav system on any boat that I sail on, so even if the boat’s electronics go down – say, after a crash gybe and all the antennas have been ripped off the back of the pulpit – then I can flick straight to the tablet.

But what if the mesa goes down? Navigation is as much about knowing where you’re not as knowing where you are, and you always need to know your escape route if absolutely everything goes down. At all times, and for all potential worst-case scenarios, you need to plan your way to safety.

Spread the workload

Just as we’re talking about backups for all scenarios, the same applies to the navigator too. You need to spread the workload and make sure other people on the crew are up to speed with your plans. When you’re doing a handover and you’re planning to have a sleep for a little while, explain the projected scenario for the next few hours, including those vital paths to safety that we talked about. Before the race you’ll do hours of preparation, particularly looking at the sailing instructions and the course routing.

I realise everyone else on the crew has their own area of responsibility, so I’ll boil down the really vital information that I think everyone needs to know, and condense it into one page. I’ll summarise the key points from the Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions and say, “Everybody should be aware of this, and there will be a fine if someone asks me a question that’s already on this one page,” because there’s basic stuff that absolutely everyone needs to know.

It’s easy to sit back and think “oh, Will is prepared, we won’t read it. We’ll just assume that what he did was right.” That reliance purely on the navigator is a big error that even professional teams sometimes make.

Article continues below…

5 Expert Tips: How to run a succesful offshore campaign on a budget

Lawrence Herbert loves his offshore racing but he and the Corazon crew are campaigning their J/133 on a tight budget.…

5 expert tips: How to be a yacht’s watch leader

Although he’s the crew boss and watch captain of 100ft Maxi yacht Scallywag in his own right, Pete Cumming is…

Set your risk level

We’ve talked about limiting your risk and erring on the side of safety, but occasionally someone will come up to me after a race and say, “Hey, what you did going in so close to the shore there, that was dangerous.” And I’ll say, “Well, no, because I was out there last week in a RIB and we sounded that whole area. And I know 100% for sure that what’s on the chart isn’t there.”

The more you research and the more you do your homework, the more you can push your level of risk, or at least what other people perceive to be risk. When we’re racing 100ft maxi yachts out of Porto Cervo we can’t afford to hit the rocks because these are big, expensive boats and the rocks on the Costa Smeralda are really hard. But a small advantage of just feet and inches can really count in such close races, which is why on the layday the navigators will be less likely to be in the bar enjoying a few beers, and more likely to be out in a RIB plumbing the depths and mapping out every nook and cranny of ‘Bomb Alley’.

There’s also a high level of cooperation and knowledge sharing between the navigators, which is exactly how it should be.

Eyeballs still matter

These days even the bowman is pinging the line with his own GPS-enabled wrist watch. But eyeballs still matter, for bowmen sighting the line and for navigators using their own senses rather than placing all their faith in charts and electronic navigation aids. There are plenty of places in the world – like the Caribbean or Hamilton Island in Australia – where I’m looking at the chart but there’s a point at which it becomes an eyeball.

If you’re working off six-star charts in the UK you can place a lot of trust in them, but if it’s a two-star chart you’re definitely using your eyeball from a long way out. In this age of electronic wizardry, eyeballs, and all your senses and instincts, still matter.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post 5 expert tips: Your guide to navigation fundamentals appeared first on Yachting World.

Lawrence Herbert loves his offshore racing but he and the Corazon 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.

Herbert learned a lot about boat maintenance 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.

Having been forced to retire from the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race due to an injury to a crewmember not long after a stormy start in the Solent, for 2025 Herbert was determined to leave no stone unturned in his quest to complete his first Fastnet.

“I must admit there were one or two stones still unturned before the start, and one was not replacing the main halyard. When I heard a big bang, my heart sank as I immediately looked skywards,” he recalls.

“Fortunately it was the Cunningham pinging accidentally out of its cleat, so no harm done. But mostly we worked hard to make sure Corazon was ready for anything, even if it ended up mostly being a light to medium airs race this year.”

Here are five of Herbert’s best tips for bulletproofing your boat on a budget.

Faring a keel takes time so plan to sort big jobs like this well ahead of key races

Plan your schedule

Identify 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 re-measured two weeks before the start.

Sails shrink over time, and just by re-measuring a headsail we got an improvement to Corazon’s rating. Get all the big structural jobs out of the way during the winter when you’re not likely to be sailing so much. Do your hull and keel inspection super early in the year.

We did ours in January and had our rudder bearings replaced at the same time, which took longer than expected. Jobs like fairing the keel and the hull – all these things take time.

If you’re 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’t being used. Even in the winter you’d 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’ll come out almost as good as new.

Winch maintenance

Elsa Swetenham is our winch maintenance expert on Corazon. 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’s going to be there for a few months.

The downside of more grease is how much it slows down the winches, so unless you’re doing a really long passage like a transatlantic, 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.

Second-hand sails

If you’re 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.

We can’t afford to buy new for Corazon, so we’re always keeping an eye out for second-hand sails. There aren’t many J/133s around, so we’re looking for sails that are a similar size but might require a bit of recutting.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips: How to be a yacht’s watch leader

Although he’s the crew boss and watch captain of 100ft Maxi yacht Scallywag in his own right, Pete Cumming is…

5 Expert Tips: How to recover from a bad race

You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. But when you’ve had a bad result, how do you…

Find solutions

It 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?

So 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. If you’re coming off watch you can jump into bed without anything getting soggy.

Budget electronics

We 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’t have time to mount it properly so we ran the Starlink off the battery from a power drill. We’d get it out once every six hours for GRIB file updates and keep it running for just 15 minutes at a time.

We’ve worked hard to keep everything as simple and as low-power as possible. We used to have a clunky old chartplotter 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. Everywhere we can, we’re trying to make the boat as light and fast as possible – and save as much money as we can.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post 5 Expert Tips: How to run a succesful offshore campaign on a budget appeared first on Yachting World.

Although he’s the crew boss and watch captain of 100ft Maxi yacht Scallywag in his own right, Pete Cumming is always eager to learn from the best. After operating as a driver/trimmer on board Volvo 70 Tschüss 2’s line honours victory in the Transatlantic Race 2025 in June, he was inspired by the calm leadership of watch captains Neal McDonald and Stu Bannatyne.

“Neal and Stu are really good at making sure everyone on the boat is connected with the decision-making process, which keeps everyone motivated and all pushing towards the same objective. Which might seem really obvious, but I’ve been on plenty of boats where the front end of the boat has no idea what the people at the back are thinking.

“The moment Neal or Stu come off watch, they’re checking in with the navigator, Campbell Field, just getting an overview of what’s going on before they go to sleep. Are there going to be any sails challenges coming up in the next four hours while they’re off?”

Done right, the watch captain spans many roles, from co-ordinating the boat handling up on deck to making sure everybody on their watch is physically and mentally able to work to their best within a demanding and maybe even sometimes hostile working environment.

Here are Pete’s five key tips for being the best watch captain you can be.

Staying in the loop

I think it was Brad Butterworth who said that when a team breaks down, lunatics start running the asylum.

When there’s no communication through the boat, and maybe a lack of trust, you get in situations when the crew suddenly decide they’re going to call the gybe because the navigator’s asleep and you don’t want to disturb him. With the seasoned pros this lack of comms is never allowed to happen.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips to help you better understand sailing heel angles

Keelboat sailors obsess about maintaining the optimum angle of heel. According to Chris ‘Twiggy’ Grube, it’s a good obsession to…

5 Expert Tips: How to recover from a bad race

You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. But when you’ve had a bad result, how do you…

It’s the watch captain’s job to make sure the chain of communication is always operating smoothly. Splinter groups develop on boats all the time, but if you can work with the navigator and the guys on deck so that everyone’s got buy-in to the strategy and the decision-making process, it makes the world of difference to the atmosphere on board, and ultimately to the team’s performance.

Earn respect

To be an effective watch captain you’ve got to earn the respect of the people around you, and that generally only comes with experience, a sense of competence and a good deal of self-confidence without arrogance.
If someone questions you, you’ve got to be able to cope with that and not look weak with your decision-making. Sometimes there can be big egos on board and you have to be able to stand your ground. You also need to lead from the front and occasionally show the guys that you’re prepared to get your hands dirty and do a tough or unpleasant job yourself.

That said, it’s important to choose the right moment. Don’t go down a rabbit hole of trying to get one small job done if that takes your attention away from the big picture. That’s your main job. Ultimately you’ve got to have good knowledge of most areas on the boat, without being an expert at everything, which is why watch captains tend to be recruited from the middle of the boat – a trimmer or someone who’s worked in the pit area who’s connected to the front and the back of the boat and understands the challenges of both ends.

Questions, not commands

A good watch captain empowers his team to make their own decisions, to run their own part of the boat as best they can. You have to be able to ask questions of each other, to check in on each other and ask for thoughts and ideas rather than pretending that you’ve got all the answers.

Stu and Neal are brilliant on watch and they might ask me: “Pedro, question for you: is the staysail over-trimmed? I’ll leave it with you.” It’s not an order, it’s a prompt. So I’ll go forward and I’ll see if the staysail needs a bit of an ease. They’re very good at empowering every team member to make their own decisions.

Keep it fun

Sometimes you can forget why you’re out there. We do this because it’s fun, and it has to be fun for all the crew. You might be capable of extracting the best performance in the world, but if you’re a miserable bugger you can shut that watch down pretty quickly. It reaches a point where everyone just counts down the minutes until they can go off watch.

Don’t be that person. Keep it fun, maintain an open dialogue where everyone feels comfortable talking to everyone else and enjoying each other’s company.

Have a quiet word

If there’s a bad atmosphere, as a watch captain you need to get to the root of the problem quickly. If someone is playing up or not fitting in with the team for whatever reason, the worst thing you can do is try and shame that person in front of the crew. It’s not always easy to find a place on board to have a quiet word with them, but that’s the way to approach it.

Find your moment to hear what they’ve got to say, because sometimes the reason for the upset can be completely different to what you might have imagined. Most people will appreciate the fact you’ve tackled the problem head on.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post 5 expert tips: How to be a yacht’s watch leader appeared first on Yachting World.

Experienced sailor though he may be, Alain Sign has had his hands full getting to grips with the role of mainsheet trimmer in a fleet as competitive as the Cape 31. Alain sees the mainsheet trimmer’s role as the hub, the central nervous system which is connected to every other role on the boat. “I’m having a conversation with pretty much everyone else on board,” he says.

“With the trim you’re looking to guide the helm to where they’re going, and I’m taking my cue from what the tactician is saying. Then I’m talking with the runner trimmer looking for power-on or power-off.

“And then there’s maintaining the right relationship between main and jib trim, working together through the gusts, lulls and shifts.”

Data analysis is another trend creeping into Cape 31 racing, with an analyst back on shore looking at when the boat was fast or slow and feeding the details back to the team before the next day’s racing.

Through the wind range, different elements of the multiple array of sail controls take on different levels of importance. Here are Alain’s five best tips for keeping your mainsail – and the overall boat speed – at the highest level of performance through different wind speeds.

Article continues below…

5 expert tips: Guide to asymmetric spinnaker handling

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5 expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind

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Mode priorities

All the time you need to be asking yourself, ‘What am I trying to achieve with the setup?’. I’m listening very carefully to the tactician’s priorities at any given moment as you need to mode the rig to what they need. Is it a fast-forward mode, or a high VMG mode, for example?

On a stable day I’m looking to control the heel angle so will be constantly playing around with the traveller. I’m also looking at boat speed and true wind angle, checking how close we’re sailing to the breeze.

With the helmsman I’m moving between sailing not too high and not too low, working to find the VMG sweet spot, managing the relationship between traveller position and mainsheet tension as my two primary controls.

Ease for speed

In sub-powered light wind conditions, if you’re struggling to get the boat moving, ease for speed. Make sure you ease the mainsheet and the jib to create really open leeches for the air to move past. Ensure lots of twist and don’t steer too close to the breeze, not until you’ve built the speed and momentum.

As soon as you get over 6 knots of breeze it’s good to bring the traveller all the way to windward, even to the point where the boom is two or three degrees above the centreline of the boat. This creates ‘false load’, creating a bit more weather helm and feel for the helmsman to work off.

Photo: Ludovic Fruchaud/IMACIS

Harden that leech

As you begin to progress into full power conditions, start closing off the mainsail leech. Now you’re starting to drop the traveller further to leeward, maintaining your target heel angle. You’re also working with the fine-tune on the mainsheet, and with the runners to straighten the mast for a lull or letting it bend in a gust.

In an ideal world, when the runner and the jib are set up nicely, they kind of do the work for you and there’s not much trimming or adjustment to be done with the mainsail. That’s when you know you’re getting close to the sweet spot of optimum rig tune.

Big breeze

The windier it gets, the more tension you want to put into the shrouds. On a Cape 31 you’re only allowed to adjust it before the race, so don’t go too extreme on these adjustments if the breeze is looking variable.

Once it’s getting windy enough for the mainsail to start ragging, you want to max out on your runners, pulling on lots of vang and Cunningham, and let the traveller to leeward. You also want the jib sheeted further out to leeward to keep the slot open.

On the Cape 31 the jib up-and-down is led to the main trimmer while the jib trimmer tends to be hiking off the side of the boat. This means you can ease the jib leech through the gust and pull it tighter again through the lull, maintaining the right balance of power between mainsail and jib.

Macif Ultime trimaran in big conditions during the Brest Atlantiques. Photo: Alexis Courcoux / Brest Atlantiques

If you’re getting really overpowered it’s sometimes worth easing off again on the vang, making sure the bottom of the mainsail keeps driving the boat forward while letting the top of the sail twist off and spill the excess power. It’s also possible to pull on too much Cunningham which you can see when the entry to the sail goes too flat, so make sure you don’t overdo it.

Use the runners

If the runner trimmer is looking around and anticipating the gusts and lulls, easing and tightening the runners accordingly, the mainsheet trimmer doesn’t have to do an awful lot.

When you’re in that light wind mode, where you’re going from 6 knots to 8 knots of breeze and you’re looking to find power, that’s when accurate runner trimming becomes really important. When the gust comes in, you want the boat to accelerate, getting those turns on the runner. Then if it’s slowly dying off, you need to be putting power back into the mainsail again.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

The post 5 Expert Tips: Your complete guide to mainsail trimming appeared first on Yachting World.

Three years ago a Sun Fast 3300 called Red Ruby, whose American owners come from the Pacific North West, popped up in UK double-handed races. It immediately notched up a string of impressive results in a very competitive fleet.

Red Ruby went from 2nd in the 2022 and 2023 UK Double-Handed Offshore Series; to 1st in class – and very nearly 1st overall – in the 2023 Rolex Middle Sea Race; also winning the 2023 ORC Double-Handed World Championships in Barcelona, and the 2024 IRC Double-Handed European Championship.

For her achievements, including being first female skipper in the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race, Christina (Chris) was awarded the 2023 US Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year. “I don’t sail for a living, but when I do sail, it’s the most alive that I feel,” she told a room full of sailing luminaries on accepting the award.

So how did two non-pro sailors achieve such good results in an unfamiliar fleet – and a sailing area on the opposite side of the Atlantic? First of all, “based on our experience, I really recommend buying a good used boat versus a new boat,” says Justin.

The couple competing in the RORC De Guingand Bowl in 2022. Photo: Paul Wyeth/pwpictures/RORC

Red Ruby was formerly Gentoo and had been previously campaigned by James Harayda and Dee Caffari.

“So much of the detail had already been figured out and it would have taken us much longer to get a new boat set up from a distance,” he adds.

“Maybe that was the lucky, serendipitous piece,” Chris adds. “James Harayda is amazing, and we got really lucky that we picked that boat, because he had it really well set up and he shared everything with us.”

“When we showed up to sail it for the first time, he went out with us for two days just in the Solent; that was a really big deal for us,” says Justin. “James had figured out so many little details. We know for sure that had we picked any other Sun Fast 3300, any other brand, or any other model, it would have taken us years to figure out.”

Of course not everyone can plan to buy a boat that’s been raced by top IMOCA 60 skippers, but in any class there will be boats that have been very well set up by sailors achieving consistent results. Acquiring one of those, with things like polars and sail crossover charts already well developed, is often a much faster way to the head of the fleet than buying a new boat that has to be set up from scratch.

Article continues below…

Double handed sailing skills: handling symmetric spinnakers

Double handed sailing skills are increasingly important to master as the recent boom in double handed racing, both inshore and…

Double handed sailing skills: Upwind trim and reefing

Double handed sailing skills are increasingly important to master as the recent boom in double handed racing, both inshore and…

Another key aspect is that the Wolfes shared Red Ruby with American pro sailor and former Olympian Jonathan McKee, who co-skippered with Alyosha Strum-Palerm (and sometimes others, including America’s Cup and meteorologist legend Pete Isler), giving a roster of four core sailors to race two-up.

“Jonathan has done a Mini Transat campaign and is just a phenomenal sailor,” says Chris. “This partnership approach has meant that we have four brains working on everything instead of just two.

“That helps with all of the thought that goes into the optimisation and setup. The four of us also do a pre-race and a post-race discussion for every single race. That really helps us learn more quickly as each time Jonathan and Alyosha go sailing we’re learning from that. Our boat actually races quite a lot, so the total knowledge gained through sharing is really good.”

Justin and Chris celebrate crossing the Atlantic double-handed in the 2024 Cap Martinique race. Photo: Marc Marsillon/Disobey/Cap Martinique

European approach

To get a better understanding of racing in Europe, the couple first went to the 2021 Double-Handed World Championship in Italy, raced in one-design Beneteau Figaro 3s. UK-based double-handed skipper Gavin Howe then introduced them to the Solent Sun Fast 3300 fleet and double-handed racer Nigel Colley of Sea Ventures.

“We specifically picked the UK because it has the biggest double-handed distance racing fleet, and found a boat that seemed promising with lots of the same design in the fleet,” says Justin. “It worked out really well because we were immediately sailing next to other 3300s and could tell if we were sailing reasonably well or not. It was as close to the one-design racing we experienced on the Figaro 3 as possible.”

Chris points out the double-handed community is close and mutually supportive. “Being a part of the UK Double-Handed Offshore Series, with the people we’ve met and communicated with through WhatsApp, has been really helpful. Most people know how the French are doing so well, as they have a sharing community that trains together. What the UK double-handed group is doing seems to be modelling that and it’s very effective.”

Light airs for an early morning start in the Solent. Photo: John Green

Technical tweaks

The couple made few big modifications to Red Ruby, other than adding Fourth Cape’s electric E-Bar toe-in adjuster for the twin rudder system and a Cyclops load cell for the forestay. The latter was added primarily to give a reliable and repeatable reference for backstay tension in different conditions “rather than trying to figure it out each time we come to the boat.”

Aside from that, Justin says: “The biggest single thing we did was changing the mast rake, just doing what we felt was right, rather than following what everyone else was doing.”

In preparation for the 3,800-mile Cap Martinique race from the Breton port of La Trinité-sur-mer to Martinique, they added a through-hull camera 25cm in front of the keel. This is interfaced with the boat’s computer and allows quick checks to see if there’s weed or debris snagged on the keel.

They made small improvements to the electrical system as well as spending time to ensure they fully understand the charging systems. “We also keep the sails pretty fresh so they don’t have a real opportunity to wear out. We worked hard with our sailmaker on the inventory and all the sails have been replaced since we bought the boat,” Justin adds.

Justin at the helm on their exit from the Solent in the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race. Photo: Christina Wolfe

Otherwise they endeavoured to keep the boat as simple and light as possible. “We looked at adding a water ballast system and fully intended to,” says Chris, “but after racing a few times, decided the boat didn’t need it.” They have avoided adding weight and complexity, and the boat rates better without water ballast.

“We haven’t added anything that isn’t essential: we don’t have a shore power charger, refrigerator, water heater, or cabin heater.” An exception to this philosophy was the addition of solar panels for extra redundancy for the Cap Martinique race. Reliability is key offshore. “One thing we did replace were the rope clutches for the backstays,” explains Justin. “Those were undersized and a couple of 3300s have broken masts in the Solent on crazy downwind days when the clutches either failed or caused the line to fail.

“We replaced them with textile clutches that are stronger and kinder to the line.”

Seasons were discussed and planned well in advance over several calls, with the budget for the following year agreed at this stage, “We split everything 50/50 with Jonathan that is boat related: maintenance; improvements; sails; and deliveries,” says Chris. “It has worked very well, but we have built a transparent relationship for this partnership, with a lot of communication.”

A through-hull camera gives a quick view of the keel. Photo: Oscar Torveo/ORC

Smooth handling

Botched manoeuvres, especially in challenging conditions at night, can easily negate any gains achieved through superior boat speed. How do they avoid this? “Chris and I have sailed double-handed together for 28 years,” says Justin, “it’s what we do best.”

“We had a J/111 at home that we double-handed very aggressively during and after Covid,” adds Chris. “You get to reinforce those manoeuvres when you are racing that boat around buoys against fully crewed boats.

“We also have a J/70 that we treat like a dinghy, also with all-asymmetric kites, so we just keep doing things over and over again, trying to get to Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours figure,” says Chris, referencing journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book Outliers: The Story of Success in which he posited that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of any discipline.

“We’re still working on all of that!” she adds.

One of the couple’s biggest tests came in the 2023 Rolex Middle Sea Race, when they finished 2nd overall – an agonising 24 seconds away from winning IRC overall on corrected time. Their race got off to an inauspicious start, with their class becalmed on the start line, then a problem with their headsail feeder hampered them further. By Lampedusa the weather models showed Red Ruby had no chance of catching eventual overall winners Bullit, a Wally 93, but the Wolfes were undeterred.

Christina was US Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year. Photo: Kurt Arrigo/Rolex

“So much happened in that race! I think we did 22 sail changes,” Justin told race organisers afterwards.

“We went hours and hours and hours without any rest at all, because there was too much going on, we couldn’t stop.” The couple used to compete in triathlons, so working at a high intensity for endurance periods is familiar territory.
“In a 600-mile race how many places did you leave 24 seconds?” he reflected, “Could’ve done one better tack, one better call on the current in the Messina Strait…”

“But then you look up, and there’s volcanic eruptions happening around Stromboli!” added Chris.

“We made some great navigational calls. One thing we can do, because we have been sailing together so long, is make decisions really quickly,” she explained. “There is no board meeting to decide if we are going to tack or gybe. We both see the same information, we both come to the same conclusion because, essentially, we have developed as sailors together.”

Red Ruby came within seconds of winning the 2023 Middle Sea Race overall. Photo: Kurt Arrigo/Rolex

Learnings

The project was wound up a few months ago, and Red Ruby will be off to a new home, but what advice would the Wolfes give to anyone planning a similar campaign?

“Start making the connections – the people are important,” says Chris. “We love the competition, but it’s really no fun if you don’t get an opportunity before or after the race to connect with people.

“Being distant from the boat [has been] the most difficult part for us because we can’t just pop down and do a little project, or go for a quick sail or whatever. We had to plan really carefully, and do things really efficiently, both sailing – and project-wise. [That] is the most challenging part because it requires more planning and more efficiency.

“One of the highlights is also that we kept moving the boat around. It didn’t really have a base and spent two winters in Malta, the summers in Hamble and the springs in France. That’s been really fun, but it’s a challenge to make it work and means dealing with different people in different locations if we need something done. It adds an additional layer of complexity in a sense, but comes with its reward. So it’s totally worth it.

“With the Red Ruby project drawing to a close we can easily say that the entire experience exceeded our expectations,” she adds. “The boat performed better and was more fun to sail than we hoped. The racing and competition were fantastic.

“But most surprising was the number of wonderful friends we made in Europe.”

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In the 50-year history of The Ocean Race (ex-Whitbread/Volvo), Leg 3 of the 2023 edition from Cape Town, South Africa through the Southern Ocean to Itajaí, Brazil, was the longest ever.

Jack Bouttell was crew on Charlie Enright’s 11th Hour Racing Team, and became chief boat fixer over 14,840 miles as the IMOCA suffered a series of breakdowns.

Broken battens in the mainsail, two damaged rudders, damaged foil downlines, as well as a huge rip in the mainsail… time and time again the team had to dig deep for creative solutions to make repairs while keeping on racing.

Many times the team wondered if the breakage would mean retirement from the leg but through ingenuity and sheer determination they worked their way through every problem. Here are Jack’s five best tips for keeping the wheels on your wagon when things start breaking.

1. Use checklists

I’m a big fan of checklists. If you’re building up a spares list from scratch, then note down each department of the boat – sails, navigation, electronics, hydraulics, engine, and so on – and what you think could go wrong.

At the end of every leg of The Ocean Race we’d debrief not just what happened on our boat but if there have been breakages on the other boats in the fleet. Then we’ll make sure we cover off those areas too, and do our best to have a solution for our rivals’ problems as well as the ones we experienced.

2. Safety priority

It’s important to divide every kind of breakage into two categories: safety or performance. Safety is always the priority and your spares and tool kit needs to have solutions to address all the potential problems that could put the safety of the crew at risk.

Once you’ve got those priorities covered, you can think about the performance priorities and build your spares list to cover some of those areas. For dealing with breakages at sea it’s the same mindset, a safety issue for the yacht or crew must be dealt with immediately and you have to forget about performance.

For a smaller breakage ask yourself: can we finish the race without a repair? What is the most opportune time to repair, to lose the least distance, and can we last until then without repairing the problem?

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3. Tailor your spares list

The longer you sail with your particular boat, the better the experience you have for knowing what’s important to keep in your tool and repair kit. If you know what typically tends to break, you can build up a spares kit that’s very specific to your boat.

As you gain experience you also learn what you can afford to leave behind, to save space and weight on board. Our spares kit got smaller throughout the last Ocean Race, but then we had a very different list for different legs of the course.

Headed into the Southern Ocean you’ll need a lot more contingency and spares than a coastal race in the Mediterranean or even a Fastnet Race, because you’re close to shore and have the option to stop somewhere.

4. Get creative

Sometimes there’s no obvious solution to the problem in front of you. We had this on the Southern Ocean leg when the tack of the mainsail ripped off at the first reef. It’s one of the highest loaded areas of the sail and just putting a patch of sticky-back over the area was not going to do anything for very long.

We didn’t have anything on board, no sewing machine. So we asked ourselves how we were going to fix it? After some thinking we decided to go for some carbon plate, cut it up into rectangles and bolted the carbon plate through the mainsail. Adapting a boatbuilding solution to solve a sail repair problem actually worked amazingly well.

5. Spares must-haves

Carbon plate is one of the must-haves in our repair kit, in various thicknesses for different applications. It’s good to have a few shapes, little disks and a few squares, so if a padeye pulled out of the deck you could use it as a backing plate or to help plug a hole.

We always carry Sikaflex because you can glue pretty much anything even when it’s wet. Sticky-back sail cloth material can be useful although it’s hard to make it stick when wet, so I take plain sail cloth material and then use Sikaflex to glue it to the sail as and when needed.

Lengths of Dyneema lashings are always useful, and for stitching sails I have a push/pull hand-sewing tool so you can do all the stitching from one side of the sail. For electronics, the big fail is fuses, and if you have hydraulics you’ll probably want oil in case there are some leaks. For engines, impellers and alternator belts are your biggest must-haves.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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Boats may have nine lives, but a sailor is not supposed to have nine fingers. Every year, however, we hear of instances of crushed hands, lost fingers, and major damage from poor line handling techniques. Technological advances have greatly reduced the amount of sail and line handling required of today’s sailors.

Sail areas are increasingly concentrated in a few, large sails, rather than broken up into several smaller ones. Hydraulic furlers, asymmetric spinnakers, in-mast reefing and self-tacking headsails all mean that we need less rope to manage our sails.

If you’re in a hurry, running your hand along the length of a line can help avoid kinks. Photo: 59° North Sailing

In fact, rope is notable in its absence from the sleek cockpits of new yachts, which can often seem like a lines-free area.

The risk of this is that out of sight can mean out of mind and, while the amount of line handling on modern yachts has decreased, the loads on those remaining lines has not.

Line handling is an essential skill for keeping yourself, and others, safe. As skippers, it’s something we should be talking about more often, especially whenever we have novice crew on board.

I asked other sailors for their thoughts and was surprised by the strength of their responses: everyone had a story to tell.

Respecting the loads

“A loaded line”, the former skipper of the 125ft Fife Mariquita, Jim Thom told me, “is like a loaded gun. They’re silent until they go off.”

It reminded me of an incident aboard an 80ft maxi I’d once worked on as a deckhand. The genoa sheet blew without warning, and it did, indeed, sound as though we were under fire.

Ensuring you don’t raise the line above winch level is key to preventing the line from spinning off. Photo: Yachting World

The sail flogged violently until we tacked and took on the other sheet. Fortunately, no one was on the leeward side deck at the time.

The speed and ferocity with which it happened have stayed with me and to this day I’m never comfortable with anyone standing near loaded lines.

Understand the power when line handling

A winch magnifies your effort by whatever ratio they’re designed for.

A modest 50:1 winch will output 1,250kg to the line for the 25kg you (or the batteries) apply to it.

That’s about the same as the weight of a VW Golf which, if it was actually attached to the other end of your halyard rather than the mainsail, would certainly focus the mind.

Novice crew won’t know how much pressure to apply to a winch and will need supervision.

experienced sailors transitioning to larger boats may not understand the loads involved and overexuberance with a winch can prove catastrophic.

One cruising sailor, who had decided to charter a larger than normal yacht in the Med, applied their beginning of holiday joie-de-vivre to a halyard winch and brought the mast down, somewhat curtailing their charter.

Winch technique

Winch handling technique needs to be revisited as the size of yacht you are sailing increases. Inexperienced crew need detailed winch briefings and demonstrations.

Standing sideways onto a winch with hands in a closed fist, little finger towards the load, gives the strongest stance. Three turns should be sufficient for pulling in by hand, anymore and you risk getting a riding turn.

However, extra turns are needed before tensioning it. A common mistake is to only use three turns and then go straight to the self-tailer.

Filling the winch drum with four or five turns is a critical moment when accidents can happen – keep hands well away. Photo: Rachel Sprot

While the self-tailer may grip the line enough to apply considerable load to the line, at some point it may need easing and will need to be taken out of the self tailer, with insufficient turns on the drum to manage the now considerable load.

Filling up the drum with four or five turns is a critical moment when accidents can happen. Crew should be briefed to slide their hands down the line, keeping them a safe distance away from the drum as they do so.

Keeping hands well back from the winch when line handling gives more thinking time if it does slip. Working at winch height, and not raising the line above winch level, is key to preventing the line from spinning off.

Handling a loaded winch with insufficient turns is dangerous.

Those lines not being used can then be coiled neatly on the guardwires. Photo: Rachel Sprot

One skipper of a 70ft yacht reported losing their hearing for a week after they were hit by a flogging jib sheet. They’d stepped in when a novice crewmember, who had only applied two turns around the drum, was struggling to keep control of the line.

Having long tails on the headsail sheets means that if they are flogging an extra turn can be lassoed on without getting too close to the winch. Headsail sheets which are only just long enough for normal operation, will be too short to do this safely.

Deck gear

Lines are only as strong as the things they’re attached to. On a boat which is working hard there’s nearly always something working loose, or seizing up.

Doing a deck walk and keeping a simple set of tools handy to rectify any defects, such as seizing a shackle or tightening up a car assembly, are easy to do and may prevent a more serious failure.

Knowing what lies underneath your deck fittings is also important: are there substantial backing plates, or just a few penny washers?

Gear failure is often preventable if signs of fatigue are identified early on, and the equipment is used as it was intended.

Flaking a line

As boats get larger the lines don’t just become thicker, they also get longer. The longer the line the more difficult it is to work with.

your hand along its entire length will help take out any kinks, and if you’re in a hurry, can be just as effective as flaking it into a perfect figure of eight (though don’t say that out loud in St Tropez!).

Flaking a braided line into a figure of eight will help prevent kinks that could hinder line handling. Photo: Rachel Sprot

Stopper knots

As the line diameter increases, the figure of eight becomes less effective as a stopper knot: they shake loose too easily. An Admiralty Stopper knot is more secure.

Danger zones

Be aware of apex zones, such as a preventer line doubling back around a block on the foredeck. If the block failed, anyone standing in the apex could be seriously injured.

Ideally, we should avoid creating an apex in the first place, especially if they rely on a single component like a block. It’s better to run a preventer through the fairlead, or around a bow cleat, in addition to any blocks.

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Let go

When line handling becomes a tug of war it’s time to let go.

Amy Graydon, first mate of a sail training vessel, explicitly teaches that ‘let go’ means open your hands and drop the rope after a crewmember suffered a rope burn from trying to hold a headsail sheet which didn’t have enough turns around the winch.

Tidy up

Loose lines on deck are dangerous: they’re a trip hazard, won’t run freely when they need to be eased, or run too freely and end up in the water.

A messy deck disguises hazards such as a bight of rope, and will make it harder for crew who are quite literally learning the ropes, to see what’s going on.

A thumb knot in the block secures lines not currently in use. Photo: Rachel Sprot

The tails of lines in use should be coiled around the winch they’re associated with or flaked neatly beside them. Lines which aren’t in use, such as spinnaker sheets, can be coiled on the guardwires and secured with a thumb knot in the block.

And without going into full Marie Kondo mode, there’s something very satisfying about a row of well-stowed halyards!

Stay calm

Line handling often occurs at high pressure moments: coming alongside, spinnaker hoists, a sudden tack. These are all times when the skipper might be feeling stressed, and it transfers to the crew. Take your time for manoeuvres and make time for line handling.

Calm leadership will prevent people from making mistakes and enable them to perform at their best.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post An expert guide to safe line handling at sea appeared first on Yachting World.

The Baltic offers rich and extensive cruising grounds, but much of its appeal lies in the opportunity to anchor in remote archipelagos which require a few specialised techniques to confidently tie up.

It’s worth noting that the average yacht in the Baltic is smaller than those in the UK, with 30-35ft seemingly the standard size for a family cruiser. These are often boats built in the 1970s or 1980s with a narrow beam and low freeboard, which means boat handling tends to rely on a push and shove rather than springs and pivot points. Boats over 40ft are more unusual, although they can be accommodated.

There is very little alongside berthing in the Baltic. Last time I was there, a Finnish skipper of a 36-footer berthed alongside a wall took out his seamanship manual to remind himself how to spring off against a cross wind. He did it beautifully, there was no question of his seamanship, it was just a manoeuvre which is rarely required.

There are also very few cleats: the strong points onshore tend to be rings, so you can’t rely on lassoing the dock from the boat. You either need to get a crewmember close enough to feed a line through the ring, or use a boathook with a special mooring clip on it to secure to.

Marina berthing requires nifty line handling from the crew. Berths can be approached stern-to if that’s your preference, which will certainly make leaving the next day a bit easier, in which case just reverse the procedure to set a bowline first and then attach a stern line to the dock.

Y berths are effective at separating boats but are not intended to be walked upon. Photo: Martin Leisborn

Y berths

These wobbly structures look like finger berths but they aren’t designed for a person to stand on (as several British sailors have found out the hard way), they merely present a strong point for attaching to and separating the berths. It’s best to make sure you have lines and fenders rigged on both sides before coming in.

As you enter the berth a crewmember standing at the widest point of the boat needs to attach the windward sternline or midships line, depending on your preference. If double-handed, they can then give this to the helm before nipping ashore from the pulpit with the windward bowline. You then need to set up the other lines.

If the berth is very narrow fenders may need to be abandoned. Some Baltic yachts have a rubbing strake, but you can also drape a heavy line over the side to offer topsides protection.

Box berths require the skipper to squeeze the boat between two piles. Photo: Martin Leisborn

Box berths

A box berth is similar to a Y berth, but instead of a floating boom between each slot there are two piles to squeeze between.

Again, the key is to secure the windward sternline from midships as you glide past, perhaps with a big bowline lassoed over the top of the post, or a line passed around it. This way it can be pre-rigged for the helmsperson to pull in the slack. Once again the crew then needs to step off with a windward bow line.

In this case fenders can be quite a hindrance as they can get hung up on the posts. Some people prefer to have them lying on the side decks, ready to kick off once you’re through the gap, or rig them horizontally with a sail tie holding the bottom end up.

Stern buoys are often found in busy harbours and can be some way off the dock. Photo: Martin Leisborn

Stern buoy

Stern buoys are a more minimalist approach to berthing and often found in busy harbours. They consist simply of a tall mooring buoy some way off the pontoon. Again, a stern line needs to be attached on the way past, but bear in mind that stern buoys can be 20m or more from the dock, so it needs to be a long line which can be paid out. For ease of departure the next day it helps to set this line to slip, in which case it may need to be very long and requires careful management to ensure that whatever slack is paid out doesn’t end up around the prop.

Many local boats have a long metal hook to which they tie their mooring line, hook the buoy as they go past and then let go, the hook kept in place by gravity and line tension.

There’s usually only one stern buoy. It can be left to windward or leeward on approach and this will often depend on how the other yachts are lying. Securing it on the leeward side of the boat will help keep the yacht square to the dock in a cross wind.

Have your fenders deployed as it’s likely you’ll lie on the yacht next door until you’ve got the fore and aft lines tensioned.

Rock moorings are not for the faint-hearted and require careful inspection for possible underwater protrusions. Photo: Chris Beeson/YM

Rock moorings

The only thing cooler than sailing through the lunar landscape of the Baltic archipelagos is tying up to a rock when you stop. Rock mooring can be done in two ways: bows-to with a kedge anchor or, for the very brave, alongside. Local knowledge, a decent pilot guide or reconnaissance by dinghy is required to identify suitable spots.

If approaching bows to, then the kedge needs to be deployed 2-3 boat lengths out. The helm can pay out the warp while the bow team focus on getting a line ashore. In some places there are mooring eyes in the rocks, but a tree or sturdy boulder also work. Snug up the kedge line to hold the bow off the rocks and drop back to give more clearance overnight.

Check the forecast for wind shifts – you need settled conditions or an offshore wind. You don’t want to end up beam on to a strong wind, as you’ll be entirely reliant on the kedge holding.

Many boats that cruise the Baltic have open pulpits or fold-down bow ladders to make stepping down onto the rock easier. Alternatively, a board lashed in place can make a useful step.

Mooring alongside a rock is not for the faint-hearted. You need to be certain that the rock face is clean with no underwater protrusions. You’ll also need to identify strong points to attach lines to before coming alongside. Some people use climbers’ crevice hooks, but these damage the rocks and should be avoided if possible. A couple of slim tyres are better than fenders as they’ll sink below the waterline. Start off mooring alongside for lunch stops only, and anchor off for a good night’s sleep.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post How to berth and anchor a yacht in the Baltic appeared first on Yachting World.

How do you pick the right departure date? One of the most critical aspects of planning for an offshore passage is choosing the right weather window for departure. A weather window refers to a period of favourable weather conditions that allow for safe and efficient passage – for either the beginning, or majority, of your passage.

Here, we take a look at the process of selecting the ideal window. We’re particularly focussing on using PredictWind, though the same principles apply to other sources of weather data.

Plan your route

The first step is to plan your route. Take into account seasonal weather patterns and look for past weather data, using tools like Pilot Charts or Historical Weather in PredictWind. These provide years of averaged monthly data for wind speed, wind direction and waves, along with other atmospheric data.

Other sources of information include forums, cruising associations, or rally organisers. Jimmy Cornell’s World Voyage Planner and Ocean Atlas includes historical data on average wind directions and strengths on many popular cruising routes.

One essential planning consideration is ensuring you have enough time and avoiding hard deadlines. If you have less than a week to find a weather window with tough conditions, it’s likely to force you to make a bad decision.

The PredictWind routing function offers different routing options based on calculations using multiple weather models

Monitor the big picture

Once you know approximately when you’re planning to depart, it’s important to monitor the big picture. Look at the global view to understand the larger weather patterns that may affect your passage, paying particular attention to wind, currents, and wave states. For an ocean crossing this may involve studying weather patterns over a longer period of time and running routing simulations to see how the weather develops in different scenarios.

Ocean currents can be caused by many factors such as wind, density differences in water masses caused by temperature and salinity variations, gravity, and events such as earthquakes or storms.

PredictWind offers three different ocean current models – RTOFS, HyCom and Mercator – on a global scale along with high resolution tidal currents for popular coastal areas around the world. The ocean and tidal currents are used in the Weather Routing and Departure planning calculations and data outputs, with warnings showing in the routing when you have a situation such as wind against current. Different current models can also be compared in the maps with your routes overlaid.

Local weather observations can also help identify trends and provide valuable insights into likely weather conditions that will be encountered. These can be found through a variety of resources, such as The National Weather Service in the US, weather buoys, marinas and airports, and ship reports, as well as apps and GRIB files.

The software searches for optimal conditions depending on your boat’s polars and
the forecast

If you’re doing coastal passages, high-resolution modelling in shorter time frames can make a big difference to the accuracy of the forecast conditions. High-resolution modelling gives more detail and accuracy around land formations from having a much higher number of grid points; they’ll also forecast thermal activity (sea breezes) which you don’t see in lower resolution global weather models. A high res model under 8km resolution will start to show these features, with 1km resolution models showing the most detail.

Once your boat is fully prepared and you’ve set up a reliable form of communication and weather reporting for areas out of mobile data range, you can start looking for a more precise departure date. You are primarily looking for a stable pattern without extreme conditions. Having consensus across multiple models, over an extended period of time, gives more forecast confidence.

Planning tools

Then, we can start using departure planning tools. PredictWind offers a Departure Planning tool that provides critical information for any departure time in the next 10 days, with times set by default to one day apart for offshore crossings, but can be as fine as one hour apart for coastal passages. With this tool you can input your vessel’s polars in various conditions and set your departure start time and spacings to get detailed weather and wave forecasts specific to your boat for each departure time.

The routing algorithm is powered by billions of calculations using six global and five high resolution weather models. It provides route outputs showing average, maximum, and lowest wind speeds, wave heights, ocean currents, and vertical acceleration (the rate at which the vertical motion of air masses or water bodies changes over time), as well as expected roll and boat slamming for each departure time. The tool also highlights any extreme conditions, such as wind against current.

Local weather observations can also help identify trends and weather patterns

Wave routing is also critical. Using data (waterline length, displacement, beam and draught) input which you enter when you set up your vessel’s polars, the program creates a 3D hydrodynamic model of your yacht, and calculates how it will behave based on different swell states.

Departure times

PredictWind’s Departure Planning tool provides multiple departure times for analysis. It’s important for each skipper to analyse the data to find the best conditions for your passage.
Consider your yacht and crew’s preferred conditions and sailplan, and look for departure times that offer wind conditions within your desired range. Additionally, pay attention to parameters like roll, vertical acceleration, and boat slamming, as lower values indicate smoother sailing conditions.

PredictWind has indicated limits for roll (4° RMS), vertical acceleration (0.2g) and boat slamming (less than 50% but ideally none).

The Departure Planning tool shows forecast sailing conditions depending on departure date and weather model

Given there’s rarely a ‘perfect’ forecast, picking a departure time involves weighing up all the options and being flexible. Leaving on the back of a front, for example, may mean you get great downwind conditions, but it’s likely that the frontal band, which brings a new wind direction, will leave a messy wave state. So you may have upper-end wave conditions for the first few days, although the excellent wind conditions may outweigh this, and conditions will likely improve as the front moves away over time.

It’s also essential to remember that the wind maps show average windspeed, and a passage that appears fairly benign can take on a far different appearance when you look at the gust maps, which can show windspeed in excess of 40% higher than the averages. It goes without saying to check for any extreme weather warnings on the route.

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Keep monitoring

Once you have chosen a weather window, you need to keep assessing the conditions, ideally every 12 hours after the forecast models update to get new routing data, including wave data. On passage, weather conditions can change quickly. Adapting your route to suit the forecast is essential.

Additionally, utilise functions such as PredictWind’s visual representation of GMDSS weather warnings (text forecast written by a meteorologist giving interpretation and warnings around any developing or existing weather events, transformed into images using AI), which can highlight events forming outside your field of view and help you make informed decisions while under way.

It’s always wise to have a backup plan in case weather conditions do turn unfavourable. Make sure you have alternative routes, and if possible identify some sheltered anchorages you could run to if the need arises.

Ready to go

Experienced sailors often say the best seamanship is not getting caught out in bad weather. But despite the advancements in forecasting technology, sailors can still encounter unforeseen circumstances such as equipment failure or crew illness. No weather model is correct 100% of the time, which is one reason we use multiple models and look for trends and consensus; we expect models to be right 85% of the time.

By carefully planning your route, monitoring weather patterns and utilising departure planning tools to interpret the data, you can give your passage the best possible start.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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When handling under power is done well, it’s like a black art. It wasn’t until I became an instructor that I realised it could be broken down into a few key concepts. I called them ‘The 10 Golden Rules of Boat Handling’. However, when I wrote them it was largely from the perspective of a heavy displacement yacht with fine ends, using a shaft drive. Most of the large yachts I’ve sailed in the past 10 years, such as the Clipper and Challenge yachts, matched this profile.

Recently, I’ve realised that the rules need updating. Yacht design has moved on considerably, and sail drives, long waterlines, bow thrusters and high topsides are now the norm, and twin rudders are increasingly commonplace.

Flexisail, which operates a fleet of modern cruisers, kindly lent me the keys to Varvassi, a Hanse 418, for a day last winter to refine these Golden Rules, and in this two-part series I’ll explain how to make manoeuvring under engine so much easier.

There are two elements to good boat handling: understanding the boat’s handling characteristics; and understanding the external factors which impact a manoeuvre. In the first of this series we’re going to look at how a boat behaves, and next month we’ll consider the real-world scenarios we find ourselves in.

Keep it as slow as you can when manoeuvring in tight spaces – things then go wrong more slowly and you have more time to make corrections. Photo: Paul Wyeth

Rule 1: Slow is pro

The number one rule of boat handling, especially on large yachts, is that if it’s all going wrong, go wrong slowly. You’re unlikely to do much damage at 1 knot. At 3 knots things become expensive. There are times when a burst of power is necessary and, carefully applied, this is an important tool. However, panic revs can cause more problems than they solve. If in doubt, step away from the throttle and pick up a fender – just use the throttle to maintain slow control.

Minimum speed is essential on a heavy boat which carries its way. Once moving, many manoeuvres can be done in neutral. However, the Hanse 418 didn’t hold her way as much as I expected so I had to be more assertive on the throttle, both to keep her moving and to stop her.

A burst of prop wash flowing over the rudder while the boat is stationary creates ‘Type 2’ steerage. Photo: Paul Wyeth

Rule 2: Maintain steerage

The counterpoint to Rule 1 is that you always need steerage. Steerage is created when water flows over the rudder. There are two ways of achieving it which I call Type 1 and Type 2 steerage.
Type 1 is what you experience when you’re actively propelled through the water, either by the engine or the wind. It’s easy to forget that the wind can still be used for propulsion, even without sails up. If you’re doing a downwind park (perhaps into the tide), or have some way on, you might not even need the engine in gear to achieve Type 1 steerage.

Type 2 steerage is what is generated when a burst of prop wash flows over the rudder while the boat is stationary. This is an effective technique for tight turns when you need to control the direction of the boat without covering any distance.

In a lighter boat like the Hanse, Type 1 steerage is more effective than Type 2. Under way, Varvassi’s high-aspect spade rudder was extremely efficient. She was responsive in both ahead and astern. However, there was less response from a power burst. This is probably due to the saildrive, which positions the propeller further from the rudder and creates a delay between action and reaction.

I suspect also that the high aspect rudder profile, though powerful when making way, can’t ‘catch’ as much of the jet created by the propeller. I’m no hydrodynamicist, but a big barn door of a rudder seems to make better use of this thrust. It felt like Type 1 steerage was much more effective than Type 2 steerage in this modern design of boat.

Photo: Ludovic Fruchaud/EYOTY

Twin-rudder variation

If the boat has twin rudders, Type 2 steerage is nearly impossible to achieve. The propeller sends water straight between the two, missing the rudders entirely. You’ll need to keep the boat moving faster in order to maintain steerage and predict what the boat will do until the rudders have gained steerage.

Rule 3: Gear then steer

I once overheard a watersports instructor coaching teenagers in a RIB. ‘Steer, then gear, Henry!’ he exclaimed, too late, as they drifted into a raft of dinghies.

Henry looked crestfallen, but he’d demonstrated that RIBs and other outboard-powered vessels work the other way round to most sailing yachts. In displacement boats with rudders, the rule is: gear, then steer.

In a tight spot every centimetre counts and there are gains to be made from following this simple rule of timing. In a heavy displacement yacht change gear from ahead to astern (or vice versa) first but don’t change the way you’re steering until the boat has actually started moving and water is flowing over the rudder in the desired direction.

This is particularly important when switching from ahead to astern since it takes longer for the boat to stop and water flow to reverse over the rudder. From astern to ahead the steerage switch is more immediate because the prop wash hits the rudder before the boat has started moving, negating the reverse flow sooner.

Varvassi was quicker to regain steerage after a gear change than a more traditional, heavy displacement yacht. The power bursts were less effective but, once moving, steerage was quickly established. It gave me more confidence to change gear in a confined space which, in turn, changed the kinds of manoeuvres I might attempt.

Varvassi has negligible prop walk with her saildrive, so on a boat like this make wider turns and keep up momentum. Photo: Paul Wyeth

Rule 4: Use your prop walk

I’ve learned to love prop walk over the years. The sideways push from a burst astern is like having a stern thruster, albeit in one direction. With a propeller shaft, the steeper the angle, the greater the kick will be.

Boats with skeg-hung rudders often have offset prop shafts too, which induces even more kick one way or the other. On a shaft drive boat I tend to think of it as being right- or left-handed. A boat that kicks to port in astern is right-handed and favours a turn to starboard, and vice versa.

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Many shaft-driven boats will turn in a boat length if you utilise a few short bursts of astern propulsion, just enough to boost the stern around but not enough to get going in, and establish, reverse steerage. This shapes your manoeuvres. In confined spaces a right-handed boat is best positioned on the port side and is easiest to park portside-to, since the prop walk draws it in that way, and creates an escape route by making room for a starboard-hand turn. There are times when this is thoroughly inconvenient, but if you plan your manoeuvres with prop walk in mind it’s largely a blessing rather than a curse.

Varvassi had very little prop walk thanks to the saildrive whose propeller sits vertically rather than tilted downwards as on a shaft drive, so the thrust comes off more cleanly. Furthermore, a saildrive is located further forward, so has less leverage around the boat’s pivot point. I found that a traditional tight turn method isn’t effective on a yacht with a saildrive, and would be even more difficult on a twin rudder boat.

In such cases, a bow thruster would be a really useful tool. Without one you’ll need to keep the momentum and stay in forward gear, but the turn will be wider. Or make a three-point turn by turning hard one way, then reversing back into the space you’ve come from, reversing the steerage too and bringing the bow around in reverse.

Consider how the pivot point of the boat moves in ahead and astern, and beware turning too sharply with a boat with wide beam carried right aft. Photo: Paul Wyeth

Rule 5: Use the pivot point

Understanding the location of a boat’s pivot point is important for any close quarters handling. However, the pivot point is hydrodynamic and changes with the direction of travel. Going ahead it’s just behind the mast; going astern it shifts aft to somewhere around the cockpit, and during acceleration it shifts further to each extreme.

In forward gear we need to be aware of how much boat is behind the pivot point. In reverse it’s the bow we need to watch. It’s important to remember this when dodging an obstruction you’re being set onto. Once the pivot point is past the obstruction you need to turn towards, and not away from it, to keep the rest of the boat clear.

Varvassi’s full-width stern is a bit like manoeuvring with a pantomime bustle: the danger is not just where you’re looking, it can be behind you. The bigger the boat, the bigger the bustle. To exit a berth I sprang the bow out and drove away with a straight rudder. It took much longer to get clear enough to turn the helm away than it would on a fine-ended yacht.

Bringing it all together

In reality, there’s a complex relationship between the boat and its environment. However, when you’re skippering a new boat it can be helpful to isolate handling behaviours by practising in benign conditions. Is that twitch on the bow when you go astern the result of prop walk? Or was it a gust of wind? Understanding steerage, gear changes, prop walk and pivot points allows us to respond with more precision.

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According to Andy Beadsworth, when you’re helming the boat you’re not so much steering as ‘applying load to the tiller’. “Sometimes the boat heels over and the load comes on to the tiller or wheel, but you want to keep going in a straight line. So as the helmsman you have to resist the load coming on if you want to keep the boat tracking in a straight line, or sometimes you go with the load and let it help you turn the boat, either luffing or bearing away, depending on your aims at the time.”

The bigger the boat, the bigger the loads, and the more the steering comes down to the efforts of the entire team, where the helmsman is the conductor who has the final say over the music that the orchestra is playing. Here are five of Andy’s best tips on the finer points of accurate, race-winning steering technique:

Don’t fight the boat

Accurate steering is mostly dependent on achieving the correct balance of the boat achieved through boat heel and sail trim. The thing I’ve learned from steering J-Class boats like Velsheda is you’ve got to allow the boat to go in the direction you want it to go in and stop it going in the direction you don’t want it to go.

Find your easy speed

One of the most important things is to have ‘easy speed’. It’s not necessarily your ultimate speed that’s important. Wherever possible, it needs to be easy, easy speed when you’re racing.

When you’re sailing with flat sails with a tight leech, the groove is very, very narrow. We all know that full and twisted setups have got a wide groove and if you’ve got the space to be able to sail like that it’s a much less stressful mode to operate in. When you’re racing against 50 other boats on a busy race track, you need to be able to pull the sails in and for the boat to go fast straight away. With hard and tight leeches, everything is quite precise and demanding. I find when we do well it’s when we’ve got ‘easy speed’ when the boat just wants to go.

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Steering to change

Quite often in the race it’s not really about going fast, it’s about sailing modes – being able to go fast in lifts towards the next header, or position your boat against another slightly differently just by changing the mode you’re sailing rather than sailing as fast as you can all the time.

When you’re steering through changing conditions, whether it’s going from gust to a lull or vice versa, or sailing through a header or a lift, this is when teamwork is tested the most. A number of things need to happen in unison to steer the boat accurately through a change of pressure or angle.

One of the most difficult scenarios is the header because as the boat heads and the mast starts to come upright you apply some rudder angle, and you can feel a load going on. Sometimes the boat starts to accelerate again and other times it doesn’t. So you’re tempted into applying more load… and then a bit more, now you’re up to 5° rudder angle but you’re not seeing the acceleration. Then you call to the mainsail trimmer to burp the mainsheet the tiniest amount, so he does and the boat picks up and accelerates again.

Of course you can force the boat if you want, but you’re putting a huge amount of drag on the boat to achieve it. As a helmsman and a trimming team you’re working to keep the whole system in balance.

Good communication between skipper and trimmer is vital. Photo: Nico Martinez / RC44

Use all your senses

Learning to use all your senses is a great way of improving your steering. Exercises like steering blindfold or closing your eyes for a few seconds is a great way of tuning into the other cues the boat is giving you – the wind in your face or the sound of the boat through the water, feeling the heel of the boat through your feet and so on.

Telltales on the jib are incredibly useful tools, but in light airs they can be unreliable, and in rain they can stick to the sail. I like to keep the jib luff tension as slack as possible, so I can see the pressure on the sailcloth. If your jib is hanked to the forestay, having small scallops between every hank can be a really good indicator for steering the boat accurately.

Think like a trimmer

To be able to do all the positions on the boat makes a massive difference because you understand the problems the rest of the crew live with through various situations. You can either expect your crew to do everything perfectly and just steer the boat how you want to steer it, or you can make it easy for them.

Sometimes you have to take the boat by the scruff of the neck and tell it what to do, but most of the time it’s about trying to keep the boat going fast and avoiding scrubbing off speed through overuse of the rudder.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

The post Top helming tips to keep your yacht balanced appeared first on Yachting World.

We hit a wave, the bow bouncing into the air. The roar reverberating from inside the covered cockpit intensifies and I look out of the bubble window to a wall of seemingly solid water rushing down the deck towards me. Medallia lurches, the water crashes into the window inches from my face then cascades down the open back of the cockpit, writes Pip Hare.

My fingers are curled around the edge of my carbon bucket seat. I need to ease the headsail, which I know will add some speed but the other side of the cockpit seems a long, treacherous journey away. I sit for a bit longer contemplating my moves while Medallia relentlessly thunders on.

Pip Hare finishing the 2020 Vendée Globe in 19th and 1st British skipper. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images

I spent my first few experiences sailing my new IMOCA in this sort of stunned state. The boat is incredible, it holds the course record for the Vendée Globe race, it is powerful – simple in some ways, complicated in others – and seemed like such a huge step up for a sailor like me. Sailing this fast is the most incredible experience but I wondered how long it would take for this speed and violent motion to become normal – or if it ever would.

It is not just the boat that has changed over the last year. I started my 2020 Vendée Globe race as a rank outsider in an old yacht, having pulled a campaign together with crowdfunding, a lot of hard graft, and support from friends and strangers alike. But now I find myself as skipper and CEO of a fully professional offshore racing team.

We employ 13 people across the whole business, our focus is on delivering elite sporting performance and a solid tangible return to our sponsors. I am an athlete, a business person, a figurehead and I have responsibilities that weigh much heavier on a sailor than navigating any Southern Ocean storm.

The transition to this new state has been rapid. I’ve had to learn along the way and at times the business has paralysed me in the same way the boat did on the first few sessions. But one of the great attributes we have as human beings is our ability to adapt. My ‘new normal’ is a million miles away from what life looked like in 2019.

Fast track foiling

The new Medallia 2 racing along on foils. Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The best part of my job is, of course, the sailing. I’m not embarrassed to say that although the boat we chose as our next IMOCA was exactly the boat that I wanted, the first few times I sailed it I was intimidated by its pedigree. You do not want to lose control in a 60ft boat with 550-plus square metres of sail.

The mechanics of sailing the new boat are reassuringly familiar and most definitely easier to manage than on Superbigou. All sails can be managed from the covered cockpit and a central pedestal. The mast track has locks to hold the head of the main in position on each reef point (no more trips forward to reef).

Above: launching the new foiling Medallia, formerly Bureau Vallée 2/Banque Populaire VIII. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The keel can be moved at the touch of a button and lines are positioned with corresponding halyards and tacks on opposite sides of the boat so winches can be loaded pre-manoeuvre and left. These details make a difference, and I quite quickly felt confident managing the boat on my own.

I got used to the foils in a ‘painting by numbers’ mode last year. Put them out above seven knots of boat speed and they will start to improve righting moment, allowing more power through the main. From 7 knots to about 18 knots of boat speed there is not that much difference in how the boat feels, it is just faster with the foils.

Above 20 knots of boat speed is when the magic happens. This is when the bow starts to lift out of the water and the boat becomes animal. I played around with this, following the tuning guide and having fun with the speed, but never felt I was getting the most out of the boat.

Medallia getting ready to launch. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

This season, with a new set of sails and having the confidence of a full and thorough refit, I worked for a couple of weeks with coaches to help me understand using my foils properly at speed. As with sailing a skiff, it is about keeping the bow up enough to clear the water, but not so much that you ‘wheelie’ or take off. This can be controlled with foil rake (we can rake them forwards up to 5° to lift off more) and fierce management of the ballast and sails stacking.

I’ve learned to feel the boat trim and when I need to lift the bow. Keel angle is also vital in this equation: above 20 knots of boat speed and the keel starts to provide negative righting moment. In simple terms it starts acting as a foil lifting the boat out of the water, so at high speeds the keel angle needs to be dropped to maintain control and for extra speed.

Keeping the bow up to clear the water –but not too much – is the key to extra speed with Medallia. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

Pip Hare’s full schedule

My race calendar for 2022 is busy. I have three solo races, and will be taking part in the Round Britain and Ireland Race with a full crew of five. The boat must be at the race village up to two weeks ahead of each solo event, and then there are deliveries to and from each start and finish.

This takes out nine weeks from 39 weeks on the water. I will be spending around five weeks racing. Then, so long as we have no major failures, I have reluctantly agreed to a roughly 60/40 custody share of the boat with my shore team. That leaves just 15 weeks to train.

Working with team technical director Joff Brown. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

Once again my performance goals are a steep, hard climb. My overall aim for this year is to learn to sail this boat to its full potential in its current configuration.

Medallia is a 2015 Verdier/VPLP design, it was the first generation of boats designed with foils (rather than have them retrofitted) and the only one of its generation which is still running on small foils. Foiling is a new experience for me, so my objectives for 2022 include learning how to sail well with the original foils. I will be changing to big ones in early 2023.

To fast track this I’ll be working with coaches – but even this is not simple. The IMOCA class is booming, and many people I might turn to for advice are already working with other teams or have projects of their own. This forced me to look outside the world of solo racing and begin working with coaches from fully crewed teams.

Training with Medallia in the Canary Islands. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

This, it transpired, has been a stroke of genius. Jack Bouttell and Ben Schwarz both raced around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race and are now on the Jules Verne crew for the maxi trimaran Spindrift. Having them on board has given me the opportunity to experience the ‘no excuses’ approach of the fully crewed world.

Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

We have worked on sail crossovers for my new sails, polars, trim books (a manual of sail settings, foil adjustment, stacking positions and much more for all possible conditions), instrument calibration, autopilot settings, and so much more. At times all I could do was watch as this well-oiled team of strong, younger men put my boat through its paces. But with each gear change I learned and questioned, and felt how my boat should be when it is fully arced up and raging.

I can’t sail exactly like them. I’m a 48-year-old woman, alone, managing sails which are way in excess of my bodyweight. But now I have sailed with them I go out alone and realise I can achieve the same performance on my own – and when I am there I can sustain it. I just won’t be up there all of the time.

Athlete’s life

Fitness training, diet, and sleep are also important parts of my routine and, as ever, hard to manage. My age is something that can’t be avoided. I’ll be 50 when I start the next Vendée Globe. At a time in life when many people are moving on to more gentle physical activities, I’ll be making my debut as a full-time professional athlete.

Pip’s calendar includes the 2022 Vendée Arctique and Route du Rhum; 2023 Transat Jacques Vabre; and 2024 Transat before the Vendée Globe. Photo: Richard Langdon/Ocean Images /Pip Hare Ocean Racing

I need to work on my strength constantly, building muscle is essential to managing the enormous loads on the boat injury free. The only way I can build that strength is through focussed gym sessions and good nutrition. When you spend your life on the road, living out of Airbnb apartments and travelling to presentations, routine is near impossible.

Working with personal trainer Rob Stewart, we run three 6am sessions a week in my garage gym when I am home, and I fit weight training sessions in on other days. If I’m not sailing, I will add an hour of cardio training (usually running), while on sailing days the cardio takes care of itself.

My diet is proving harder to manage. In truth I seldom leave myself enough time to shop well and prepare good quality regular meals. The irony is that I eat best when I am racing because I am forced to plan my meals ahead.

Behind the scenes

Our shore team has grown, and they too have a big job to keep our beast of a boat in good condition. Joff Brown has stayed as technical director to the team and brings 20-plus years experience of running IMOCA racing programs. A winter refit allowed us to ‘undo’ Medallia’s post-Vendée fatigue. Now the team are focussed on keeping everything running, and working with me to develop and adapt, to make the boat faster, to make my life easier.

We’re moving away from the ‘keep it safe’ ethos that underlined boat preparation in my last campaign towards ‘make it fast’. The team is obsessed with details, weight saving, efficiency – and they need to be.

It has been very important for me to offer entry level jobs to young people as well as ensuring a high level of knowledge and experience within the shore team. Finding the right people has not been easy – many people apply for sailing positions on the team, but finding people who genuinely want to make a career in technical boat preparation has been hard. We are still relatively small compared to many of the IMOCA teams, so everyone has to take responsibility for their areas.

I have less to do with the boat preparation that I am used to. I hand over at the end of each day on the water; we talk through problems, suggestions, work up the job list. Joff is also working on planning for our 2023 refit. We’ll be working with designer Guillaume Verdier and Kevin Escoffier from team PRB on the new foil design. Building work starts this summer and installation will be at Carringtons in early 2023.

Money talks

Lou Adams is Pip Hare Ocean Racing’s head of business and operations. Photo: Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The other side of the team is the business. It is the engine that drives us all forwards, but it is not glamorous and is the bit that seems to suck my time. Lou Adams has taken over full time as head of business and operations. It has been a real relief to step back from the day-to-day running of our team, which is complex and complicated.

In the same way that Formula 1 teams pack up and move their operation to a different race track every few weeks, so we need to arrive at different venues, fully functional with a mobile workshop, tools, spares, and support boat. My only job now is to turn up with the boat and the rest happens around me. I cannot explain what a weight off my shoulders this is (though I still feel a little like a prima donna).

But when it comes to dealing with fundraising, finances and sponsor obligations, I cannot walk away. We are a team, and we race as a team – albeit in my name. However, as CEO and spokesperson, much of my time needs to be spent with the people who fund us (or who we would like to fund us).

As a naturally shy person I have had to learn to speak in public, to have the confidence to sell myself in meetings and it is still a struggle for me to come to terms with presenting myself as anything other than very normal. But, together with Lou, I have worked hard on developing a way to collaborate with our sponsors that genuinely brings them into the team, and addresses what they want out of a partnership.

Pip was awarded the RYS Francis Chichester Trophy, among many accolades. Photo: Pip Hare Ocean Racing

The most stressful part of my job is managing the finances. We are a small team reaching high, and managing our cashflow is a huge challenge. I feel the weight of responsibility towards employees, subcontractors, and sponsors enormously and I am not oblivious to the world at large: we are in an immensely privileged position and I feel accountable for making the most of what we have on every level.

Most months I have big decisions to make that could change the course of the campaign. We need to sign more sponsors to complete our funding package and for both Lou and I this is constantly in the front of our minds. Although the last Vendée Globe race had a lot of mainstream media coverage, sailing is still a lesser known sport to sell.

Upping the ante

The world of IMOCA sailing has changed incredibly in the short four years that I have been involved and solo ocean racing is enjoying something of a heyday right now. The 2020 Vendée Globe race really highlighted the value of this international sporting event and there has been a big influx of sponsors into the class. This translates to more teams of a higher calibre.

Not only is there fierce competition on the water but we’ll also be fighting for places on the start line. In every other edition of the race, finishing the previous Vendée Globe race gave a skipper automatic qualification to the next. Not so this time round.

There will be 40 places available on the start in November 2024; 13 of these will be given over to new boats (there are 14 new boats in build), one is a wild card at the organisers’ discretion and the remaining 26 places must be earned by skippers competing in and finishing IMOCA races.

On a global level this is incredible for the sport. It means more events, more races to follow, more chances to compete. On the other it has upped the ante in an event which was already tough. We need to race and I need to finish. This adds up to more miles on the boat, more budget to raise, more time and resources to keep everything in the best condition. Every time we race there is risk. If we don’t race the risk is bigger.

The shore team takes over when the boat is in dock. Photo: Pip Hare Ocean Racing

There’s always too much to do and each day I need to try to work out the most important thing for the campaign. This level of pressure has been normal to me for a few years and I’m used to it. Now, at least on land, I have my team to shoulder the load.

The one thing that grounds me, the reason it’s all worthwhile, is the fact that I now find sailing at over 25 knots normal.

I’m constantly filled with wonder and amazement at what I, a small human being, can get this boat to do. Being alone in the ocean allows me to step away from the reluctant businesswoman I have had to become. I have so much to learn, I want to become a completely different sailor over the next few years, but getting to grips with a foiling IMOCA is blowing my mind.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

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How do load cells work?

In very basic terms, a load cell is a unit that is able to measure force and a strain gauge is a type of load cell that measures the in-line force across a single component such as a toggle. The load cells we’ll be covering in this article are strain gauges.

Strain gauges measure the change in length of a metal component and then convert that to a measure of force by applying Hooke’s law which states that the change in length of an elastic component is proportional to the force applied.

Sensors can be used for accurate trim settings. Photo: Spinlock.

When a relatively large solid item (such as a rigging screw) is put under load the change in its length is microscopic and impractical to measure. So, load cells measure by attaching a very fine length of wire to the main component in the direction that force will be applied. The wire runs up and down a fixed grid, several times and is stretched and relaxed at the same rate as the main component moves.

As this fine wire changes length, so will its electrical resistance (due to the resultant change in wire diameter) and it is this measure of resistance that can be converted to a measure of force. Each strain gauge will also contain a temperature control wire to ensure only changes due to an increase in resistance are being measured.

Article continues below…

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Types of load cells

Different types of strain gauges and interfaces can be used for various applications around a yacht’s deck. They include:

• Load pins: these are designed to replace the pins that attach standing rigging to the deck or hull and are ideal for sensing load in forestays and shrouds. I also use them for backstay loads on my IMOCA.

The strain gauge is housed inside the pin and measures the upwards force placed on the centre of the pin when under load. For accuracy it is essential the pins are orientated correctly and fixed in position.

• Bottle screw gauges: these are a retrofit alternative to load pins which will allow monitoring of forestay and shroud loads. The gauge replaces a conventional bottle screw.

Bottle screw gauge measuring forestay tension. Photo: Cyclops Marine

• Toggles: these can be used between the top of a furler and a cable end for non-structural cabled sails such as Code 0s. They sit in line with the furler and will relay the cable tension. If retrofitting to an older sail this may require a reduction in cable length.

• Running rigging gauges: these small gauges are simple links that can be used for various in-line applications to measure load in running rigging. Think of them as metallic links with rigging attached on each side, they can be used to measure mainsheet or vang loads, or even placed in-line with a sheet.

Be aware that you’re adding a hard component to soft rigging so avoid set ups that will flog on hard objects by keeping the strop one side of the gauge short. The benefit of these types of gauges is that if attached with soft shackles they can be easily removed and used in different locations, or used only for setup and tuning sessions but removed for casual sailing.

Smartlink running rigging gauge fitted to a J/111. Photo: Cyclops Marine

• Sail integration: we are now starting to see strain gauges being integrated with sails, mostly in the tack to measure luff tension in cableless Code 0s, however they can be used in clews to measure sheet tension. These are normally custom solutions focussed on the racing market.

How to use load cell data

It is all very well having this data, but you need to be able to use it in a meaningful way before the load cells are able to add value. Here are some of the ways load cell data can be used:

• Safety

Load cells will allow you to set up and view the loads in your standing rigging both on the dock and when under load in changing conditions.

Work with your rigger to understand what the safe and maximum working loads should be and have those numbers on display in the cockpit or by the helm. With rigs that are more adjustable this will allow on-the-water adjustment of backstays and tacklines to ensure the rig is stable, not pumping upwind and at no risk of inversion downwind.

Load cells in the shrouds can also be a good indication of when a boat is overloaded, triggering a reduction in the sail plan. This is particularly useful in cruising catamarans which, when loaded up with extra weight in the hulls, can feel stable and mask the signs it is time to reef leading to damage of sails, mast or rudders. For safety applications conditional formatting as mentioned above is helpful.

• Furling

Load cells will help successful furling of headsails both on and off the wind by enabling an exact tension to be replicated each time. Quite often a furl will not be successful because the torsion cable was too slack for the ‘twist’ to transfer to the head of the sail, or damage can be done by over-tensioning a cable and pulling the head of the furler into the top of the mast.

• Trim

Load cell data gives a numerical value to sail trim which can be replicated in a precise way. By measuring the force going through running and standing rigging we are not reliant on marks on ropes, or the deck or memory of sail shapes to sail well. This makes it easier to record and return to fast modes.

For race boats there are obvious advantages to this but it can also make life simpler for sailors who spend much time under cover. Fixed biminis and doghouses often leave a sailor with a poor view of the sails and working on sail trim from the cockpit can be challenging when you cannot see the sails and are on a single person watch. The development of load cells built into sails has the potential to make precision trimming easy for sailors across all types of vessels.

Interface options

Each strain gauge reading needs to be amplified and then transmitted as usable data to a display around the boat where the information can be used. This is done either through a wired, or wireless, connection with more versatility currently offered through wireless options.

Strain gauge info on a mast display unit. Photo: Cyclops Marine

Data can then either be sent directly to an app on a smartphone or tablet, or converted to NMEA 2000 and displayed on an instrument cluster or PC-based software.

Each of these solutions has pros and cons, but the most important thing to consider is what you are using the load cell data for, who is going to be accessing it and when it will be used.

For example, if only using a bottle screw type strain gauge for initial set up prior to going afloat then an app on a smartphone is perfect. If the data is helping with performance and will be monitored while racing, displaying the data on existing multigraphic screens which have been sited in view of the helmsman and trimmers may be a better option.

Forestay loads relayed to a phone app. Photo: Cyclops Marine

The other consideration when choosing displays is how the force value will be interpreted by your crew. An experienced racing crew may be used to working with numbers and so be happy to read forestay tension as a value in tonnes and make suitable adjustments.

A novice crew cannot be expected to interpret load cell values in the same way, so using a data interface with conditional formatting, that might for example show a dial, which is green then changes red when normal working loads are exceeded is more appropriate.

When racing my IMOCA I am often staring at banks of data where it is hard to pick out one number from another so I find dials and any visual display with colour a useful way to gain my attention if something is wrong.

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Wherever we have current (tidal or other) this will always influence the sailing wind and the boat’s course over the ground. At anchor we can accurately measure the wind speed and direction, which we call the ground wind.

However, if we are just drifting the effect of the current will alter the wind speed and direction that we are measuring. This we usually call the sailing wind or apparent wind.

Navigating in tide

This relationship between the ground wind and sailing wind is not just important for racing around the cans but also when venturing offshore. We can look at the direction of the tide and decide in a general sense where we want to go; for example when beating out of the Solent in a flood tide we will usually choose the north shore, but the routing solution should also take into account sailing wind angle. The simplest example is the tacking and gybing angles when with a favourable or adverse tide. We have all looked at our track and been disappointed with the tacking angle when against the tide – even to the point that we’ve made little or no progress.

As boats get lighter and faster, with the ability to plane or even foil, wind angle becomes incredibly important. A few degrees one way or another can make a significant difference in boat speed. We see this as we balance speed and angle in a coastal race where competitors are close. However, in longer distance racing we need to take navigating the tide into account, not just on our heading but also for wind angle. The forecast wind direction will be the ground wind, which can be quite a different wind angle to the sailing wind.

A current from the side will change the true wind angle around 1.5° for every tenth of a knot. It doesn’t sound like much – until we get into a current in excess of 0.6 of a knot when we’re looking at a 10° shift in the wind from ground wind to sailing wind; more than enough to change sail settings or the difference between a good layline, or making a tidal gate or not.

Routing apps

We can now get racing routing solutions on our mobile phones or tablets. The latest generation of apps include cloud routing where, by setting your course and the boat’s polars, a computer ashore will run a number of different models, giving you a series of solutions and routes. By comparing the different model solutions, we can choose our best fit to the actual conditions.

The routing solutions also include tidal and ocean currents for navigating in tide. The best known of the companies offering this is PredictWind which (at a cost) provides GRIB file forecasts for weather conditions and current.

The red route shows the optimum course from the Needles to Cherbourg using the GFS wind model and PredictWind tides (on Expedition). The blue route is just wind without any tidal input

Most racing yachts, however, run onboard weather routing programs and navigators work tirelessly on perfecting their boats’ polar diagrams. These are used to predict the boat’s speed for all wind speeds and wind angles.

Most computer-generated polars are for flat water and, while a top helmsman may be able to sail to the polars, most sailors will find it difficult once waves and the extra weight of equipment on board has been added in. It’s therefore useful to develop our own polars for boat and sails, and most navigation software programmes have datalog facilities to help with this. This information is also used to develop crossover charts for different sails.

Weather routing depends on accurate information; it’s pointless trying to develop polars if your instruments are not properly calibrated. As true wind direction and speed is calculated from boat speed, heading and apparent wind, all need to be accurate. If they’re not, we’re better off using apparent wind and generic polars for the boat and run them at less than 100%. But calibrating our instruments and generating polars in an area of moderate to strong tidal current is difficult and incorrect polars will give us a poor routing solution.

Is your tidal information accurate?

When inputting information into cloud routing or onboard navigation software, we will get a weather routing solution that takes into account all the variables. However, the times of high water will vary between different sources of data. There are also other variables to take into account; atmospheric pressure will alter tide heights – not much as a 1mb change in pressure computes to 1cm. We rarely get changes of more than around 30cm due to changes in atmospheric pressure, but 30cm can be a lot if you’re trying to keep out of the tide!

Additionally, the direction of the wind will add or subtract to water depths and also the timing of high and low tides. An onshore wind will increase water depth and will tend to induce a stand at high water. This will delay the start of the ebb tide, which is then likely to be stronger. When the wind blows parallel to the coast the wind tends to set up long waves and storm surges. These waves have a period of hours and a wavelength of hundreds of kilometres. All of these factors become increasingly important when navigating tides.

While it’s difficult to take into account all these variables when sailing, it helps explain why the tide information that you have may not be the same as what you are experiencing, either in time or magnitude. Inshore, it’s always worth verifying the rate of tide when passing navigation or racing marks.

Offshore paper tide atlases have been used for many years, but we now tend to use electronic versions. These tend to be a mixture of theoretical and observational data and can vary between sources for accuracy for navigating tides. With well calibrated instruments we’ll see a difference between COG and SOG compared with the boat speed and heading. By continually monitoring the actual effect and comparing it with the theoretical we will get a very good idea on the accuracy of the data.

Light winds and strong currents: How to keep moving in strong tides

When the wind is light and the current is strong, the two components can be equally important as each other.…

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On Tuesday 15 June 2021 our Swan 48 Isbjorn was positioned near 51° North, some 350 miles south-west of Fastnet Rock. She was in deep North Atlantic waters, charging north on the fringes of a strong depression in sustained gale force south-westerlies and heavy seas.

“Isbjorn is handling the conditions like a champion!” her skipper wrote to me from the sat comms. During the strongest conditions that the boat had ever experienced under the 59° North flag, I was ashore at my farmhouse in Sweden, nervously watching the progression of the GRIB forecasts overlaid on Isbjorn’s track.

”The seas are impressive and we are taking on some green water when the breaking crests catch up with us. Making great speed under triple-reefed mainsail and just a scrap of headsail.”

Isbjorn’s skipper, Norwegian August Sandberg – who is every bit the long-haired, bearded Viking – was in command, bound from Horta towards Oban, Scotland, and ultimately Bergen, Norway. “Winds are touching 45 knots true in the largest gusts, but we are under full control. Steering is going to be more scary and challenging for the watch at night, but we are up for it,” he added.

Relative experience

I knew the storm was coming. Sandberg and his five-person crew knew the storm was coming. Weather Routing Inc (WRI), the professional weather routing service we use, knew it was coming. “Routing is expected to be exceptionally difficult due to the active pattern in place with several fronts and gales,” WRI had briefed us. “There are several features we will have to monitor in the coming days to minimise lengthy periods of extreme weather.”

Isbjorn’s position relative to the approaching depression when skipper Sandberg began running off east-north-east

We knew all this while Isbjorn was still in Horta, yet Sandberg elected to head offshore on the 1,200-mile passage anyway. I agreed with his decision. As a team, 59° North had developed a solid heavy-weather strategy and with Sandberg’s crew, which included several repeat customers who’d sailed with us before and whom we trusted, he was confident they’d be able to implement a variety of tactics in order to make the experience not only manageable but a unique ‘teachable moment’ to see what heavy weather is really all about.

The passage to Oban was an outlier in that the weather got gnarlier than it usually does. Regardless, every trip we sail, whether we encounter heavy weather or not, shares two core fundamentals: a solid heavy-weather strategy to plan for the weather; and flexible, practised and reliable tactics to execute once it hits.

Storms are experienced differently by different skippers, crews, and boats. The storm August Sandberg encountered in the North Atlantic was a big one, but nothing he hadn’t seen before. Prior to joining 59° North, Sandberg had spent much of his career skippering expeditions in Arctic Norway and Svalbard, with multiple crossings of the Barents Sea, excursions to 80° North, and winter passages above the Arctic Circle in 24-hour darkness. During that June storm, he was in his element.

Conversely, a 25-knot beat into 6ft seas can be overwhelming for a first-time ocean skipper.

“I define heavy weather as when the normal running of the ship gets disrupted,” says my friend and Golden Globe skipper ,Susie Goodall, who is intimately familiar with the kind of heavy weather most of us pray we’ll never encounter.

Photo: 59 North Sailing

“The whole routine that you’ve got set up when you are offshore gets suspended. Heavy weather means that you are no longer operating under your normal day-to-day pattern offshore.”

Heavy weather strategies

While the terms are often used interchangeably, there is a clear distinction between strategy and tactics.

‘Strategy is the overarching plan or set of goals,’ writes Shane Parrish on the excellent blog Farnam Street (a must-read for anyone interested in leadership and decision-making), ‘Tactics are the specific actions or steps you undertake to accomplish your strategy.’

A heavy weather strategy is devised at the preparation stage of a voyage, and will be different depending on the type of boat, the size of the crew, experience of the crew, and other factors.

Sailplan

For our boats I have a very specific sail plan and equipment list that I like to carry for the range of expected weather conditions and the way we like to sail (specifically, fast offshore cruising).

We outsource the creation of a safety equipment strategy given that we are Cat 0 coded (and so should you — World Cruising Club’s safety equipment guidelines, derived from World Sailing’s Offshore Special Regulations, are ideal for recreational ocean cruising), so that part of the strategy is taken care of. Where we have some choice is in the sailplan, forecasting tools and heavy weather equipment.

well found boat and crew can cope with whatever the weather and sea conditions have to throw at them. Photo: Mike Delamore

I’ve optimised our sailplan for simplicity, robustness and redundancy. We opted to forego a trysail in favour of a deep-reefed mainsail simply because it’s far easier to set. I insist on a second stay for attaching the staysail and storm jib rather than the type that wrap around a furled headsail – far too much to go wrong there. An inner forestay (or Solent stay) adds another bit of support for the mast in really gnarly conditions.

Deck layout

The most important part of my heavy weather strategy is to avoid cascading problems resulting from too much complexity. A single green water, deck-sweeping wave can do a lot of damage if not planned for.

All three of our boats have nearly flush decks, allowing green water to harmlessly flow out the lee scuppers, and we deliberately don’t keep anything lashed to them at sea. No dinghy on the foredeck, no jerry cans of fuel on the side decks, no big davits aft. The less stuff you have on deck during the worst weather – including crew – the less stuff the ocean can grab and wash overboard.

As far as equipment goes, I’m a big fan of mounting liferafts on a stainless bracket on the pushpit and keeping the drogue, if carried, on top of the lazarette and ready to deploy.

Heavy weather equipment

We carry a Jordan Series Drogue on our smaller boat Isbjorn, an S&S Swan 48. Despite the failure of Susie’s drogue on DHL Starlight in the Golden Globe Race, to me the series drogue is still the only choice for serious heavy weather. While I’ve never had to deploy one in anger, there seems to be consensus among the folk I’ve talked to and the articles I’ve read that when it comes to survival conditions, the series drogue is the obvious choice.

However, on Icebear, a Swan 59 and soon Falken, our new-to-us Farr 65, we don’t carry any type of heavy weather drogue. It’s pretty well documented that big boats are exponentially at far less risk of capsize in serious heavy weather, so we’ve forgone a drag device.

Make sail changes early before heavy weather arrives to minimise time spent on deck. Photo: 59 North Sailing

Routines

Just as important is our watch schedule and daily routine. We keep a standard three-watch rotation of four hours on/eight hours off, with the skipper and mate floating. In heavy weather this changes to four on/four-off with skipper and mate included, so one of us is always on deck to manage the situation.

Then we have an emergency action plan to hand at all times should things get out of control. These routines are baked into our SOPs (standard operating procedures) and require no thinking in the moment to activate them.

Tactical choices

A heavy weather strategy is predetermined at the planning stage and difficult, if not impossible, to change once offshore (your strategy will have dictated what choices you made at the planning stage regarding boat type, sailplan, equipment list, etc). Tactics, however, are flexible and adaptable as the situation changes.

In that North Atlantic storm, August Sandberg was able to employ a rerouting tactic that allowed him to mitigate the worst of the weather. Isbjorn wasn’t fast enough to avoid the storm altogether, so he aimed to position her as far away from the worst of it as possible.

But to minimise the conditions, it meant running off at best speed to the east-north-east, towards Ireland as the storm centre was forecast to pass to the north and follow a similar track. The problem was that if the storm tracked just a bit south of its forecast, Isbjorn would wind up in the worst of it anyway, while also on a lee shore on Ireland’s formidable west coast.

Learn to read GRIBs and understand how to route away from the worst weather. Photo: 59 North Sailing

So he split the difference. Knowing they’d be sailing into stronger conditions they reefed down, changed up the watch schedule and sailed a course to keep the wind just aft of the beam, heading more north-north-east and parallel to Ireland’s west coast, thereby leaving them much more sea room should they ultimately need to run with the storm.

Anticipation

My first heavy weather tactic begins just before any given passage when we’re analysing the weather and looking for our departure window. At this point I’m looking for trends in the weather regarding wind strength and direction, with two goals in mind:

1. Can I find a window to depart either in a relative calm or at least off the wind?
2. What sailplan am I going to start the passage with?

If we’ve a high likelihood of heavy weather and/or a lot of beating in the forecast, I’ll opt to bend on the smaller genoa to the headstay furler, pre-rig the removable inner forestay and hank-on the staysail before we ever leave port.

I know that an initial beat will feel like heavy weather to a lot of the crew who sail with us, even in moderate conditions, and consequently will wear them down much more quickly in those first 48 hours. Conservatively anticipating the weather is a tactic that allows me to easily transition into heavy weather mode once offshore; it’s simply a matter of changing into the predetermined new watch rotation and hoisting the staysail.

Heading downwind while towing a drogue. Photo: Helen Nicholls

I’ll make this transition well in advance. On a recent November passage between Lanzarote and Horta on Icebear, we had a well-forecasted cold front set to overtake us as we approached the Azores. We’d have some heavy south-westerly conditions ahead of the front, and we wouldn’t make it to Horta before a north-westerly wind shift which would leave us beating the final 18 hours into port up the channel between Pico and São Miguel.

In bright afternoon sunshine the crew assembled on deck and, despite the moderate conditions at the time, bent on the smaller genoa and hoisted the staysail. Before nightfall we tucked two reefs into the mainsail. By midnight, winds were touching 30 knots and all that was left to do was partially furl the genoa. Icebear raced through the night with her small sails up and little drama.

At dawn the wind shifted and we switched into upwind mode, shaking the reefs in the main and re-setting the 105% genoa, making landfall in Horta a few hours later, a textbook application of anticipating the weather and executing good tactics to contend with it.

Active vs passive tactics

Active tactics apply to situations where you’ve had to change your daily routine, adjust your routing, or both, but continue actively sailing the boat, even if it’s an autopilot doing the actual steering. Active tactics require someone on deck, which requires energy, your most precious resource in heavy weather. Eventually, if the weather sustains for long enough, you will run out of this resource, especially with a short-handed crew, and you’ll need to change tactics.

Staying active on the helm in heavy weather can give a sense of purpose, easing stress. Photo: Paul Wyeth

Passive tactics are when we’re no longer in control of sailing the boat, but rather its tending to itself. Passive tactics are about holding position to let the weather pass and re-energising the crew. The most important part of any good active tactic is knowing when to give it up and switch to a passive tactic before you’re exhausted.

Eventually, if the weather gets gnarly enough, some boats require active tactics to remain seaworthy – ie deep fin-keeled monohulls that are reluctant to heave-to may require fore-reaching, while most multihulls will need to run-off sooner than a displacement hull to avoid capsize risk – and this is where that crew energy is crucial.

Fifty years ago Don Street observed in The Ocean Sailing Yacht, that: ‘It must be remembered that on long offshore passages a well-built and well-equipped boat will stand up to much more rough weather than will the crew.’ The same holds true today.

Adapt your approach

Good execution of heavy weather tactics during a sustained storm means staying flexible. Your tactics will change as the storm evolves:

• Anticipate: Understand the forecast and set the boat up for the expected conditions long before they deteriorate
• Active: continue sailing and progressively reefing deeper and deeper, aiming to route as far away from the worst of the storm as possible in the time before it hits
• Passive: heave-to before it gets truly gnarly to give the crew needed rest
• Active: fore-reach (easier to helm, but wetter) or run-off (more dangerous, harder to control) once the sea-state gets too large to safely heave-to
• Passive: douse all sails, secure the companionway and set a Jordan Series Drogue to ride out the worst of the storm with all crew below decks. Lying ahull is no longer considered a safe option unless it’s a very short-lived storm that doesn’t build up a significant sea state
• Active: as the weather eases, transition back into actively sailing the boat. Eventually, once everyone is rested, you’ll be able to revert back to your normal at-sea routines and continue towards your destination

Assume you will need to hand-steer, and make sure at a minimum one other crew is capable of hand-steering in all weather on all points. Again, autopilot reliance is a great tactic, poor strategy. Photo: 59 North Sailing

You won’t always progress through that entire sequence. In fact, in the nearly 100,000 miles I’ve sailed offshore, I’ve yet to do so myself. But I sleep easier knowing all the tactics I have available to me when the weather gets really bad.

Every time we hold a crew debrief after we’ve seen some heavy weather, people always talk about how surprised they were at the long build-up to the actual weather event. Sandberg’s crew from June 2021 were no exception: “They’d imagined that heavy weather just hits you quickly and randomly, and that coping with it is like putting out a fire. They had not imagined that it was something you’d plan for, discuss and prepare for, often days in advance.”

If there’s one takeaway that’s most important here it’s the concept of anticipation. With anticipation at the root of all heavy weather tactics, you’ll never get caught out without a plan.
Thanks to a well found boat, her well found skipper and a sound heavy-weather strategy that was executed well, Isbjorn made it through that North Atlantic storm drama free and not only unscathed, but with an exhilarated crew who learned a bit of good seamanship.

Coping strategies

Heaving-to

Don’t believe the myth – all boats will heave-to, even modern flat-bottomed, fin-keeled performance boats. Some just require more patience and practice.

Heaving-to is the art of stalling a boat at about 60º off the wind by backing the headsail, sheeting the main in tight and locking the helm ‘down.’ Just like balancing a boat under sail, heaving-to, especially on more modern hull shapes, requires a careful balance of headsail size, mainsail trim and rudder trim. Once dialled in, the boat takes care of herself, allowing the crew time to recharge. It’s a useful tactic on any long passage, even in nice weather; stop for a swim, wait for a favourable wind shift, ride out a dark night before entering a new port.

In real heavy weather, there’ll be more setup. Blocks must be rigged such that jib or staysail sheets have a fair lead aft when the sail is backed. When practicing the tactic this is often overlooked, but at sea in a blow, chafe sets in and must be avoided.

When properly hove-to, your world changes: the boat locks in at a steady angle of heel and bobs on the seas while the crew gets needed rest. We find we use this tactic more than any other. It’s easy and effective. But at some point it can become dangerous…

Switch to alternate heavy weather watch rotations early to keep the crew fresh and a leader (skipper or mate) on deck at all times. Photo: 59 North Sailing

Fore-reaching

If the seas are breaking, heaving-to can become dangerous. And despite what I wrote above about all boats being able to heave-to, some are indeed difficult. In either case, consider fore-reaching.

Fore-reaching is basically sailing very slowly to windward. It’s an ‘active’ tactic and will require someone on the helm, or at least monitoring the autopilot, but often staying active in heavy weather can give you a sense of purpose and can ease the mental stress of intense conditions.

All boats can fore-reach. Set your small sails and basically pinch your way to weather. Fore-reaching is quite similar to the ‘feathering’ tactic we often employ during quick squalls when the wind is forward of the beam. Instead of reefing and unreeling for each squall, simply feather-up on the helm to de-power the sails and ride it out. Fore-reaching is similar, but over a longer duration and with smaller sails.

Series drogue

When conditions get too heavy to do anything but hide down below, the series drogue is the go-to tactic. It’s also the only tactic that requires truly modifying your boat before departure – you’ll need stout chainplates on the transom to take the loads from the bridle, a protected companionway that can survive a heavy breaking wave from astern, and a way to stow and deploy the drogue efficiently offshore.

Practicing deployment and retrieval is essential to avoid snags in the 300ft-long line. Modern series drogues are made with Dyneema, making them far easier to carry and stow, but more difficult to retrieve thanks to the slippery line. Randall Reeves used his often when solo sailing around the Americas and Antarctica: his blog has useful observations on how to retrieve a Dyneema drogue when short-handed.

Bluewater Sailing Techniques Part 3: Coping with squalls

Discover the best way to cope with squalls and weather them safely in the latest instalment of our Bluewater Sailing…

Bluewater Sailing Techniques Part 4: sailing downwind with a poled out headsail

Discover how to sail with a poled out headsail in our latest Bluewater Sailing Techniques video

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It’s only really developments in sail handling technology that have allowed the size of boats to increase so much: we’ve been building yachts of 60ft for decades, but they often needed a full crew to sail them.

The move towards sloops and away from cutters and ketches means that any single sail is likely to be bigger too. But thanks to furling sails, electric winches, asymmetric spinnakers and snuffers, a crew of two can handle a 60-footer in largely the same way they’d handle a 40-footer.

It’s not just the boats that have got bigger. The upwind sail area of the new Swan 48 is 22% bigger than that of the 1971 S&S of the same length. Although technology has allowed us to build far more power into our rigs, the fact that we can reduce that power at the push of a button masks how big the loads are.

These increased loads need to be treated with enormous respect. If you’re hit by a flogging jib sheet on a 60ft yacht it feels like you’ve been knocked down with a crow-bar (I learned this lesson the hard way).

A flappy sail is not just unhappy, it’s lethal. Emily Bower runs Skyelark II, an Oyster 62, with her husband, Dan (adventuresailing.com). She points out that big headsails are fine when they’re up and you can use the furling gear to control them, but if you need to raise or lower them, perhaps because a halyard has failed, they become a hazard.

“You can get yourself in a mess handling big sails short-handed, especially if a big gust of wind comes along.” They impress on their guest crew to always ask for help with sail handling. As a charter yacht they often have novice sailors on board, and emphasised how important it is to give people something to monitor while winching. “Make sure they know what to watch, and know when to stop winching,” said Dan. He also found that being gentle with the commands translated into more sympathetic use of the power: “We ask people to ‘tickle’ the button now, it’s so easy to be heavy handed otherwise.”

A snuffer allows a crew of two to handle a large asymmetric spinnaker with relative ease. Photo by: Christophe Breschi

Weighty Work

Moving heavy sails is also challenging. Rather than brick them, which makes them really dense and awkward to handle, leave them in a long flake with plenty of sail ties on.

These can be used as handles so that multiple people can help lift and drag it to where you need it. When reefing, it’s not advisable to let the mainsail flog to depower it: the sail and boom might have a combined weight of a quarter of a tonne.

Traditional sailing techniques offer today’s skipper seamanship techniques to draw from and scandalising the main for reefing is one example. Rather than allowing the sail and boom to flail around, raise the boom on the topping-lift or vang while keeping some tension on the mainsheet.

This will open the leech allowing the wind to spill while keeping the boom under control. With increased loads, gear failure becomes more serious. As a teenager I was deckhand on an ageing Whitbread maxi. We were storming along at 12 knots when a genoa sheet parted. It sounded like a canon had gone off and the line snapped back instantly, fortunately no one was in the way.

Because it’s so expensive to replace, there’s a temptation to keep old gear going past its ‘use-by date’ on larger yachts. I’ve never liked having anyone stand near a loaded sheet since. Good winch and line handling technique is essential for sail handling on larger yachts.

Unfortunately degloving injuries are not uncommon and even experienced sailors have lost fingers in a moment’s inattention. Emily Bower also pointed out how dangerous power winches can be if they fail. “I was putting someone up a mast one day and when I took my finger off the button the winch kept turning,” she recalls. “I had to ease the line continually to prevent the person being winched into the block while someone else went below to isolate the batteries.”

Maintenance

Although the sailplan often stays the same despite the increase in boat length – a mainsail and furling headsail remains a pretty standard set-up for boats from 20-80ft – the systems involved in managing that sailplan become exponentially more complex and more critical as does the sail handling. If the roller furler fails on a large yacht there’s a lot of sail wrestling to do.

From windlasses to electric winches, gear failure isn’t just inconvenient, it can be downright dangerous when sail handling. I’ve had to retrieve 80m of chain and a 40kg anchor by hand, and it took 10 crew the best part of half an hour to do it. Fortunately, we weren’t on a lee shore at the time or it could have been a different story. If we’d been short-handed we’d have had to drop the bitter end and buoy it, to return in better conditions.

If you rely heavily on any system, service it and inspect it like you would your engine. Replace worn deck gear and running rigging on the advice of your rigger. Before it fails, think through how you could cope without it, especially if doublehanding, and bear in mind that no piece of kit is 100% reliable.

Winch Handling Skills:

• Load the winch fully with four or five turns before grinding on: use the whole drum
• Keep hands a safe distance from the winch by sliding your hand down the line as you load the drum, and work at winch
• level – holding hands too high can cause the rope to spin off
• Make sure you know how to do a rolling hitch to take the load off a line if you’ve got a riding turn

Line Handling Skills:

• Don’t put your hand between a line and a cleat – if load comes on the line it will crush everything in its way
• Beware of ‘snap-back’ zones on loaded lines and avoid standing in their apex
• When coming alongside, surging a line around a cleat will help slow the boat down, but don’t snub it too abruptly.

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There has been a huge surge in the sales of performance multihulls and with them a need to know how to handle them particularly when it comes to specific multihull techniques. The market for these boats is broadening; multihull cruisers are upgrading, monohull sailors are upsizing, and even virgin boat owners are tempted.

Over the last 12 months, while coaching for Outremer, I’ve met hundreds of these owners, everyone from young families to retired couples moving aboard a new catamaran and setting sail on a circumnavigation. Handling a performance catamaran is achievable even for a novice multihull sailor. But there is a big difference between just ‘getting by’ on such a boat versus sailing efficiently, safely and in style.

The transition for even experienced sailors can be quite a step up. For a seasoned monohull sailor, the differences are obvious: increased volume and speed, and a lack of heel. Even for an existing multihull sailor, the handling and performance is noticeably less forgiving and requires a shift in focus and technique.

This winter, I set sail on a transatlantic with the new owners of an Outremer 55. They have previously owned another less performance-orientated catamaran but invited me on board to coach them to fine tune the boat, assist with routing, and help them take best advantage of all the performance their new yacht offers. Here are a few of the topics we focussed on:

sailing at higher speeds will change everything from manoeuvre techniques to weather routing. Photo: Robin Christol/Outremer

Speed

Most non-planing monohulls will do approximately the same speed on all points of sail. However, a performance multihull might sail at twice, three, even four times its upwind speed on a reach.

For example, the factory polars of an Outremer 55 give its average speed in 20 knots of wind with a true wind angle (TWA) of 50° at 8.5 knots, but in the same windspeed with a TWA of 110° it’s 19.1 knots. That’s more than twice as fast. How do you make the most of this speed advantage? And how do you best manage it?

In a monohull it often pays to slog it out for days sailing the best course to windward as this normally gives the best velocity made good (VMG). A dead downwind rhumbline route is the usual strategy for longer ocean passages, rather than sailing more miles and wider angles.However, on a performance multihull it is important to prioritise reaching when route planning.

aboard high performance catamarans, such as this TS42, you can race competitively in offshore events. Photo: Jacques Vapillon/Sea&Co

In upwind conditions on a long crossing, consider whether bearing off by even as much as 20° will result in a better VMG, even if it feels counterintuitive. In light winds bearing off to 70° or 80° TWA can be the difference between a totally stalled boat and 5 knots of boat speed.

Faster speeds open up the possibility of keeping up with pressure systems as they move around the globe. For example, if crossing the North Atlantic eastwards, ideally you’d leave the US in clear weather with a depression forecast to leave the American coast a few days later.

You could use its predicted track to decide how much north or south to add to your easterly heading, to ensure that as it catches up with you, you are sufficiently south enough of it to pick up its strong westerlies.
As they approach, you will accelerate, and if you can hold the speed you can use that downwind airflow to push you most of the way across the pond.

Handling at speed

Controlling and handling the boat at these higher speeds requires a change in strategy. Increased speeds and acceleration mean that the apparent wind angle and apparent wind speed change much more frequently.
So you need adaptable and flexible trimming and driving solutions.

Use twist to balance power and control. Photo: Robin Christol/Outremer

Downwind the boat should be carving S-curves through the water to ensure it achieves the best VMG possible. If you can get this right you will attain the momentous double figure average speeds that a performance multihull offers, while also going the right direction! Instead of allowing the speed to plummet at the end of each surf, as the bow sinks into the bottom of the wave, a performance multihull can just keep on going.

How to maintain speed:

1 Sail at higher angles to build up apparent wind speed (AWS) and boat speed.

2 Soak downwind as the apparent wind angle (AWA) surges forward with the acceleration.

3 Drive the boat back slowly upwind in time to maintain the average speed and continue the surf.

In an ideal world, to achieve this the boat would be hand-steered. But realistically, no cruisers want to be on deck for two weeks straight on a transatlantic crossing. Your best compromise is to invest in a top quality, well set up autopilot, as well as good wind instruments.

Set the autopilot to sail to apparent wind angle and watch how the boat slaloms through the ocean. The quality of the autopilot will really start to show its value when the sea state starts to increase. The best ones improve over time as they collect data and learn the wave patterns. If you aren’t sure exactly which AWA is ideal, choose a day that has very consistent wind and sail in open water. Set the autopilot AWA to 90° and then systematically increase the setting by increments of 5° at fixed time intervals until you get as low as you can before the foresail is shadowed behind the main. Measure the VMG by comparing the distance travelled at each of the different wind angles, and the average A to B course over ground (COG) achieved. This will give you a good starting point, and then it will shift further depending on sea states and wind strengths.

Sail setting

Another solution if you want fast speeds but don’t want to actively sail the boat to within an inch of its life is to use twist. Twist is a compromise between having a hardened sail that stalls when the wind goes aft, or a very eased sail that luffs when it goes forward. The more changeable the conditions, the more extreme the acceleration increases are, or the rougher the sea state is, the more twist you need.

Cats have the space and stability to hoist and douse, so keep weight low by dropping flying sails when not in use. Photo: Christophe Launay

Mainsail

The wide beam of a multihull allows for a long traveller, so most won’t have a vang. Sheet tension and traveller position are your primary controls to create twist in the mainsail. Begin by finding a full power setting in the main.

Set your autopilot to 35-40°AWA; most performance multis should make this upwind. Set your traveller at midships and over-ease your mainsheet so that the sail is luffing. Gradually tighten your mainsheet until the top telltale just flies. Manual winching offers better control here than electric.

Pull your traveller to windward until the boom runs down the centreline. The top telltale of the mainsail will now be flying about three-quarters of the time. If it is closer to 50% you may need to tighten the mainsheet further and then ease the traveller until you have achieved this (or vice versa). This is your full power sail shape, and your default car position upwind.

At this point some people like to mark the mainsheet (this doesn’t work with a continuous mainsheet). To begin with, just take note of the traveller position. If the conditions require more twist, ease the mainsheet, and pull the traveller to windward to keep the boom in the same position relative to the boat. You could keep a note of three traveller positions for each point of sail: full power, mid power, low power.

As the wind moves aft, you can add other ‘go-to’ traveller positions for different wind angles by easing the traveller down to leeward while keeping the mainsail shape set to ‘full-power’ mode. Once the wind goes aft of the beam, your traveller will be all the way down to leeward. Keep an eye on spreader chafe at this point.

Jib

Once you are happy with mainsail trim, you can trim the jib in a similar way, using car position and the sheet tension. Bring sheet tension in so that the leech shape looks very similar to the main: flat with a slight curve at the top. Then adjust the cars (if you can) so that the sail is not luffing, and the top telltales are also flying 50-75% of the time. Finally, walk forward to the forestay and view the slot between the sails. Do they look roughly parallel? If not, you may need to open up the slot a touch by moving the car outboard. This is your default jib car position for that point of sail.

Sailing the angles with an asymmetric. Photo: Kinetic Catamarans

When conditions increase, don’t forget to add twist to the jib too. Initially just ease a touch of sheet. Be careful moving the car too far inboard or you might close the slot. Moving the sheet attachment closer to the foot of the clew will open up the leech and create more twist.

Think of twist as the middle ground between sailing fully powered and reefing. Multihulls are much less communicative than monohulls. You do not have the obvious signs that the boat is overpowered, like a submersed toe rail or rounding up as the boat heels.

In time you’ll get to know your catamaran and build a connection to read how aggressively the boat is accelerating, its fore-aft pitching, sounds, and rhythm. But at first it’s useful to have some number guides and wind parameters of when to add twist and ultimately when to reef.

Generally a performance cat will require a reef much earlier because it’s lighter. I’d usually put in one reef at 20-25 knots, two at 25-30 and three reefs for 30-35 knots.

Comfort

On our transatlantic crossing on the Outremer 55, contrary to my advice on the advantages of sailing angles downwind, we chose instead to sail dead downwind with the symmetric spinnaker up for the entire passage.

taking it easy dead downwind under symmetric Photo: Nikki Henderson

There are costs to taking full advantage of the speed of a performance catamaran. Averaging 15 knots boat speed is not everyone’s idea of comfortable. The hulls are so stiff that every wave that hits the hull sounds like the beating of a drum. The humming of carbon rigging, the swooshing of water screaming past the topsides, the slapping of the waves, the wind: it’s incredibly loud even when averaging 10 knots, let alone 15 or 20.

Performance multihulls are also so lightweight that they are really thrown about in a substantial sea state. Our decision to sail dead downwind rather than heating up and taking full advantage of the performance came down to the following reasons:

1. Lack of adequate autopilot We had one, but it wasn’t able to react quickly enough to the acceleration and resulting rapid change of wind angle that broad reaching would have created. It also struggled in a big seaway, so sailing with the waves square on to the stern was easier to cope with.

2. Sails We did not have a heavyweight asymmetric sail, which is what you need to sail these downwind angles (both our reaching sails were light weight).

3. Safety Akaroa II is hull No2 of a new design by Outremer. This was the first transatlantic crossing that this particular model of boat had ever done, so we were a testing ground and deliberately cautious.

Despite our conservative approach we still achieved 90% of the factory polars averaging 9.6 knots in sustained winds of 20 knots across the entire 2,700-mile route.

The trip took 11 days and 17 hours. The beauty of a performance multihull is that even if you don’t push it, you still manage brilliant speeds in the right conditions.

We calculated how much faster we would have gone, had we sailed the angles instead of running downwind. This assumes we would achieve the same 90% polars. TWA 140° appears to be the sweet spot.

Getting the main down when reefing can be problematic – rig up downhaul lines to help grind it down if needed. Photo: Nikki Henderson

Loads

Without any power being dispelled by heeling, performance multihulls will convert additional power into acceleration. With this increased speed comes increased loads on the lines, blocks, rudders, sail cloth and rigging. Winches are upsized. Jammers are used instead of clutches. Halyards are 2:1. You may be sailing on a 50-footer, but the loads are akin to a 70-80ft bluewater monohull.

A future owner recently reminded me of this, when he opened the main traveller jammer while holding the line with only one wrap on the winch. The lack of skin on his hand was gruesome evidence of how surprising the loads can be when a multihull is really powered up.

Interestingly, comparing a standard cruising multihull with a similar sized performance multihull, the opposite is true. A boat that weighs less needs less sail area to power it. For example, a Lagoon 450 has a sail area (main and jib) of 130m2 compared to an Outremer 45 (actually 48ft LOA) at 104m2. So, for the same apparent wind speed, there will be less load on the gear.

Watch out when sailing downwind. Due to a performance multihull’s ability to accelerate and hold high speeds downwind, it is easy to hold significantly more sail area in higher true wind speeds as the apparent stays low. However, if you do hit the bottom of a wave and stop dead in the water, the sail, rigging and lines will feel the full force of that wind.

Another reason to reef earlier than you think on a performance multi is that with swept back shrouds (needed to support the mast without a backstay) and a fully battened mainsail, even with the halyard eased downwind the sail may still not come down. You should be sailing with the minimum amount of sail cloth up to achieve the polars.

Reducing sail

1. Rig up downhaul lines from each reefing point on the luff to help grind down the sail. Keep an eye on chafe on the leeward side on each of the batten pockets.

2. Use the rotating mast to open the sail to the wind more.

3. If that isn’t enough, come upwind to help get the sail down.

Multihull trim

Switching to a performance catamaran may bring new trimming options: daggerboards, a rotating mast, and fully battened square topped mainsail.

Brush up on your fundamentals of sail trim so that you have a solid foundation to build on. When you first start sailing the boat, to avoid getting overwhelmed (which tends to result in people under-sailing their boat), begin by finding a base setting for all points of sail. Forget the rotating rig for now, but find enough twist in the sails that gives you enough height without too much power. Set the daggerboards as you would on a dinghy: down for upwind, up for downwind, mid-way for a reach. Then you fine tune.

Set performance cat daggerboards as you would for a dinghy at first: down for upwind, up for downwind, mid-way for a reach. Photo: Nikki Henderson

When adjusting daggerboards, make sure you have your GPS track switched on. See if dropping a little more daggerboard helps with the COG upwind. Downwind, if you feel like you are on an ice-skating rink, try dropping a little board for better grip. If on autopilot, take note of the rudder angle. If it’s taking the helm from full starboard to full port then it might need some more grip, if not then a reef.

Be cautious of the risk of ‘tripping up’ in big seaways. In sea states much over 3-4m, it’s safest to lift the daggerboards and allow the boat to glide over the waves rather than risk one of the boards digging into a wave and destabilising the boat. While exceptionally unlikely to happen, if a daggerboard digs in, the worst case scenario would be a capsize. If you see any slick in the water that suggests the boat is sliding sideways over a wave, or an increase in heel, or significant water over the deck – these are signs that it’s time to lift the boards all the way up.

Finally, play with the rotating mast. At a basic level, try to get the mast in line with the foremost sail position and curve. The easiest way to see this is actually to stand forward of the mast and look down the line of the sail. It is in itself a foil and when in the right position can add the equivalent of as much as 10% more sail area. In the same way, you can use it to depower by reducing the angle.

With a rotating mast you’ll generally be trying to get it in line with the foremost sail position and curve. Photo: Nikki Henderson

When fine tuning sail trim I’d recommend marking all your tracks and angles of mast rotation, and once you are confident you could mark the sheets and halyards themselves. This is an exercise for the detail-orientated and it pays to be specific. Keep a notebook at the helm station to record your learnings, and over time build up not just ideal trim settings for wind and waves, but also polars.

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Weight

Learning a performance catamaran’s sensitivity to weight can be a real learning curve. Compared to cruising catamarans, performance cats tend to be half the weight (or even less). Meanwhile, compared to a monohull the main difference is in the areas where the weight is most concentrated. A monohull’s weight is predominantly in its keel. Almost the entire weight of the boat is concentrated in around 15% of the boat’s length. Conversely, a multihull has no keel, so without that pendulum effect its centre of gravity is higher and less stable. On a multihull the weight is distributed along almost 90% of its length.

In practice, this means that what you carry, both below and above decks, has a big impact on the boat’s performance and safety. The first step is to become minimalists. Summon your inner Marie Kondo and ask yourself “Does this bring me joy? Does this keep me safe?” of every single item that moves from dock to boat. If it doesn’t – don’t take it.

Performance cats are weight sensitive so streamline your possessions onboard. Photo: Carl Newton

Step two is to arrange your belongings evenly around the boat. Ensure you don’t list the boat to port or starboard. Try to keep weight amidships and ideally low down. Avoid loading up the bow lazarettes or aft areas with too much weight.

When sailing, don’t forget that the worst kind place for weight is aloft. Without the keel, you significantly reduce the stability of the boat by having a furled Code 0 (for example) hanging around up the rig. It’s inconvenient to drop it every time, but it’s worth it.

Safety

Higher speeds, bigger loads, a lighter boat and higher centre of gravity don’t sound like the safest characteristics, and they aren’t if poorly managed. But you can also use them to your advantage. Being able to sail faster means you sometimes have an option to run away from bad weather.

But there are other safety drills that are worth thinking about ahead of time. What is your MOB recovery plan? With cats’ high freeboard, some owners plan to reverse up to the casualty and pick them up from the steps at the back. But how many have practiced that? Will it involve dropping the mainsail? Could the props injure the casualty? How does the back of the boat behave in a significant sea state? I’d recommend practising this until you have a plan that works for you on your boat with the equipment you have. The same should be said for plans to evacuate the boat, or deal with a fire on board.

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It’s that time of year when yachts and crews from northern Europe flock south, migrating to warmer climes. But like all good migration routes there’s an obstacle in the way: the Bay of Biscay.

Biscay gained its notorious reputation because in the prevailing westerlies a square-rigged vessel could be ‘embayed’ for days. Failing to make sufficient ground to windward they’d drift inexorably closer to the French coast and potential disaster. However with 21st century forecasting techniques and a modern yacht it no longer needs to be the feat of endurance it once was – but it does still need preparation, strategy and a healthy dose of respect.

In my dealings with Biscay over the years I’ve motored across in light airs with pilot whales for company, beaten across in a howling gale (using every pair of socks I owned) and on one occasion I sat west of it with the drogue out until it calmed down, determined to keep the sock inventory dry.

A Biscay crossing is as variable as the weather itself and there’s no one-size-fits-all rule that can be applied to the passage.

However, if we identify the various challenges and plan for them in advance then we can tailor make a crossing strategy that works for each boat, crew and weather forecast.

6 elements to consider crossing the Bay of Biscay

There are six main factors to consider: the distance, prevailing conditionS, heavy weather, the continental shelf, the lee shore element, and shipping

Distance

The shortest distance across Biscay without going into the Bay itself is 360 miles from Brest to A Coruña. A vessel heading directly from Falmouth around Finisterre to the Rias can expect to add another 150 miles onto that.

For many crew Biscay will be their first taste of long distance sailing and it needs to be treated as a mini ocean passage. It brings with it all the associated challenges of ocean sailing: fatigue, seasickness and the distance from help when things go wrong.

Much of this can be mitigated by planning the crossing well in advance, keeping on top of routine maintenance and familiarising your crew in the preceding weeks and months.

Tactics

• Make sure the crew are well-briefed on safety issues: what to do in the case of fire, flooding and how to abandon ship
• Check that all safety kit is functional and within its service date
• Conduct an MOB drill prior to departure
• Carry plenty of fuel, fresh water, food and gas
• Inspect the sails and rig
• Service the engine and ensure that you’re well supplied with spares
• Run a robust watch system so that everyone gets enough rest
• Encourage everyone to take seasickness tablets prior to departure

The weather in the Bay of Biscay becomes much less predictable in the autumn and winter. Photo: Kila Zamana/svmalaika.com

Prevailing Conditions

Meteorologically speaking the Bay of Biscay sits squarely in the mid-latitudes – that zone of low pressure between the Azores high and the Arctic high.

The ideal time to cross is May-August when the weather’s more settled, but many yachts aren’t ready to leave at that point and an autumn or spring crossing often fits better with cruising plans. Furthermore, the course is south-west, straight into the prevailing wind direction.

Despite the improvements in upwind sailing performance of the last two centuries, a 400 mile beat is still a daunting prospect and likely to turn a two-to-three day passage into a four day slog.

Tactics

• An up to date weather forecast is essential prior to departure
• If possible time your passage for settled weather even if this means a bit of motoring or leaving earlier
• If you decide to go with unsettled weather, use the wind shifts to your advantage (see page 36)

Heavy weather is a regular feature. Photo: Amory Ross/Team Alvimedica/Getty

Heavy weather

The average crossing time for Biscay is three days – that’s a long time in the life of the North Atlantic. Having a flexible schedule is the best defence against heavy weather – if you’re on a tight deadline there’s always a temptation to leave with a less than favourable forecast.

However, unless you’re transiting in the summer months you’re likely to encounter strong winds at some point along the route so it’s important to be prepared. As ever small boats need to be more mindful of heavy weather in the forecast. Not only are they more vulnerable to breaking seas, but the slower your boat the longer the passage duration and the more likely you are to be caught out at the end of the passage.

Tactics

• Know how to rig storm sails and set them early if you think you might need them
• Prepare meals in advance
• Stow the boat well below decks
• Establish good routines from the outset when it comes to clipping on and moving around the deck
• Have time on your side when looking to cross

Continental Shelf

Somewhere between 60 and 100 miles offshore the continental shelf ends and the ocean begins. Here the depth plunges from a mere 100m to over 3,000m.

Atlantic swells rolling in from weather systems hundreds of miles react to the depth change by heaping up, creating a short, steep sea. In strong onshore winds the shelf will be very unpleasant, and even in moderate weather it is noticeably uncomfortable to cross. You’ll breathe a sigh of relief once you’re past it and the wavelength increases.

The shelf is also a favourite spot for French fishing boats. In my experience these are magnetically attracted to sailing yachts, and the more challenging the conditions the stronger the pull…

You’ll need to keep a particularly good watch and be prepared to take early avoiding action.

Tactics

• Time your departure from Falmouth or Brest to ensure that the conditions when you reach the shelf are as favourable as possible. Watch out for any cross swell which will exacerbate the sea state.It may be tempting to cross Biscay on the north-westerlies straight after the passage of a depression, but the combination of a lingering south-west swell with a fresh north-west breeze could create hazardous cross seas
• If you think the shelf might be tricky, try to cross in daylight when you can see the waves (and fishing boats) approaching
• Put your best crew on watch for this section of the voyage
• In rough weather, better conditions have been reported by staying west of 7°

Lee shore

As the square riggers of the 19th century knew only too well, the Bay of Biscay is one big lee shore. Once past Brest there are few all-weather ports of refuge and if the weather sets in there really is no option but to put as much distance between you and the coast as possible.

Tactics

• In onshore weather, avoid tacking into the Bay: keep your sea room and stay west of the rhumb line
• If in doubt stand out, and don’t attempt landfall until the conditions have improved

You can never rely on a ship’s crew seeing you. Photo: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy

Shipping in the Bay of Biscay

If the geography of Biscay wasn’t enough to contend with there’s a constant stream of merchant vessels heading along the Traffic Separation Schemes off Ushant and Finisterre. A course from Brest to A Coruña will keep you out of the shipping lanes and relatively clear of traffic. But a course from Falmouth to Finisterre will see you slowly converge with the shipping route and you’ll spend a long time dodging ships.

Early in my sailing career I was on one of these slow, converging courses coming home from Galicia. We were sailing downwind on a 70ft, 40-tonne steel boat with a large following sea and a tanker approaching from astern on a near collision course.

Due to the sea state I didn’t want to round up to cut across them, and a gybe would have been a lot of work. I decided as the stand-on vessel to hold course and let them take the avoiding action. After an hour they were a mile or so astern of us with a CPA that was too close for comfort. I radioed to ask their intentions and to my horror they hadn’t seen us either visually or on radar and they were in ballast condition so couldn’t manoeuvre easily. We had no option but to get out of their way. It was a sobering lesson in how you need to take matters into your own hands when avoiding ships.

Tactics

• Away from the TSSs sailing yachts are the stand-on vessel in encounters with merchant shipping. However, you can never rely on a ship’s crew seeing you and I always prefer to take decisive avoiding action if in any doubt
• If you find yourself plagued by endless shipping encounters change course and cut directly across the line of traffic, it is usually confined to a 4-5 mile stretch and easy to avoid

Photo: Tor Johnson

Routes to cross the Bay of Biscay

Departure points

There are two main departure points for vessels heading south across Biscay: Falmouth and Brest. They are both major ports with all-weather access, good facilities and plenty of cruising options nearby if you need to wait for a weather window.

Arrival points

Making landfall after a long passage is always the most challenging part, and the more preparation you can do for it the better. Depending on your choice of route there are three options:

• 1. North Spanish ports of Gijón and Viveiro
• 2. A Coruña
• 3. Rias south of Finisterre

Gijón and Viveiro

If persistent south-westerlies are a problem and you’re not in a major rush to get around Finisterre, then landfall further into the Bay may be preferable: Viveiro and Gijón have decent marinas with good facilities, though Gijón is a long way east. Both would be difficult to approach in winds from the north but are well sheltered from the prevailing west and south-westerlies. The problem will be continuing the voyage westwards, but if you simply can’t make enough ground to windward to get to A Coruña they’re safe and attractive alternatives.

A Coruña

A Coruña is a favourite staging post for many yachts crossing Biscay in either direction and for good reason: it’s a lovely city with good marinas and shelter from the prevailing westerlies. The only drawback on a voyage southwards is that it leaves Cape Finisterre to be dealt with. The notorious coastline between A Coruña and Finisterre is aptly named the Costa da Morte and needs to be avoided in onshore swell.

The Rias

If the going’s good, it’s worth rounding Finisterre and making for one of the Rias. The first big Ria south of Finisterre is Muros. It has a decent marina and a lovely little town for that well-earned cerveza. Further on you’ll find wonderful cruising options in the Ria de Arousa, the Ria de Pontevedra and the Ria de Vigo. Yachts on a tight schedule may skip the Rias entirely and just do a quick stop in Bayona (at the mouth of the Ria de Vigo) before continuing south.

Forecasts

Forecasts are all important for a Biscay crossing: both how you get them, and how you interpret them. Many yachts making this passage don’t have the luxury of sat-comms and rely heavily on their final GRIB file before leaving. But there are also the UK, French and Spanish shipping forecasts broadcast over VHF when in range.

If you’ve got Navtex that should carry signal most of the way across. The shipping forecast is only for 24 hours from the point of issue and the sea areas are huge, so they probably won’t help you avoid a gale entirely, but they will warn you that it’s coming. Don’t forget it’s also broadcasts on 198LW and, if nothing else, the dulcet tones of Radio 4 are very soothing in a blow!

Shipping forecast areas for the passage are huge and will give more of a broad brush indication of weather patterns than precise details for your location. The boundary line between Biscay and Fitzroy sea areas crosses right through the rhumb line so some reading between the lines is required to interpret the forecasts for the two different areas.

These days the departure forecast for a three-day passage should give a relatively accurate picture of the type of weather you’ll experience. It will tell you whether to expect light airs, westerly airflow, unsettled weather or more of a blow. The details such as wind direction and strength or the timing of fronts will change but you should have enough information to know if there’s likely to be any heavy weather and that’ll help you decide on a crossing strategy.

Forecast models

I always like to consult two forecast models as well as the shipping forecast prior to an offshore passage. The ECMWF and GFS models are well-established and easy to access online through sites such as Windy and Predict Wind – both allow you to toggle between the models to compare and contrast the predictions.

Left: Scenario A: PredictWind shows a wave height of 5m, with a wave direction of 274.6° True, wave period 10 seconds. Right: Scenario B: wind strengths in the south of Biscay are similar but wave height reduces to 2.2m, direction 291.9°

Swell

It is sea state, not wind strength, that makes conditions challenging. With any long-distance passage it always pays to keep an eye on the weather charts well in advance of the trip to build up an idea of what kind of weather patterns are established, but it is particularly true for a crossing of the Bay of Biscay where swell is a key player in the passage.

Swell catches people out because it isn’t directly linked to the conditions around you – it’s a reflection of what’s been going on further afield. Waves grow with time and distance so to understand the swell conditions you need to be looking further out into the Atlantic and further back in time.

The charts (above right) show two very different swell forecasts despite the fact the wind forecast for the southern half of Biscay is a westerly Force 6 in both instances. Force 6 (22 knots) is on the limit of what most of us would like to be out in, but these two examples highlight that there are Force 6s, and then there are Force 6s…

The first chart (Scenario A) shows a 5m sea state created by an enormous low pressure system that had been pushing swell down from the Denmark Strait for two days. The second chart (Scenario B) shows the swell created by a smaller system which moved through more rapidly. The first is a complete no-go in my opinion: 22 knots close-hauled isn’t fun though it could be doable for a short while with the right boat and crew; but a 5m wave height could be dangerous, especially if it’s breaking.

The second scenario indicates a possible weather window for a fast boat making the short hop from Brest to A Coruña though – aiming to be about halfway across at the time of this forecast period so that you avoid the worst of any residual swell from the system to the north.

Read the weather conditions en-route and be informed about what’s likely to happen next. Photo: B.A.E. Inc/Alamy

Under way

In the absence of forecast information en-route, it’s important to be your own meteorologist. Be alert to the conditions by logging the wind, visibility, sea state and barometer on the hour.

Remember that a 6mb rise or fall in three hours indicates the imminent arrival of strong winds and you’ll want to adjust your sail plan. Cirrus cloud coupled with the steady drop of the barometer is your advance warning of a low pressure system: expect the wind to back slightly, then veer as the warm front arrives, and veer again when the cold front goes through.

What if…

With all the preparation in the world, things still go wrong. It always pays to think through the ‘what if’ scenarios – medical emergency, steering failure, dismasting, water ingress – and consider your options. Make sure you’ve got chart coverage for your ports of refuge, lodge your passage details and crew list with a shore contact and brief your crew on what to do if you, the skipper, are incapacitated.

Thrill of the crossing

Crossing Biscay is always a thrill, its awesome reputation is etched into the sailor’s psyche from early on. And it should be daunting, there are few other places where the Atlantic reigns with such indifference to our sailing ambitions. You don’t have to spend long in the yacht club bar in Bayona before someone testifies to Biscay’s enduring potency: vertiginous waves, disastrous break-downs, human triumph over adversity. They are the exception rather than the rule though. Plenty of people will be sitting in a corner wearing dry socks and wondering what all the fuss was about.

Gijón/ Photo: Espelt Gorgozo/Alamy

Strategies

Deciding on a crossing strategy will depend on the six factors already explained, plus the limitations of your boat, your crew and your time frame. You can reduce the impact of any of these factors by trying not to encounter too many at once: shipping + the shelf + heavy weather = high stress!

Try to break them down by tackling them in stages: stay away from the shipping route in heavy weather, for example.

Short-handed/ slow boat

If you’re double-handed or on a smaller yacht with an average speed of less than 6 knots then a Brest-A Coruña/Viveiro crossing makes more sense, staying clear of the shipping route to keep things simple (if wind angles allow). The shorter distance increases your chances of getting across in a limited weather window.

Fully crewed/ fast boat

My preferred route on a larger yacht is to go Falmouth-Muros, staying west of the rhumb line and outside the shipping route until the second half of the passage (and until you’re well past the shelf), then cutting across the traffic and making for the inshore traffic zone off Finisterre. If the conditions deteriorate in the second half of the passage you can always bear away to A Coruña or Viveiro but having stayed west to start with, you’ve got options.

Using the wind shifts

If you have to make the passage during unsettled weather with low pressure systems lurking around, then you’ll need to use the wind shifts to your advantage. During the passage of a typical low pressure system the wind backs slightly to the south or south-east initially before veering south-west as the warm front passes over, and veering again to west-northwest on the cold front.

If you start off on port tack (shown red) while the wind is in the south it will help you make ground to seaward, and then tack over when the wind veers south-west, crossing the lines of shipping at steeper angle (green), and follow the wind around as it continues to veer (blue) to bring you back up to the rhumb line.

It won’t look this neat in reality, and depending on the size of the system this whole pattern may be compressed into 24 hours, but the point remains the same: in predominantly westerly weather any shift can be a gift if you play it well.

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Have you ever dreamed of sailing in an around the world race, passing Cape Horn or surfing down the face of a breaking wave deep in the Southern Ocean? In your imagination you’ve pictured yourself standing behind the wheel of a yacht racing under a spinnaker tight as a snare drum, hosed by spray and wearing a rictus grin of fear and exhilaration.

In real life? No chance. But now, maybe you could, even if only for that one, giant-slaying leg.

From 2022 a clutch of new round the world events are set to start that open up big ocean racing possibilities at costs that align with private yacht ownership. There are double-handed races, solo races, non-stop and stopping, through the Tropics and deep into the Southern Ocean.

Some mix professionals with experienced amateurs and offer a chance to race against the pros, or hire pros to race alongside you. Several are specifically tailored to older yachts and in the process are remaking a ready market for well-found evergreen cruiser-racers.

Compared to pinnacle races such as the Vendée Globe or The Ocean Race, each with a ticket price of €10-15 million to reach the podium, a variety of epic events are now taking off with very different entry costs.

Golden Globe goes again

Next year will see the second edition of the Golden Globe Race. The ‘retro’ solo event set up by Australian sailor and adventurer Don McIntyre may initially have been seen as a one-off celebration of the 50th anniversary of the famous 1968/69 race, but it proved to be a hit worldwide, earning a mass audience and producing a queue of sailors wishing to take part and experience around the world racing.

With a home in Les Sables d’Olonne, where this race alternates with the Vendée Globe, the Golden Globe is now set up to be a perennial of the racing calendar. While it is not an event aspired to by elite professionals, it is a raw and relatively affordable around the world race for the everyman sailor.

Finnish skipper Tapio Lehtinen and his Gaia 36 Asteria pass Hobart during the 2018/19 Golden Globe Race. Photo: Jessie Martin/PPL/GGR

Being slow by nature of its eligible pre-1988 long keel designs, the GGR replicates the exact ‘lonely race for madmen’ experience that initially ignited our enduring fascination for around the world racing.

Stripped of modern technology, from autopilots to communications to weather routing, and with no stops, it is comparatively inexpensive. Jean-Luc Van Den Heede’s winning yacht in 2019 was a Rustler 36, of which secondhand models change hands for around £80-100,000. “You can’t win the race with money, as boats and equipment are restricted,” says Don McIntyre.

There is already a strong line-up for the 2022 race. “The [next] edition is going to have a different feel,” says McIntyre. “Those entering this one know what to expect and there are three distinct groups: the ones who are passionate about winning, others with a wholesome attitude focussed on doing as well as they can, and a third group who just want to get round.

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“PRB will come back with Damien Guillou, an IMOCA skipper and seven times Figaro racer, with a fully funded campaign – the PRB boss went looking for a skipper. Then we have Graham Dalton [Grant Dalton’s brother and former Around Alone competitor]. He has bought Matmut, Van Den Heede’s old boat, and will spend months working it up.”

Finnish sailor Tapio Lehtinen is returning, and Indian sailor Abhilash Tomy, capsized and dismasted in the Southern Ocean, is also rumoured to want to come back.

Undoubtedly the most experienced sailor will be the enigmatic David Scott Cowper, whose multiple solo circumnavigations and polar expeditions in small boats over 40 years is the stuff of legend.

Some pundits are still sniffy about the GGR, its slow boats and proportion of older skippers. Others point to the lack of technology increasing the risks of this race, which had a 27% finish rate last time with five dismastings and four abandonments out of a fleet of 18.

The race is not endorsed by a national sailing federation or subject to World Sailing safety requirements. However, it’s hard to make a watertight argument about safety considering the historic retirement rate of the Vendée Globe.

Whitbread rebooted

Of all the races set to go round the world in the next two years, the Ocean Globe Race in 2023 is causing the biggest stir. The largest of the retro races imagined by Don McIntyre in terms of boat size and likely fleet numbers, the OGR has caught light in the imaginations of sailors of all backgrounds, from boat owners to professionals, and others who see potential to make this the ultimate ‘pay-to-play’ experience.

Accutrac competed in the 1977/78 Whitbread Round the World Race and has been reimagined as Translated 9 for the Ocean Globe Race. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi

The OGR unashamedly places its heritage in the Whitbread Round the World Races of the 1970s and 1980s, when amateurs and professionals raced together, cruiser-racers could win, and before niche specialisms replaced all-round seamanship.

McIntyre argues that it also stands against the inbuilt obsolesce of modern races by giving new life to older boats, in this case chiefly pre-1988 glassfibre production yachts of 47-68ft.

The route is a simple one that mirrors the Whitbread Races over four legs, stopping in South Africa, Australia or New Zealand, before rounding Cape Horn and back to Europe.

McIntyre says: “We are nearly full with a maximum of 35 boats already. We knew it would be big.”

ADC Accutrac in the 1977/78 Whitbread Round the World Race Photo: Jonathan Eastland/Ajax News

There are several classes: the Adventure class for listed yachts such as the S&S-designed Swan 47, 48 and Frers Swan 55, 46, 51 and 53, for which entries have already closed.

There is also the Sayula class for 56-66ft yachts, with a range of Swans plus the Nicholson 55 eligible; and the Flyer class, which can include any yacht of any length that entered in the 1973-81 Whitbreads or historically significant sail training yachts.

A further Classic Challenge is for approved Maxis from the 1985 Whitbread and Whitbread/Volvo 60s.

The Adventure, Sayula and Flyer classes share the ‘back to basics’ concept of the Golden Globe Race (although with a weird rule that modern equipment such as GPS, chartplotters, AIS and PLBs are all behind a locked screen that “two people on board sworn to secrecy can look to check this equipment and use it for MOB situations,” says McIntyre).

On the other hand the Classic Challenge in Whitbread/VO60s allows the technology of its era and will possibly sail a different course. Now-classic Whitbread yachts such L’Esprit d’équipe/ Export 33, Maiden, ADC Accutrac and King’s Legend are already entered.

Some are setting out to take part in a race they always wanted to do. “Dominique Dubois, who owns the Multiplast yard, went and bought a Swan 651 and is getting 25 of his friends together with a chef on board,” says McIntyre. “Some of the big names, front line F1 sailors, want to sail with him.”

Another who is looking at entering is Andrew Pindar, long-time sponsor of round the world yachts and Vendée sailors. He has two eligible VO60s, the former Assa Abloy and News Corp, both from 2000. “This is about reusing and repurposing boats in a world [away from] an arms race, and for people to go back to celebrating what’s been achieved in half a century. It’s wonderful,” he says.

“I’d love to go back to that era of sailors who have ended up in coaching roles but who have at least one more race left in them, people like Brad Jackson or Guillermo Altadill, 50-55-year-olds who are amazing sailors, and team them up with people who have a great competence but who didn’t choose that path and maybe went on to become accountants or lawyers. They would never get a place on an Ocean Race or an Ultime, and wouldn’t want to do it in a Class 40.”

Pindar can foresee a strong class of VO60s raced on a “high level pro-am basis”, with paying crew coming from people buying a “life experience”. Or, perhaps “a bunch of legends and the other half mentees from something like the Magenta Project [a programme to accelerate women into pro racing].”

Swan 59 Icebear will enter the Ocean Globe Race. Photo: 59° North Sailing

That mix of private owner and their friends, and of professional sailors and paying crew, could make the OGR enduringly popular. Andy Schell, who is planning to race his Swan 59, Icebear, with three other professionals and seven paying crew, says the places he can offer have already been snapped up at US$32,000-$40,000 per leg and $100,000 for all four legs.

Around in miniature

A third race being planned by Don McIntyre in 2024 is a new event called the Mini Globe. This is a race for 19ft one-design plywood kit yachts round the world from northern Europe via the Canary Islands, Panama, Marquesas, Tahiti, Tonga, Indonesia, Mauritius, Cape Town and Cape Verde.

The concept echoes the somewhat cultish microyacht voyagers who have followed John Guzzwell’s circumnavigation in the 21ft wooden yawl Trekka in the 1950s and Shane Acton’s circumnavigation in the 18ft Shrimpy in the 1970s.

This circumnavigation will be via the tropics, at latitudes above 40° and will take around 13-14 months. The schedule is based on a pursuit format, with each start date set only after 15% of the racers finish the previous leg.

The 5.80m one-design created for this event was designed by Polish designer Janusz Maderski. It is actually smaller than the Mini 6.50 class that is raced across the Atlantic in the Mini Transat.

A build package is available either as a kit, or you can buy the plywood, plans and CNC files separately. A builders’ pack with hardware is also available from Plastimo and one-design mast packages from Sparcraft and Seldén. The budget to be ready for the transocean races planned for the class, the Globe 5.80 Transat and Mini Globe Race, is around €45-50,000, including all the safety gear.

McIntyre is about to launch hull No 1, Trekka II, for himself. “It is being built in Poland and I will be doing the first event for this class [the Globe 5.80 Transat from Portugal to the Caribbean November 2021] and testing the one-design sails,” he says. He reports interest from an extraordinary 135 builders in 26 countries.

An affordable challenge?

Another twist on the ‘accessible and affordable’ recipe is a new non-stop round the world pursuit race launched by Italian solo sailor Marco Nannini. The Global Solo Challenge will have a rolling series of starts over eight weeks between September and October 2023.

Marco Nannini has launched the Global Solo Challenge.

Nannini began his solo racing in a Sigma 36 in the 2009 OSTAR and went on to race in a Class 40 in Josh Hall’s Global Ocean Race in 2011/12. He says that experience was hard, and he wanted to turn away from “a format that you either have the fastest boat or there was nothing on earth you could do to win – it was like cycling on bikes with two different size wheels.

“I never wanted to do that again; it was a horrible feeling that you were part of a race… but not.”

His race is open to approved yachts of between 33-55ft with a maximum IRC rating of 1.25, “so it effectively cuts out the very latest Class 40s”. Nannini says his race, with a pursuit-style format, will instead feel like “the tortoise and the hare, David and Goliath. This is very easy for the public to understand: first to arrive wins.”

Nannini already has a number of experienced entries with eligible yachts, and the line up has a feel similar to entries in the Golden Globe Race or OSTAR.

For serious racers, the staggered start format makes this something of a curiosity, as does a dispensation to allow engine use within 500 miles of the finish line. The Global Solo Challenge is perhaps best viewed in the organisers’ term, as a ‘fantastic personal adventure’ for those who really want to achieve the feat of a circumnavigation without stopping and with the comfort of some safety in numbers.

Around the world racing for the pro’s?

Chronologically, the first of the six races to set off will be the Globe 40, a double-handed round the world race for Class 40s, which is scheduled to start in June 2022.

This is one of two new events hoping to attract professional racers and provided a possible pathway to the Vendée Globe.

The Globe 40 is run by French company Sirius Events and headed up by Manfred Ramspacher, who was in charge of the Tour de France à la Voile for eight years, has twice run the Transat Jacques Vabre, also organised the Ultimes’ Brest Atlantique Race and set up one of the leading Class 40 events, the Normandy Channel Race.

Since the box rule Class 40 designs launched in 2005, some 163 have been built, around 50 of which are actively being raced in Europe. Despite the pandemic, a surprising 15 new boats were launched last year, and more are in the pipeline.

Globe 40 organiser Manfred Ramspacher also set up the Normandy Channel Race – seen here heading out of Caen – a leading Class 40 event. Photo: Jean-Marie Liot/NCR

However, despite being vastly cheaper for professional sailors than the IMOCA 60s, the Class 40 is far from a budget boat. The design is now on its fifth iteration and a new build costs around €750,000.

Ramspacher has set the rules to allow co-skippers to be changed at each port and, unlike the rival Race Around (see below) it jinks north after the Cape of Good Hope to go through Mauritius and French Polynesia.

“These boats are 12m and you need a minimum of length to be safe in the big waves of the Southern Ocean,” says Ramspacher. “But the Globe 40 will not be an easy race. Some of the legs are 7,000 miles and the race is 30,000 miles.”

So far, French legend Kito de Pavant has expressed interest in racing, US sailor Brian Harris is on board, as is and Dutch sailor Ysbrand Endt.

Another circumnavigation for Class 40s is planned to start in September 2023, The Race Around. This one will go through the Southern Ocean, with both solo and double-handed divisions. A multi-stage event beginning in France it will stop in Cape Town and New Zealand, round Cape Horn to stop in Rio, before returning to Europe.

Organisers Sam Holliday and Hugh Piggin have long links with the Class 40 association and have signed an agreement to provide its official round the world race. The event is also being validated by the Fédération Française de Voile, which would make it the only race of this group to have national body endorsement.

Uniquely, the race is working with the Futures Program to research materials that reduce carbon emissions.

Organisers plan to build a race yacht fully out of recyclable fibres, and will form a mixed gender Futures Ocean Racing Team to compete then go full circle by recycling the boat at the end of the event.

An upwelling of demand

Despite so many new races coming onto the market over the next few years, all of the above have entries and, more importantly, include unsponsored or otherwise self-funded sailors who already have yachts.

Their existence is evidence of an upwelling in demand, with the bell curve fattened by middle-aged or retirement-aged sailors eager not to miss their chance. If anything, the pandemic has sharpened that urge.

These races rely heavily on owner participants rather than sponsors, a formula that the ARC rallies, for example, have also proven to be robustly sustainable, regardless of economic climate. There seems to be no shortage, decade after decade, of private sailors with an unquenchable appetite – and the means – for a challenge.

Risk, however, is another matter and some professionals have raised concerns about the possibility of serious problems and rescues in the Southern Ocean that could threaten regulation for well-established events. The greater the number of yachts racing deep sea, the greater the likelihood of multiple failures and problems. This boom being played out over such a short timespan raises legitimate concerns.

That said, sailing commentators can be quick to misjudge the abilities of sailors they simply haven’t heard of, and usually underestimate the value of older sailors’ long-won experience. Most of these amateur or pro-am races are for well-proven, conservative designs, which may in itself be a risk mitigation.

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The safety and wellbeing of both crew and vessel are the primary responsibility of any skipper.

Without exception every crew leader will attest to this and yet it is nearly impossible to find a single MAIB (Marine Accident Investigation Branch) report that doesn’t attribute a safety failure to some degree of human error and breakdown in communication, sometimes with catastrophic results. So, what are we in the sailing world doing wrong?

To answer this question it pays to look at the aviation industry, which has acknowledged and addressed the impact of ‘human factors’ for almost 40 years.

With a single passenger aircraft carrying up to 800 people, eliminating error is absolutely critical in flight.

In 1981 United Airlines introduced Crew Resource Management (CRM) training, to try and improve safety by focusing on interpersonal communication, leadership and decision making in the cockpit of an airliner. The CRM model proved so successful it has since become ingrained in aviation safety culture.

Albert De Nijs is a Yachtmaster Instructor who began his career in the Dutch Navy and later became an airline pilot with KLM. He is passionate about leadership in both sectors.

“In the maritime industry, and especially in yachting, there is still the picture of the skipper with authority, who makes the decisions and does the difficult stuff alone. That’s quite different from the airline approach, where the operation is considered an integral crew effort with a lot of delegation,” De Nijs explains.

“I’m convinced that an involved crew contributes a lot to the successful outcome of any trip, sailing or flying. It isn’t a big step to make as skipper, it’s something you can easily experiment with; starting with crew briefings, asking for feedback and delegating tasks to keep the crew involved while you overview the situation and monitor progress.”

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency introduced the HELM (Human Element of Leadership and Management) programmes to their professional training portfolio in 2013, aimed at addressing the fact that 80% of maritime incidents and accidents are the result of human error.

I have co-facilitated training for the Operational Level HELM course at UKSA, the maritime training centre on the Isle of Wight.

Like the aviation industry’s CRM training, the HELM course is designed to give structure to a topic that is often subjective and to provide models and techniques that can be applied on a practical level.

Given the gravitas of the subject matter, in my experience the attitude of many in the marine industry towards HELM-style training can be frustratingly dismissive.

Leading an effective team

It takes bravery for anyone to put themselves in a position of vulnerability, which comes hand in hand with deciding to learn a new skill or to join an unfamiliar team.

It’s the role of the skipper to acknowledge the commitment made by every crewmember, and help each reach their potential.

As a freelance skipper I’m tasked with building effective teams from scratch on a regular basis. These can vary massively, but whatever the assignment, the goal is the same; to nurture a cohesive group and try to achieve the best possible experience and the outcome for all on board.

Creating the right atmosphere starts with first impressions. Forgetting names is a deal breaker. If you want the crews’ respect then the least you can do is take a moment to remember a person’s name.

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If you struggle with this – and lots of people do – then work on finding a method that helps you. I like to ask each crewmember to tell me something unique about themselves when we first get together. It not only helps with the process of remembering a name by association but also helps break the ice.

You also need to learn to truly listen. You might be thinking ahead through everything you need to do before you set off, but listen carefully in that introductory session and process what each crewmember tells you about who they are. Paraphrase back to them what they have said to show that you have really heard, and make sure you give everyone equal time.

Creating a set of team values will set the tone for the voyage ahead. These values should be drawn up as a group exercise and endorsed by everyone. This ‘crew charter’ provides a reference and focus when things go awry (which they will) and creates the foundation for the dynamic on board.

Record the charter in the logbook so you can refer back, and get everyone to sign it. Ground rules set by the team provide a valuable point of reference if dealing with crew conflict later on and encourage a democratic approach towards overall safety and wellbeing.

Create a framework

Have a predetermined framework in mind when setting your team values. Citing key elements such as a blame free culture promotes an environment that encourages the less vocal team players to speak up and may even result in avoiding an accident, injury or worse.

Initially, a desire to ‘fit in’ will naturally bring out the best in everyone. The challenges begin when the group becomes comfortable with one another and less guarded. Add to this the additional pressures that come with a life at sea and cracks can begin to form. These cracks need to be addressed quickly before they threaten the integrity of the dynamic you have built together.

Creating a culture on board that encourages feedback without reproach is essential for ironing out issues as the team continues to evolve.

Empower the crew

We all have a natural default style of leadership but a good skipper will adjust their style based on the situation.

In a crisis we need an authoritarian style with specific instruction and guidance. There isn’t time for democracy when there’s a fire on board. Conversely, when developing a team member in a normal day to day scenario then a more participative style may work better, asking questions and encouraging them to think for themselves.

When a crewmember demonstrates full capability it isn’t productive to micro-manage them. Instead simple direction will generate a mutual respect. Responsibility can be a powerful motivational tool in the right circumstances.

A culture of crew safety

Why is all this important? You need your crew to feel empowered so they’re confident in reporting safety concerns or mistakes, even when there has been no incident, without fear of repercussions. This can only happen in a no-blame culture, or what is referred to in the airline industry (among others) as a just culture.

“A just culture is where people are encouraged and feel able to report incidents because they know they will not be blamed/reprimanded for honest mistakes,” explains Rachael Best, from the UK’s NATS air traffic control training centre.

Following the introduction of pilot and crew CRM courses, the air traffic control sector also adopted their own ‘human factor’ training.

“This [taught] us all that no matter what your position was in the team, everyone’s role and opinion was equally vital and important. This made it much easier for everyone to challenge behaviours and decisions.

“We looked at the Jim Reason ‘swiss cheese’ model, i.e. if one small error is left, then another and another, this can lead to a major safety incident or accident.

“We are all trained to pick each other up on the smallest errors with no issues taken or inferred. Reporting of any safety issue is critical, with notices then sent out for the lessons learned – usually very quickly. This is common practice in aviation.”

Albert De Nijs believes the sailing world will benefit from adopting this mindset: “There is a big difference in safety culture between the maritime industry and the airline business.

“After a maritime accident there is talk of blame and the possibility of prosecution. In airline flying you can only be prosecuted after wilful misconduct or gross negligence, not for making a mistake – however disastrous the outcome.”

When all errors are openly discussed, it reduces the chances of the same mistake recurring. “The aim is to find out what went wrong, why it happened, and to act to prevent it happening again. If one person makes a mistake, the same thing could almost certainly happen to anyone else,” says De Nijs.

“People should feel safe to report issues that may implicate themselves, in order to improve the system. For example, suppose a watchleader falls asleep during his watch. If nothing happens, this will (most likely) not be reported. If an incident happens while the watchleader is napping, there will be serious consequences. But the situation is the same: the person on watch was not alert.

“The underlying reason could be almost anything but, if not reported, the system cannot learn and similar situations are not avoided.”

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On one of my earliest trips as a professional sailor a wise old skipper gave me some seasickness advice at watch change. “Watch the green ones, they’ll rush for the leeward rail and if they aren’t clipped on there’s a strong chance they’ll go over,” he said. “And what’s more, they won’t care if they do.”

I gulped and looked at my crew. Their faces resembled a Farrow and Ball paint chart: lichen green, skimmed milk white and ash grey. We were en route to Cherbourg from the Solent. By the time we got to the shipping lanes I only had one crew member left on the deck of the 80ft maxi, the rest were in their bunks.

Inglorious and debilitating as it is, the green monster of seasickness strikes indiscriminately.

Ensure seasick crew on deck are clipped on

I know several experienced skippers who resign themselves to a diet of bread and water for the first 48 hours of every offshore passage, while some complete novices who’ve joined our expeditions got off scot-free.

Even round the world sailors like Chris Nicholson and Tracy Edwards are sufferers, whilst Admiral Lord Nelson himself admitted that: “I am ill every time it blows hard and nothing but my enthusiastic love for the profession keeps me one hour at sea.”

The reality is that we all have a wave with our name on it, so we’d better have a decent plan for when the time comes.

Why do people suffer seasickness?

Seasickness is caused by the confusion between different parts of your balance mechanism.

Your inner ear is a network of fluid-filled channels sensitive to gravity and motion, called the vestibular system. Normally the information sent from here to the brain corresponds with the signals coming from the other senses such as vision.

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On a boat, things stop adding up: according to our eyes, we’re stationary relative to our immediate surroundings, yet the vestibular system is registering constant motion. The result is that our bodies release a deluge of stress hormones resulting in symptoms such as nausea, headaches, dizziness. It’s well known that being on deck with a view of the horizon will often alleviate these.

Avoiding heavy weather is the single biggest thing you can do to prevent seasickness. Photo: Rachael Sprot/Rubicon 3

One neat but unproven theory is that the mixed messages from your body convince the brain that it’s been poisoned. Many toxins affect balance so a logical evolutionary response is to throw up when this system is under attack.

Medication for seasickness

There are many different types of seasickness tablet on the market, all working in slightly different ways.

You may need to try a couple of products before finding one that works well for you. The two most commonly available are cinnarizine (Stugeron) and hyoscine (Kwells). If you can’t take or get on with either then speak to your doctor about the alternatives. In any case, do read the user guidance carefully and, if in doubt, seek medical advice:

Cinnarizine

With the brand name Stugeron, this is an antihistamine that works on the connection between the vestibular system and other senses involved in balance. Like the antihistamines you take for hayfever it can cause mild drowsiness but, in our experience, it is well-tolerated by most people and available over the counter.

Hyoscine hydrobromide/ Scopolamine

Available as tablets (Kwells) and patches (Scopoderm) this works on the part of your brain that controls vomiting. It seems to be slightly quicker acting than cinnarizine making it a better choice if you’re caught out.

Many people swear by the patches, which last for three days and won’t be affected by vomiting. One of heir common side affects is a dry mouth but it is a good reminder to stay hydrated. Like cinnarizine, they are also available over the counter.

Promethazine

Another antihistamine, promethazine is sold as a treatment for motion sickness under the brand name Avomine.

It’s one of the constituents of Night Nurse, so no prizes for guessing that it’ll probably make you drowsy. For this reason people rarely take it for long, but it does seem to be highly effective if you can put up with the drowsiness. One or two doses in the first 24 hours usually do the trick. It’s only sold with a pharmacist’s approval, so you’ll need to fill out a questionnaire to buy it.

Prochlorperazine

Another prescription-only drug, the antiemetic, prochlorperazine is often used to treat nausea from migraines and vertigo.

Brand names include Stemetil and Buccastem. It’s not commonly used for seasickness as drowsiness is one of its main side-effects, but as it’s absorbed through the gums it can be a good option for those who can’t keep any other medication down. It’s worth asking your pharmacist for a packet to have on standby if you know you suffer badly.

How and when to take medicine

How you take your medication is just as important as what you take. As with most things on boats, prevention is better than cure.

With any seasickness medicines the key is to take them sooner rather than later. In some circumstances taking a tablet the night before departure can help by giving your body time to adjust – check the instructions first. Don’t be tempted to mix-and-match medicines without your doctor’s approval.

Seasickness coping strategies

Preventing and managing seasickness is about looking after your body. Try to keep normal routines: eat, drink and go to the loo as you would do at home, put an extra layer on when you need to and get your head down for a rest when you can.

Anxiety, fatigue, and being cold or hungry all quicken the onset of seasickness. If you feel seasickness coming on, take preventative action early: don’t martyr yourself in the galley.

Ginger has long been recognised for its stomach-settling properties and there are now scientific studies to back this up. Carry a packet of fiery crystallised ginger or make a fresh root ginger tea for maximum effect.

There’s less consensus on the effectiveness of acupressure points for motion sickness. The P6 point in the wrists can be activated by wearing special bracelets which may ease mild symptoms. I’m sceptical about their ability to keep the pressure on the correct point during a long sea voyage but it certainly won’t do you any harm.

The biggest risk from seasickness is dehydration. I always carry a tube of sports rehydration tablets and encourage anyone who has thrown up to take one. They dissolve in 500ml of water and aid a swift recovery.

If a member of crew has been vomiting for over 24 hours you should monitor their fluid input and output closely. Make sure they keep drinking, even if it comes back up again shortly afterwards.

Sealable sick-bags are a true source of comfort to a casualty confined to their bunk.

Make sail changes early and be kind to the crew and boat. Photo: Rachael Sprot/Rubicon 3

You may need to decide whether a crew needs some help managing their condition. Reassuring them it will pass and making sure they’ve topped up on tablets is a good first step. Small things can help, like making them a hot drink, or encouraging them to take the helm. I’m no fan of pressurising people to tough it out, though. If someone is starting to lose the battle, sending them to lie down is often the best option.

The single biggest thing you can do as skipper to prevent crew being seasick is avoid rough weather. Next is to give people an opportunity to get their sea legs on short training voyages before heading offshore. Put a reef in, crack off and be kind to your boat and crew. Just because you can beat to windward in 25 knots it doesn’t mean you should.

The lesson from my Cherbourg trip was that we should have thought twice about going in the first place.

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Although Peter Burling and Blair Tuke had won Olympic sailing silver at the London 2012 Games, the young New Zealanders felt their decision-making skills, particularly the blend of long-term strategy and short-term tactics, needed a lot of work. They turned to coach Hamish Willcox for help.

In 2013 at the 49er World Championships in Marseille, Burling and Tuke would go on to win their first of six (and counting) world titles in the Olympic skiff, closely followed by a younger, less experienced Kiwi team also coached by Willcox, Marcus Hansen and Josh Porebski.

Part of the reason for the Kiwi 1-2 was Willcox’s detailed analysis of the venue. Having built up his skills in both weather and strategy roles at almost every America’s Cup since Auckland 2000, Willcox was able to give his 49er teams the confidence to commit and go for the favoured side of the course in Marseille.

Here, Willcox shares five tips for taking clear and decisive action on the racecourse.

1. Do your homework

The moment an America’s Cup team finds out the venue for the next Cup, the whole campaign is planned around being able to win in the predicted conditions. Treat your campaign the same way. If you know the venue is often a ‘go right’ race course, then you know you’re going to need to be able to get off the committee boat end of the start line and hold good height.

Knowing this might have an impact on how you set up your rig and maybe even redesign your sails. If it’s a choppy venue, that could ultimately have an influence on your ideal hull shape. Look at historic wind data, get hold of tide charts, get in touch with sailors from the area, and with sailors who have won there before. All this can be done well in advance.

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2. What type of day?

Your homework will have helped you determine what you can expect to encounter and the percentage likelihood of it happening. By the evening before the first race you can look at the weather forecasts with a reasonable level of confidence. This is where you want to identify the ‘day type’. Broadly there are three different types of day:

• Side: One side or the other is expected to pay, perhaps influenced by current or land mass
• Tactical: e.g. very shifty, no particular side expected to pay
• Steady: Stable wind direction, typical sea breeze scenario

3. Win the leg, not the start

Even world-class teams sometimes end up starting at the pin or the committee boat, regardless of the bigger picture. What’s the point in winning the pin if you’re at a go-right venue and you have to wait for most of the fleet to tack on to port before you get your opportunity to follow?

A winning start is not defined by your success 60 seconds after the gun, it’s the launchpad to put you in a winning position by the first mark.

This is where identifying the ‘day type’ becomes so critical. If it’s a side day, a go-left race track means you must get a start somewhere on the front row so you can sail all the way to the layline before tacking. A go-right course, and you’ll need to start near the committee boat so you can tack away early.

In a steady scenario, it’s a boatspeed day so make sure you get a clean start and are able to hold your lane for as long as you want.

On a tactical day, it’s all about getting into phase with the wind shifts as quickly as possible.

4. What’s your Plan B?

Sometimes the start goes wrong, either because you failed to execute or because someone else got in your way. The whole team needs to be clear about the Plan B well before the start sequence.

Don’t throw the whole of Plan A out of the window in these scenarios; keep sight of your original strategy based on the ‘day type’ that you identified. It’s too early in the race to start gambling: dig in and use Plan B to get you back on track with your original strategy.

5. Hone your skills

Part of the reason why even the best sailors tend to start the same way in any situation is because of their limited comfort zone. If you’re worried about getting it wrong if you start near the committee boat, then you’ve identified an area for practice, a weakness that – with the right training drill and commitment – you’ll be able to turn into a strength.

To expand your decision-making toolkit to cope with each and every scenario, make sure you’ve done the boat handling practice to be able to execute on your decision. Give yourself a score for every skill that you practise and keep a log. This way you’ll see your progress and be developing your skills and confidence to be ready for every kind of race the weather gods throw at you.

About the expert

New Zealand sailor Hamish Willcox is a three-times 470 World Champion, and top coach. He’s is working with Pete Burling and Blair Tuke in their build-up to the America’s Cup 2021 and defence of their Olympic title at Tokyo and now offers an online course, roadtogold.net, on running a world-class sailing campaign.

First published in the December 2020 issue of Yachting World.

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Whenever I show new sailors how to fill out the logbook I make a point of heading the page ‘Passage towards’, rather than inserting an end destination. It’s an old habit, but it demonstrates from the outset that it is normal to change plans.

Making the decision to turn back is not always straightforward. When the big stuff happens, say injured crew or a dismasting, it’s an obvious choice to make. It’s the situations when we could limp on that challenge our decision-making skills the most.

When faced with slowly worsening weather, a small amount of damage to the boat or a crew who is not 100%, but coping, it can be harder to make the call. The factors affecting our judgement as skippers can be nuanced, and the consequential effects of one small problem are not always easy to predict.

The closest port of refuge may not be the safest if getting there puts undue stress and strain on boat and crew. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi / Rolex Fastnet Race

Here are some of my tips to help make those decisions:

Draw your red lines

These parameters should be drawn before you set off, and are the situations or conditions under which you would alter your plans. Some of these are fairly straightforward to establish: I will not beat upwind in more than 20 knots; I must make this headland before the tide turns; I must have a minimum of three crew able to stand a watch; we must have visibility of more than one mile when crossing the shipping lanes.

Take a bit of time to consider why you’ve set these limits for this passage, this crew and this location/time of year. If you fully understand your reasoning it’ll make the decision to turn back easier. These lines define the conditions under which you’d not set off in the first place, so should also stand true for what happens while you’re out there.

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Overall objectives

Think hard about what it is that you’re aiming to achieve on any given passage and try to weigh up as rationally as possible the cost of continuing. We’re normally driven to carry on due to time restrictions and the often inevitable costs associated with not making a destination at a given time.

It is sometimes difficult to balance these tangible costs against the risk of what could happen, but there is sometimes a middle ground to be found – changing your destination does not necessarily mean aborting a trip.

Dropping an anchor in a sheltered bay to wait until the front has passed could be an option, or making a pit stop at a port along the way to let an unwell or time restricted crewmember jump off may be a better decision, rather than bashing on to suit their time frame.

Even minor injuries can impact the rest of the crew’s workload if one member is incapacitated. Photo: Yann Riou / Dongfeng Race Team

Remember your crew

As the skipper of any vessel your responsibility is not only to the boat but also to ensure the crew stay safe and well. Managing needs and expectations can be difficult and crew will inevitably influence your decision of whether to press on in worsening conditions as well as when to turn back.

Understanding how your crew feel will make your decision to turn back easier for them to understand. If setting off into a marginal forecast make sure they understand your red lines and that there’s a chance you might not make your planned destination. Don’t let confident crewmembers talk you into doing anything that doesn’t feel right, and consider the impact a bad experience might have on those with fewer miles under their belts.

By involving crew in the monitoring and reporting of weather conditions, course progress and any damage to the boat, you’re automatically including them in your decision making and building support for making the right call. Once you’ve made the decision to turn around ensure that you manage people’s expectations. The trip to a port of refuge may still be a long one, just on a safer or more comfortable point of sail.

How’s your crew? Fatigue and seasickness will impact on how you carry out manoeuvres. Photo: Dallas Kilponen

Adjust your timelines

If the boat is damaged or you are down a crewmember through injury or illness, make sure you readjust your timelines to allow for a slower passage, more challenging manoeuvres and the remaining crew being more tired. A subtle difference in speed or performance can mean the difference between making a tidal gate, missing a weather system or getting over a tidal bar.

Damage early in a passage, such as ripping a spinnaker, could decrease your daily mileage by over 50 miles, so even though there is no immediate need to turn back, make sure you understand the implications further down the track.

If using routing software to plan, adjust polars to reflect the loss of a sail or a diminished speed, and study the impact this will have. This can be done quickly by using a percentage of your original polars.

Determined to carry on? Even major failures can be worked around if conditions are favourable. Photo: Dallas Kilponen

Monitor damage

If you’ve damaged the boat but decided to carry on to your final destination, ensure you incorporate regular inspections of the damage into your sailing routine and establish ways of gauging whether it is stable or worsening. In the case of cracks or splits in sails or deck, hardware, using a permanent marker to outline the area of the damage will allow you to quickly see if a crack is growing.

In the case of a leak use a bucket, bailer and sponge rather than the bilge pump to completely dry the leaking area, then go back at regular intervals and repeat, measuring how much water you are removing each time.

Think about how a worsening sea state may affect damage, or how changing your point of sail may help to bring leaking areas out of the water or reduce the load. If you’re worried and have communications ashore then call someone who can give you good advice.

Is your fuel gauge accurate? If you need to divert, how many miles can you motor? Photo: moodboard / Alamy

Widen the area of refuge

Just knowing there are suitable places to divert to along your route takes a lot of stress out of making the decision to change your plans. Don’t forget you can also research alternative destinations en route, if you don’t have sat coms then alter course to get close enough to the coast for GSM coverage and get Googling.

Use your network ashore to help make decisions, other people can take the strain by researching ports and can get on the phone on your behalf and report back.

Don’t just focus on the ports along your route – sometimes the safest place to go is not the closest. Think about what you need from your end destination, does it have the right facilities – a travel lift, a sailmaker? Does it have 24-hour access? What will the sea and wind conditions be like on approach? Is it better for the boat and crew to sail downwind or on one particular tack?

First published in the December 2020 issue of Yachting World.

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Rather like the poker player who unwittingly plays into a trap, starting in a strong steam easily ensnares the unwary. To reduce this risk, getting to the start area early is strongly recommended to carry out some pre-start ‘due diligence’.

First, you need the best tidal stream information you can lay your hands on (the highest resolution). Then you need to compare the ‘forecast’ stream with what is actually happening. Inevitably there is a difference which could be due to factors including particularly high or low pressure, a lot of recent rainfall, or the tidal stream simply running late.

Do a quick tidal survey of the start area, comparing what you are seeing with the prediction. Never sail past a buoy, beacon or committee boat without looking down and checking on the stream. If you are running race software, does the measured current concur? Is the stream due to change in the next 30 minutes, and if so, how?

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Using transits

Start line transits are part of your starting due diligence, so make sure you brief the person calling the bow on the tidal stream. While getting a bow transit (lining up the start line with a mark on a nearby shoreline), maybe consider getting a second transit for your starting position at the ‘back of the bus’?

When beating to windward, a layline is the highest angle or bearing you have to sail to just make it to a mark or anchored boat. Two knots of tidal stream can dramatically change these angles, particularly in light winds. Knowing these ‘tidally adjusted laylines’ is powerful information when lining up your approach to start.

Assuming you want to start at the pin end, the trick is to position yourself about a minute back and sail into the pin, ideally picking a transit between the buoy and the shore as you start. Then refine that starting position or transit with a couple more practice runs.

That way, even in the heat of the battle when other boats get involved, you already have a transit that you know works. Before the days of foiling, America’s Cup yachts would practice this over and over to help hone their approach to the start before the match race duel begins.

Tactical navigation software can help a great deal here, but visible transits are hard to beat. Software is great for giving you time to the line from over 10 boat lengths out, whereas the human eye gets better as the distance gets closer. Calibrating your eye with some practice makes it even better!

Once we have a handle on the tidal stream we can then consider how things are likely to play out. Looking upwind, if the tidal stream is moving right to left we can start to anticipate how that will affect the fleet. In particular, once tidally adjusted there may be a wider angle on the layline into the start, meaning that a gap opens near the committee boat in the final countdown. This makes a late run into the committee boat less risky, even on a busy start line, with a ‘cross tide start’.

High-risk strategy

Meanwhile, at the pin end it is high risk with the tidal stream sweeping boats towards the pin. It is easy to mistime your start in these conditions and see a pile up at the pin. You sometimes even get boats head to wind, pinned to the pin. If you get below the port layline to the pin, then it is not going to be your day as you will need to do some sailing on port tack to start and that might be tricky in a busy fleet with a squadron of boats bearing down on you on starboard tack.

With the tidal stream running left to right, then the pin becomes easier, but the starboard end can be very high tariff, so ‘crash helmets on’ if you get it wrong! An inner distance mark will help protect the committee boat, but fenders may still be required.

Probably only one boat will get a good start, so it might make sense to start some way in from the end of the line in these conditions.

When the tide is running directly with you, getting close to the start line early becomes the risky option. Practising with timed runs helps build confidence here. It is useful to know how long it will take for you to sail a boat length when up to speed. Hence if it is taking 10 seconds to sail 1.4 boat lengths, then if you are outside six boat lengths at 40 seconds to the start you can ‘pull the trigger’ and move to full speed mode.

Navigation software helps a great deal but it is also useful to have a good feel for how long your boat takes to accelerate in the prevailing conditions.

Starting ‘down tide’ in light winds, having a spinnaker ready to claw your way back over the line can be a wise move. If recalls are called on a VHF radio then tweak the volume up, particularly when the tidal stream is trying to push you over early.

On reaching starts, timed runs work well in a tidal stream – you might be able to utilise a buoy set back from the line or, when close to a shoreline, use a second transit about one minute back from the line.

Finally, with a tidal stream against you on the start line, having confidence to run in early, often ahead of the pack, can make big gains. You already know the answer to achieving this… practice, which helps you calibrate your eye to the conditions of the day.

About the author

Mike Broughton is a pro race navigator who has won many titles including World and European championships. He is a qualified MCA Master to captain superyachts and previously had a successful career in the Fleet Air Arm flying Sea King and Lynx helicopters.

First published in the January 2019 issue of Yachting World.

The post Expert sailing advice: Mike Broughton explains the importance of tidal laylines appeared first on Yachting World.

For me, managing a 60ft IMOCA alone demands my full attention so there is little time for distraction. However, even then it can be difficult to maintain really long-term focus.

On long passages, particularly those with few course or sail changes, it can be hard to keep your concentration up. Here are a few ways I help myself focus over long periods:

Clear objectives

It may seem obvious, but ensure you are clear about your objectives for any given leg. Should you be sailing best VMG upwind, going for straight speed on a reach, or trying to work as much distance downwind as possible in every surf? It’s important to state these objectives at the start and keep reviewing your performance at regular intervals, particularly on long legs.

It’s easy for a helmsman to lose concentration and get sucked into a fast mode that might be tactically wrong – especially when trying to make downwind VMG.

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Set your instruments to reflect the information you most need to achieve your objective. Try to minimise the data available so you only have a couple of numbers to focus on: I’d suggest speed and wind angle, or speed and course. Before settling onto the helm note your optimal targets and keep referring back to them.

It’s a good idea to have a chart with target VMG angles on display in sight of the helm, or try writing your target course or angle on the coachroof in chinagraph pencil. Keep referring back to your targets.

Get comfortable

To truly stay in the zone you need to be physically comfortable. The helming position should allow you to maintain good posture and have a line of sight that allows you to see sails, instruments and waves. Take being comfortable seriously, especially when offshore or ocean sailing.

If your boat is not comfortable to steer then move things around to make it so. Trying to focus for extended periods if any part of your body is in pain or uncomfortable is distracting; even if you don’t realise it in the moment.

If sitting, choose a flat surface, avoid draping your legs over cleats or ropes as these will dig in and cut blood flow off; adjustable footrests are valuable. On tiller steered boats I like to sit on a low foam cushion, this is a softer seat and keeps me up off the deck and so drier. Foam backrests on the guardrails are also great additions for those with smaller cockpits. If you regularly stand to helm then think about adding extra foot chocks or a pop-up platform to steer from.

Being comfortable is equally important if you’re having to trim the spinnaker or mainsail over long periods, especially if you need to look up constantly. Avoid jackets with big or bulky collars if trimming for a long leg.

Our cognitive ability can also be hugely impaired by what we eat and drink. Staying hydrated and well-nourished is key. Before coming on watch ensure you have enough water within easy reach and make sure you drink it all. Snacking well is important for maintaining focus but can be challenging on an ocean crossing.

Avoid high sugar and salty snacks as these can lead to spikes in energy, dehydration and wavering concentration levels. Instead opt for food rich in protein like plain nuts, fruit bars, or even a nut butter sandwich. Use caffeine with caution, it can provide a short term pick up and increased focus, but it may also mess up your sleeping patterns, affecting concentration levels adversely over time. Personally I avoid coffee when sailing, sticking to weak tea or herbal teas.

Take regular breaks

The brain will function better if given regular breaks. The optimum time to maintain focus will vary between humans, but for most people it ranges from 30-90 minutes. Be honest about your own ability to concentrate, understand that everyone is different so play to your strengths.

Schedule in regular breaks, allow your eyes to adjust to a different focus, stand up, walk around, stretch and relax, knowing that when you pick up the wheel or sheet again you’ll be more efficient.

Staying focussed under autopilot

Some of the most challenging times to remain focussed are at night, when the boat is sailing itself under autopilot and your role is simply as ‘guardian’. It’s tempting during these times to switch off, doze, look at a tablet or read a book. However, the human crew still has a role to play in these scenarios and can actively make the boat go faster.

To stay alert and keep busy I make a list of all of the things that could be negatively or positively affecting the boat’s performance and regularly run through that list at intervals during the watch. For example:

• Sail trim – check every 30 minutes, look at tell tales, leech profiles, shine a torch on the sails at night time. Try trimming sails to see if it impacts boat speed. Never assume you are going as fast as you can.
• Angle of heel/power – watch the autopilot to see how far it is moving the helm, if the amplitude of each correction is large then think about easing sheets or putting in a reef. Check the level of water relative to the toe rail, are you at the optimum angle of heel?
• Course keeping – is the pilot managing to steer a clean course? If not do you need to adjust the gain, or to change the mode, or change the sail plan?
• Traffic – scan the horizon, check AIS or radar.
• Weather – in the tropics check for squall action at night.

First published in the October 2020 issue of Yachting World.

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