Hierarchy of Sailing Skills
Finding they “Key” to speed starts with crew work.
Spring is coming to the northern hemisphere, and that means it is almost time to bring the family racer home from storage. The boat will be dusty and dirty. There are pieces and parts that need replacing, so a good inspection is in order. I’m willing to bet money that the rubber swivel for the tiller extension will require replacement. As it ages, it cracks and ultimately parts ways with the tiller, guaranteeing an untimely loss of steerage. (For the non-sailors, inability to control the boat’s direction is generally a bad thing.) Maybe I should figure out where all the gear got stashed away in the garage, too. Anyway, you get the idea. So, with all of this preparation for the sailing season, I thought it might be a good idea to present some less mundane stuff a sailor can do to have a more successful season.
One of my all-time heroes in the sailing world is an Aussie named Frank Bethwaite. He was an aviator, sailor, and practical applications weather geek. I never met him, or his similarly famous son Julian, but I do own a copy of his massive book on how to make boats go faster. In High Performance Sailing: Faster Racing Techniques, he offers a pyramidal hierarchy of sailing skills. I don’t know if it was inspired by Maslow and his Hierarchy of Needs, but it sure feels that way. (If sailing were described on the Maslow hierarchy, it would be near the bottom of the pyramid.) So, where does Captain Bethwaite think we should spend our precious sailing preparation time? In order, from the base of the pyramid to the top: crew work, boat speed, tactics, and finally, race course factors. Let’s look at these one at a time.
Crew work- If you and/or your crew are as good or better at the fundamentals than your competition, you increase the probability of making it around the course faster than them. On the flip side, if you can’t execute a respectable start, tack, gybe, spinnaker set or douse, or reconfigure the boat for changing conditions, on command, in all conditions you are likely to encounter, you decrease the likelihood of even making it around the course, let alone finishing ahead of your competition. All of this is to say, you should take time to learn and practice with the crew in non-race conditions, because an unskilled crew in a faster boat is unlikely to beat a skilled crew in a slower boat. Bethwaite’s diagram shows this taking up 1/3 to 1/2 of the pyramid. It’s why coaches in many sports are heard to say “Let’s get back to fundamentals!”
Boat speed- Now that the crew work is as good, or better than, the competition, let’s make the boat go faster. Start with clean and fair underwater surfaces. This is low hanging fruit, especially for boats that stay in the water. Find the fastest settings for your sail controls, in a wide range of conditions, and mark them for reproducibility. Pairing up with another boat is usually the best way to do this. Bethwaite’s diagram has this taking up a full 1/4 of the pyramid. That’s a lot of wet sanding, polishing, and tweaking of rigs, but it only makes good sense. If your boat is faster than the competition, and your crew work is better, you will probably find yourself among the race leaders.
Tactics- Read a book on basic tactics. Learn the high probability moves, and how to avoid the common pit-falls. Become a master of the rules. This will bring confidence on the race course, and prevent dumb decisions when the pressure is on.
Course Factors- If everybody is equally fast, and their crew work is equally flawless, and nobody makes rookie tactical mistakes, it is the competitor’s ability to anticipate changes in weather and water on the race course that will put them in the right place to have the best chance of finishing well.
Did you notice there wasn’t a lot of explanation in the last two? That’s because they require a lifetime of learning to master, and rarely decide the outcome of typical races. A failure in the lower levels usually determines the result long before tactics or course factors. Some races, like big breeze events, never rise above the crew work level. The crew with the best heavy weather skills do well, not because of some tactical genius, but because they can still function when the competition is just surviving.
So, to sum up, spend your pre-season time wisely, and follow Frank’s pyramid to the top. I hope that gives everybody something to chew on for the next month or so, until the sailing venues are open and ready for racing (and buy a copy of my book.)
