Laser Cheat Sheet - Sailing Fast - Pressing

By Doug 

Laser Cheat Sheet

Before I started sailing at night on a Dallas lake, I couldn't win anything above a local club event. After learning how to sail at night, I won my first national championship and started getting top 5 finishes at the Laser Master Worlds. The improvement was from learning the "feeling" for what my Laser was trying to do, and how to react with my four controls (mainsheet, tiller, weight in/out, and weight fore/aft). Sailing at night is impractical for most, but almost everything in the fast column of my cheat sheet, I learned at night.  

A little background - there were several reasons for my sailing at night. These included "me time" after the kids were in bed, the beauty and the solitude after a long day, and a way to escape the brutal summer heat. But there was one more reason that can be seen at the end of the movie Wait Until Dark. As described in IMDB, a killer is chasing a blind Audrey Hepburn "leaving us with the question how does a blind woman defend herself?" The answer is that she leveled the playing field and actually gained the advantage by turning out the lights.

So, the other reason why I sailed at night was because, while my vision has always been a problem, it was rapidly getting worse and I was on the way to going legally blind. Sailing at night was empowering because I did not have to see the sail to learn how to improve my sailing.

Sailing downwind was fairly simple. The obvious question sailing upwind is "How can you sail if you cannot see the sail?" Good question, because you cannot see its shape or the telltales. The answer is that you do not need to see the sail. Here's why.

The purpose of the sail is to deflect the wind. The trick of course is to deflect as much of it as possible so that the wind is deflected parallel to the centerline of the boat. Too little and you can be underpowered, and too much and you can be overpowered, so you want as much as possible until just before you're overpowered. This deflection is invisible, but you can feel it... on your butt and the back of your legs.

A small puff hits you and the boat heals, and you can feel the increased pressure. The puff ends, the heeling stops, and you can feel the pressure drop. Everything that happens up there is felt down here. But we have an advantage over keelboats because we can prevent a boat from heeling by, you guessed it, putting more pressure on our butts and the back of our legs.

Hiking pants dull the feeling, so I only wear them when it's windy.

Here's how Pam described this when I first taught her: pressing is a subtle weight shift to where you feel the boat on the back of your thighs. This didn’t make any sense to me so Doug had me sit and feel the pressure on the back of my legs. No biggie. Feels like my legs sitting on a chair. Then he said to keep my upper body straight and he proceeded to slightly push me backward and in order to maintain my balance and stay upright, I had to increase the pressure on my legs. Definite difference.

Understanding this increased pressure at the right moment helped me develop a new way of sailing a Laser, something I call "pressing." It's the awareness of what's going on "up there" and my conscious effort to control it "down here" in order to squeeze every drop of boat speed out of the conditions as they constantly change. Boat speed is like squeezing juice out of an orange. An average sailor gets a certain amount, a good national sailor will get more, and a top international sailor will get even more. And in a class that is so equal in so many ways, the top Laser sailors are the ones who get those extra few drops of boat speed.

The recent Championship of Champions reminded me of how important this is. The regatta was held in C-Scows - a boat that I had never sailed before. I never did get a feeling for the boat, and my results were that of an very average sailor at a national championship.

So, try focusing less on what the sail looks like and more on the pressure on your butt and legs. It's a great way to develop better boat speed.

But if you're sailing by feeling and not looking at the sail, what else are you looking at? The answer is simple - everything else. The water, the competition, the compass, the angles, the waves, etc. In addition to boat speed, pressing gives you an increased awareness of what's going on around you. 

That way, you're not using your new boat speed to just go faster the wrong way.

Laser Cheat Sheet - Sailing Fast - Angles: Better than Boatspeed

By Doug

Laser Cheat Sheet. Half way up the first beat of the Laser medal race I made the comment that this was the "key moment in the race." Pavlos Kontides (CYP) was not going to beat Tom Slingsby (AUS) by the required 7 places to win the gold medal, so it was just a race to see who would beat who in front of the large crowd. The boats were even with CYP in the controlling right position (because tacking would have given him the right of way). And then this happened.

AUS got the dreaded (or wonderful) "inside lift" and the advantage immediately reversed so that when CYP tacked, AUS could cross and then tack on top of CYP. The race was over.

During the inside lift, AUS gained about one boat length on CYP every 5 seconds. No one has this speed advantage, not even Tom Slingsby, and is why I believe that sailing angles are more important than boat speed.

CYP did have a defense but did not use it - he could have immediately tacked and the inside lift advantage that AUS had would have been negated, plus CYP would have maintained his right-hand starboard tack control.

This happens time and time again with all sailors and was really obvious from the excellent aerial coverage at the Olympics. Here are some more examples from the women's match racing.

For me, the amazing thing about these photos is that no one on the outside boat is aware of what is going on. Absolutely amazing!

Now, I can understand how it's hard for a Laser sailor to keep looking around to spot this, but when there is a crew on board, then someone has to keep track of the other boat(s) to windward. Not doing so is a huge waste of boat speed, training, sponsorship, time away from family, and everything else that prepares Olympic athletes.

In each case, the outside boat must tack to negate this disadvantage, and if the inside boat also tacks, the inside advantage switches to the other boat for as long as this temporary breeze stays the same.

So, let's review: if someone told you how you could gain one boat length on your competition every five seconds, would you be interested? What could you possibly do to have such boat speed? The answer is never with boat speed – it’s just not possible in one-design classes. The answer is in something that few people understand – what I refer to as sailing angles.

Here, two boats are going to windward in a steady breeze. Neither has an advantage and either can go in any direction without gaining or losing.

Steady wind, and rare!

The good news is that in these conditions boat speed is the best way to gain, so you can go out and buy a new sail and polish your blades. The bad news is that the wind is never like this on the race course. So, before you spend any more money, spend some time understanding how these angles change.

In a race, one of two things happens. If the wind is spreading out and the boats are on starboard, the one on the left gains as shown by the color of the lines. All other things being equal, the one on the right must tack immediately and the one on the left must hope that he or she does not. If right delays tacking for just 5 seconds, it will lose 1 boat length. If the boats are on port, the one on the right gains and the one on the left must tack.

Wind is spreading out, common in puffs.

The key to sailing angles is sailing with your head out of the boat – looking around to watch the angles of the boats around you because they constantly change. This is important in match racing, and also how you can pick a specific person who you want to beat, something that I wrote about here. The best of the best have amazing boat speed, and this is one of the few  ways to beat them if that's your game plan:

Two campers are walking through the forest when they suddenly encounter a grizzly bear. The bear rears up on his hind legs and lets out a terrifying roar. Both campers are frozen in their tracks.

The first camper whispers, "I'm sure glad I wore my running shoes today."

"It doesn't matter what kind of shoes you're wearing, you're not gonna outrun that bear," replies the second.

"I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."

In sailing, I don’t have to hit every shift perfectly – if you're my target, I just have to beat you!

Sailing angles is how you can do this. If my game plan is beating a specific person, I’m much more interested in getting the angles right than where I am on the course or what my compass says. In fact, the very best sailors I get to compete against do not even own a compass. Sailing angles tell you what the wind is doing to your boat as well as everyone that you’re sailing with. No compass can do this.

Of course, the other thing that happens is the wind may be converging. For me, this does not make sense but it happens all the time and is what creates the inside lift. If the boats are on starboard, the one on the left loses as shown by the color of the lines. All other things being equal, the one on the left must tack. If the boats are on port, the one on the left gains and the one on the right must tack.

Wind is converging - strange, but happens all the time.

This is a scenario that is fairly common after rounding a leeward mark, where the inside boat gets the inside lift.

Red has his head inside the boat...

The lead boat has to keep looking over his or her shoulder and must tack if the inside boat is on a lift. In spite of this, very good sailors will focus on boat speed and not look around to see what’s really happening to their lead.

...and pays the price.

These diagrams show the boats side-by-side for illustration purposes, but sailing angles work for all boats at all times. In this next example, the boat in the lead on starboard should hope that the boat behind on the left does not tack. If it does, the lead boat should only cover with the understanding that it will lose until the angles improve.

Sailing angles work in any combination.

One way for the lead boat to ensure this is less of a factor is to sail directly to windward of the boat that it is targeting to ensure they both get the same wind with the understanding that the angles may sometimes be different as the boats sail into wind shifts. This favors the boat that is behind because it can force the lead boat to sail into headers for a few seconds per shift. The way that the lead boat defends against this is to tack on the shifts and hope that the boat behind does the same. The way that the boat behind defends against this is to sail into the header and hope to get some separation and its own angles.

Sailing angles are more important when the wind strength is less than 10 knots because the shifts and resulting angles are more pronounced.

To benefit from these sailing angles, you have to learn to tack quickly and to sail with your head out of the boat. The best way to do this is by sailing at night to enhance your feeling of the boat. A good daytime drill is to watch something upwind and be able to tack several times without taking your eyes off this object.

For me, there are three ways to sail upwind: by the course, by the wind patterns that you have, and by the competition. Sailing angles is purely by the competition. During any windward leg, the importance of these three strategies changes and it all boils down to one thing - when to tack. What works for me will be in another post. 

This is an update of original post on Butterfly Fleet 20 blog

Laser Cheat Sheet - Sailing Fast Windward Heel

By Doug

Laser Cheat Sheet. Watching windsurfers has always fascinated me. I love the way they pull the rig to windward as shown on the left. They dig in when a gust hits and then take off. If the gust is really strong, it knocks them vertical but they're still under control.

Less experienced windsurfers sail with the rig straight up, as shown in the middle. When a gust hits, they're knocked over, out of control, and overpowered even through they're spilling wind.

Heeling to windward, trapping the wind, and going vertical in a gust all seemed to make sense, so of course I wanted to try it in a Laser. And this led me to another discovery from sailing at night. Here's what I learned:

·        This only works in relatively flat water.

·        You cannot go block-to-block and the boom appears to be higher in the air because of the windward heel.

·        The feeling of speed only lasts for a few seconds and you then have to go vertical and bear off a little to keep your speed.

·        But the best part: you can really feel the lift from your centerboard as it digs in.

Volumes have been written about getting more lift from sails, but how much has been written about getting more lift from your centerboard? Water is more than 800 times denser than air, so how the centerboard moves through water really should matter. Just hold a centerboard beside a motorboat moving even slowly and try different angles and you'll feel the lift.

Here's what I think is happening. The windsurfer in the middle diagram has the wind go across the sail, which is what we expect. The windsurfer on the right has the air go up the sail. Both are bad because of the vortex created at the top of the sail. Airplanes have this same problem with the vortex at the end of each wing, and they're refitted with winglets to reduce these vortexes and save about 5% in fuel costs.

Courtesy of Boeing

 The windsurfer on the left heeling to windward has the wind going down the sail and there is no vortex because the water is acting like a winglet. The air is trapped and not wasted. It's similar on a Laser when heeled to windward with the air trapped at the bottom of the sail, and it's fast. But that's not the best part!

Everything is the same below the water with the centerboard, except it's reversed: the push comes from the leeward side, the lift is on the windward side, the water flows up, and the winglet is the hull. And you can feel the centerboard dig in and lift, and this force can be significant as our motorboat test showed.

When we were in Sydney visiting Frank Bethwaite, I asked if he agreed that this hull-as-a-winglet was probably the reason for the lifting feeling and he agreed. So, we still have much to learn about how to get extra speed when sailing Lasers.

And with the right touch, this trick is easy to learn. When Pam was brand new to Lasers, she lifted so much that I had to keep asking her to please put her foot in the water so that I could catch up!

Excellent form... and fast!

Laser Cheat Sheet - Sailing Fast Observations

By Doug

Laser Cheat Sheet.  So, you're sailing on a lake trying to hold your position on the line and the race is about to start. You look ahead and see motorboat waves coming when you least need them. Most people think, "These could not come at a worse time." I think, "Goody."

Sailing at night taught me something that was completely unexpected - how to sail faster through certain types of waves. This is what works for me - please post your own comments if you disagree.

First, a review: all boats are good in some types of waves and bad at others, and it has to do with the relative size of the boat and the waves. Motorboat waves are bad for Lasers because they creates a fore and aft rocking movement, and the slapping of the bow into the waves can kill the speed of a Laser. If you can stop this rocking you'll come out of these waves faster. So, let's try an experiment.

You have two eggs at room temperature, one is raw and the other is hard boiled. How can you tell which one is which? The answer is that you spin them - the one that stops sooner is raw. So, I'm guessing that something that has a center of effort that moves loses its momentum, while the one with a fixed center of effort keeps its momentum.

Back to Laser sailing. Slapping into waves, or rocking, or resonating is because the center of effort is fixed, and I wanted to know what would happen if it moved. Obviously, the center of effort of the hull and rig is fixed, but our bodies are not and most of us weigh a lot more than our boats. So I experimented  sailing at night, and here's what I found out:

• The boat has to "know" where you are, so I used my mainsheet hand to grab the gunnel and stiffened my arm so that my body was now a part of the boat.
• Body movement in and out had no affect.
• Movements fore and aft work, but they have to be random. The best way to do this is look at different things from different positions - under the boom at another boat, up at the sail, back in the cockpit, behind at the boat on your hip, etc. all with my arm still stiffened.

When I do this, I'm sure that no one understands what I'm doing because these are all natural movements sailing a Laser. But with my arm stiffened and making sure that my movements are random, my Laser has the same problem keeping the slapping motion that the raw egg has spinning. It's absolutely amazing, and feels like the waterline is longer as my boat goes though certain types of waves.

The result in our starting example is that I come out of the motorboat waves with 50% more speed than the boats below me or on my hip. What an awesome way to start a race!!

Laser Cheat Sheet - Sailing Fast Pipeline 2

By Doug

Cheat Sheet.  My preparation for the Laser Master Worlds has always been practicing on Dallas lakes and then arriving early to hopefully get a feeling for the open-water conditions. One of the really cool things is that the Master Worlds are often scheduled right after the Open Worlds, so I got to watch Robert Scheidt win in Algarrobo, Cancun, Cork, and Hyannis, as well as watch his epic battle against Ben Ainslie in Melbourne. Robert was easy to pick in a crowd because of his fore and aft movement in the boat - he really punched through the waves and I'd listen to various discussions about the legality of these movements. The consensus was that something this beautiful to watch was surely legal. In fact, many feel that Robert redefined what was "legal" in sailing a Laser.

Unfortunately, I also watched another champion win an event that was definitely illegal. I was just ahead of this World Youth champion as we headed for the finish line and could hear his boat accelerating and decelerating as he rolled me. I turned around to watch 90 degree sit-ups.  He stopped, gave me one of those what-the-hell-are-you-looking-at stares, and then continued. I gave up sailing for several months out of disgust.

For those readers who may not be familiar, try this next time you're sailing upwind in a medium breeze: lean in and out so that you can feel the sail fanning or pumping the breeze. With each pump, your boat will accelerate.

Why does this work? Surely, any gain leaning out is negated by the corresponding opposite movement in? The reason is that the pressure is the square of the wind speed. So a 7 mph (square=49) is slower than 5 and 9 (average of 25 and 81=53). The bigger the pump, the bigger the advantage. This of course is illegal in a Laser because the rules state that sailors "shall not otherwise move their bodies to propel the boat." And at judged events, the things that judges look for is this in and out movement and also the resulting movement at the top of a mast.

So, we have a fore and aft movement that is legal and an in and out movement that is illegal. Sailing at night helped me find something in between and, yes, it's legal because I've had World's judges watch and follow me without objection from just a few yards away. Disclaimer: this is what works for me - if you disagree with any part of this, please post your own comment.

Besides being illegal, there's a problem with an in and out movement. On the left, we can see that the additional pressure on the sail is sideways and not forward, so it's not very efficient. But on the right, a movement that combines both in and out and fore and aft works with the part of the sail that moves your boat forward. And the more the fore and aft the movement, the closer we're getting to Robert's legal movement. And if it's so subtle that there's no movement but rather just feeling the slight changes in the pressure at the front of the sail, the top of the mast does not move and it's legal. And it's fast!

Sailing at night helped me develop a better feeling for Laser sailing and taught me to focus on subtle changes in the direction that I want the sail to go, both sailing upwind and downwind. This was really obvious when watching Robert sail downwind:

Photo courtesy of sail-world.com

Sailing update: Robert is now the current world champion in the much larger Star class and is Brazil's Olympic representative. And yes, he does sail it just like a big Laser:

Photo courtesy of zimbio.com

Laser Cheat Sheet - Sailing Fast Pipeline

By Doug

With the Cheat Sheet articles about "be smart" completed, I'm going to post some thoughts about "be fast" (you can review the 3 sailing gears here). For me, these are the conditions above 5 and below 15 where boat speed is everything.

I grew up and learned to sail in Montreal, where Bruce Kirby and Ian Bruce introduced the Laser and yes, I knew some of the people working at the original Performance Sailcraft. But I left for Sydney a year before the Laser was introduced and it was not until five years later that Frank Bethwaite suggested I buy one. While moderately competitive, I did not win a major event for the next 15 years and was never fast enough to go to the open worlds. It was not until I as in my 40's and I bought waterfront property in Dallas that I really learned how to sail. After putting my sons to bed, I'd go for a night sail as a way to wind down, and certainly did not expect this to change my sailing forever.

You see, sailing at night was completely different because it cut me off from from my regular senses. I could not see the sail or waves and could not judge my speed, but I could feel the boat and hear the differences in speed as my boat moved through the water. After a few months, I found a whole new way to sail, everything from getting more lift from the centerboard and trapping differences in wind pressure to going through certain types of waves faster.

It was amazing, and I started winning major events on boat speed alone. Instead of trying to figure out the  local shifts, current, and conditions, I simply picked a person I wanted to beat (more on this here) and then went with that person. If I got behind, I'd stay with the leader instead of taking a flyer. Boat speed made me a more patient sailor.

It's interesting to note that my vision was failing at this time and I was on the way to slowly going legally blind. But rather than slow down or quit, sailing at night actually helped me improve enough on my own to win master national and world championships (I wanted to keep my vision issues private but some people figured out that I could not properly see laylines, wind patterns, and even my own sail).

I tried variations, like sailing during the day blindfolded to simulate sailing at night. But believe me, it's not the same because I really had to starve my normal senses to make this work. For most of us, sailing at night is impractical and even dangerous. So rather than recommend this, I'm going to share everything I learned to improve my boat speed.

Everything was centered around what I call "pipeline" which is a term I got from watching the skiing halfpipe competitions on TV. In the middle, they're going the fastest and they slow down and stop on either side. Speed in the middle is everything, and pipeline is my way of describing the feeling of finding something in the middle that is really fast. I used this feeling with the only real controls I had sailing a Laser - my mainsheet, my tiller, my weight in and out, and my weight fore and aft. While this might sound simplistic, there are many combinations that are really fast, and my purpose of sailing at night evolved into getting extra boat speed from these four controls.

For example, heading up stalls and slows the boat down and you counter this by leaning in. You then bear off again and lean out as you accelerate. While the pressure on the sail changes, the top of the mast does not move, so it's completely legal.  Pam calls this "fishy" because of the way the boat goes through the water, and can be really fast in 6-10 with small waves because it leads to a trick I learned called "pressing." This will be discussed in more detail.

The truly great sailors instinctively find and use the fastest combinations of these four controls to give them additional speed. The most gifted sailor I have ever watched is Robert Scheidt. In my next Cheat Sheet post, I'll discuss my observations of how he used his fore and aft movement to go over waves which contributes to his distinctive style and amazing speed.