Student Nationals

Yep, The RS200 fleet does have a habit of playing funny tricks on you on tight reaches.....just make sure you head high first when you round the mark then bear away and get the burst of speed before the other boats do it to you, otherwise you're stuffed......as we found out a few times this year

Generally though......unless you have a part of the course that is very tight, it's better to try and sail lower as quickly as you can, unless its blowing then you head up for speed and bear away as soon as the speed comes on, but the RS200 kite will lose it's shape very quickly if you use it on tight reaches too often......a lot of the boats at the nationals had completely stuffed their kites within the week just because they were comstantly tight-reaching when they should have been bearing off more.

If you do have to sail on tight reaches as part of the course though.....have the luff always curling just slightly......esp when its windy. We were the only RS200 at the RS pursuit this year at Datchet that could carry the kite on the tight reach beacuse we were having the luff on the curl slightly....all the other boats had to two sail it....which was slow as we gained miles on them by carrying the kite.

The boat that makes the right tactical decision will probably win. The 49er might go really high and try to hoist later, the musto (in your scenario) would sail point to point, the 800 might try something else, hoist and go high, sail beyond the mark and gybe once you reach the other lay line for it, the boat that sails the best leg for their boat will more than likley win the leg. Or at least limit the damage if the boat doesn't reach well.

At the SGP recently we had several different reaches, Some favoured us in the FD, some favoured the laser 2's who can almost beat with their kite. The 505's have their own paticular favorite. On some occasions we decided the best way to get to the mark was to fly and stay as high as possible and then drop the kite and beat up to it, we were never going to fetch the gybe mark so we just went as fast as possible in it's general direction. The 505's with their Monster kites on tried to fly then got taken low by a gust. They went with massive speed as high as they could and dropped, and still won the leg.

Mind you at the SGP we sailed a knitting pattern, a trapezoid outer loop, a inner loop trapezoid, a couple of sausage triangles and a P as courses. Maybe PRO's for handicap events should be encouraged to run several different courses throughout the weekend, if nothing else it makes it more interesting than the standard olympic or windward leeward.