Top advice ever given

Originally posted by iGRF

   I was told by a good sailor that when gybing ( they were talking about a RS200), the trick was "not to let the main out).At the time I didn't get it at all, and went off on my merry way and kept falling in on gybes. Only when I had made some progress ( and done lots of swimming) did I realise what they meant by the " don't let the main out". They had worked out that if they gybe with the main in they didn't capsize, but when they did let the main out they did capsize. I now understand why. If you keep your boat speed up through the gybe the apparent wind stays forward and the main can be kept in. If you lose boat speed through the gybe, the apparent wind goes behind and the rig loads up. You then have to dump the main, then the gybe then becomes tricky quite quickly. So it wasn't the act of keeping the main in that was the trick it was keeping the boat speed up that allowed you to keep the main in. 