Enlighten me please!

I bought Y&Y today, thinking I could use the luffing tactics in it to turn me into a super slick sailor! Sadly, it turned out all to be a load of greek, so can someone please explain this in english for me:

We need to be sure that the luff is definitely taking us out of the danger zone. Boats behind may respond by copying our move, maintaining the status quo. In this case our options are: luff to send them to leeward; soak into a clear lane; gybe into a clear lane; or put up and shut up!

Voila! If you can help you'd be a star!

you can loose a lot of places and distance getting envolved in a luffing match with a boat ahead of behind you. I find the best stratagy is to choose if you want to go high or low on the next leg. use the bow wave off the boat infront to go the way you want. if you go low you must soak(go low) untill you get clear wind use the bow wave of the boat boat infront and only come back up to the other boats near the mark when the are struggling to get back down. if you go high the danger is the boat infront trys to defend there wind or the boat behind comes up with you. its best to go very high early so other boats think you are stupid to go that high and to follow you up will only result loosing places. if you time this well on there bow wave your increased speed will mean you have not lost VMG and have a clear lane to concentrate on going fast with out having to worry about boats luffing you. by doing it early you only end up 5-10 boat lengths high which is much less than a bunch of boats slowly edging higher to protect there wind. once you have got the other boats to settle for going straight or low make sure you dont get stuck to high by looking for good waves or gusts to get back down on.

Yeah.......

Ta, sten for your invaluable block of text!

If you didn't know sten is Richard Stenhouse who went to the Olympics in 96 in the Finn and this year won the Musto Worlds in Spain so it's good advice.

Rick

Supposing you're overtaking something like an RS400 which kicks up a big wave system. You can come from leeward surfing up his stern wave till you're close to the transom. If you then bear away sharp and take a big pump off the stern wave you've got less than a boat length to gain till you're on his bow wave. This is still in his windshadow, but if you catch it right you can surf on it to drag yourself into clearish air and then you're past. If you're lucky when he sees you come up to his stern on his stern wave he'll think youre going for a windward pass and stuff a quick luff in, in which case you'll get through more easily. This works nicely inland on flat water, in big waves more complicated.

Edited by JimC