Getting better?

Originally posted by Clive Evans Originally posted by sargesail Clive, Are you also aware of the old adage: In small fleets be bold, in big fleets be conservative. The symptoms you describe are often tied to not playing the %s enough. By that do you mean taking more tactical risks in smaller fleets knowing you can recover most places on skill alone whereas in larger fleets accept that some races will be great some ok and some poor and that taking risks that pay off may get the odd good place but overall it's harder to recover? We used to have sailors in the solos who would hit hard right banging the corners in EVERY race the whole week and end up with a win and 8 60ths!

I found that sailing in a different class has helped me to improve. I had been sailing the laser for about 3 years, then sailed a laser 2 for the autumn and winter series which was quite disheartening as our small shifty light-wind lake is utterly unsuitable for spinnaker and/ or trapese boats, so we found ourselves fighting with the solo fleet. When I went back to the laser I found my results had improved, I can only think this has been something to do with making me focus on what the wind is doing rather than the other boats as the solos were different a different speed anyway. Also I suspect having the spinnaker made me have to look ahead to the next legs to assess if we should hoist/drop/head high or low to get the best speed, making me look further ahead so as to be one step ahead of the non spinnaker boats whos extra maneuverability made us an easy target. So it might be worth trying an utterly different boat occasionally to see what skills it develops.

Thank you so much for this, sail juice looks good think I'm a convert and going to sign up, can listen on the way to work beats Sydney traffic