Strategy in tide??

Starting in any amount of tide offers the astute tactical tidal sailor
options..

These options rely obviously also on the wind. There is a school of
thought that sailing in tide is like riding an elevator it's the same for
everyone, but in lots of cases it aint.

The lighter the wind, the more the tide has an effect, only yesterday I
watched our commodore go from 1st to last in one tack off the line when
he strayed into a tidal back eddy, and the funny thing, we're a tidal club,
but no-one had even noticed it, yet there it was plain as day described in
darker coloured ripples for all but the partially sited to view.

Again, in danger of turning a post on a thread into a chapter of a tactical
sailing book, as a rough rule of thumb if you can start with the tide
pushing against your lee bow, you will move faster off the line than all
the boats with the tide on their weather bow. Being on Port or Starboard
is obviously the overiding factor, or if you could get a port flyer and have
the tide on your lee bow whilst the fleet head off on starboard with a tidal
weather bow, you would have to do something dramatically wrong not to
beat them to the first mark.

There is also another fundamental point to back this, in the seconds after
the gun, particularly in a big fleet, you can lose tens of places per second,
make an error at the top of the triangle and you maybe lose one or two
places, so another reason to grab any tidal gains early on.

I'll not stray into course bias, but I would be concerned not to over cook a
favorable tide then end up over shooting the buoy allowing boats
previously under you to overtake by pointing high whilst you're having to
free off.

This sort of discussion needs illustrations or a chalk board - I'm available
for lectures

Surely you would start up tide, so when sailing the beat, you will end up drifting slightly with the tide and not have to correct yourself.

Got bored trying to draw a diagram, if you start at the down tide end, you will constantly be batteling tide so may end up drifting further away from the windward mark.

At least starting upwid, you can tack and sail with the tide assisting you if needed.

 

(sorry probably waffling rubbish!)

Edited by radixon

Deletes lengthy post.

Is it worth arguing the point?

I suppose it's why there can only ever be one winner..

This assumes all other things are equal!:  If the tide is at 90 degrees to the wind i'd say start at the right hand end of the line every time.  If its going right to left, starting at the right hand end means you can tack off earlier and get the lee bow up the first half of the beat and hopefully cross the fleet later on.  If its going left to right, need to be carful you don't get pushed onto the committee boat, but you'll start with lee bow on startboard (along with everyone else), but at right hand end, have a better chance of clear air.  I'm probably wrong about this so comments please...

Originally posted by turnturtle Originally posted by Guest#260 Originally posted by turnturtle  .... other factors have significantly more input into my decisions than tide at the start. At Draycote I am sure that is always the case ... I dunno, I find my one and only pint of driving lager ebbs far too quickly on a wednesday night.... interesting points re apparent wind, is there a documented resource online for this phenomenon?  (I might get salty next year, so interested in finding out...)

All covered in Mark's Book.

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