That Extra 2-3%

Good point, I guess as you fall further behind you also fall into cleaner wind ;) so "last is fast?"

Originally posted by Sam.Spoons Good point, I guess as you fall further behind you also fall into cleaner wind ;) so "last is fast?"

Perhaps due to my choice of boats in the past and the waters they've been sailed on, I've become pretty good at getting boat speed. Upwind I can shoot the shifts and oscillations and generally can make places up upwind. My biggest weakness is downwind. Now on small inland venues this is less of a problem due to short legs forcing the route to the next mark, and at tidal venues you tend to find one or possibly two lanes, but on medium/large lakes I start losing the plot. I observed this painfully at the Grad nationals where I was almost always ahead of the eventual winners at the windward mark, but downwind they spotted the pressure often sailing way off the rhum line to get there and then stay in it, only to then pop up infront of everyone at the leeward mark. It's easy to see this as a boat speed advantage but in reality it's simply down to positioning, and clearly many of the fleet, me included either can't see the optimum course to steer to stay in pressure or we are just too nervous of ballsing it up and dropping even further down the running order. It's certainly an area I will be focusing on this year meaning I might have to get to some other venues.