A short review of John Heyes’s book Winning Races (Adlard Coles Nautical, £12.99), followed by an extract from it on picking gybes on the run. The extract gives a rule of thumb for the first gybe – if you were lifted into the windward mark, gybe onto starboard (for a port rounding) – and explains that the spinnaker trimmer is the best detector of downwind shifts. It advises spending as little time as possible on the layline, not running too low into the bottom mark, and thinking through how nearby boats will respond before calling a gybe. […]
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How to round a leeward mark when there is a boat just in front of you. Rounding nose to tail leaves you in her dirty air, forces you to ease and sail low, and lets the boats behind block your tack, so you lose the chance to attack or escape the cover. Instead, anticipate the problem: drop the spinnaker slightly early, sail lower before the mark to open a gap, and round wide in, close out so you can climb off her or tack away with better speed and height. […]
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Four strategic rules of thumb for downwind legs when you are not sure which side of the run is favoured: sail the longer jibe first, sail for velocity before shifts, sail away from the next shift, and jibe on the lifts. Dellenbaugh explains which of these mirror upwind strategy and which are the opposite of what you would do on a beat. A sidebar shows why it is easy to overstand the leeward mark: jibing angles can be as narrow as 20° to 30°, and an increase from six to eight knots lets a boat sail much lower. […]
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The run is a leg on which places can be gained, so planning should start on the approach to the windward mark: decide which gybe takes you closer to the leeward mark and make a clear call to the crew before the spreader mark. The bear-away set is the usual call, because gybing at the spreader mark puts you in the lee of every boat sailing down the spreader leg, which is poor in light winds. Straight after rounding, the crew member at the mast should look back and tell the helm whether you are in clear air or being covered, and judge whether to go high with the fleet or sail low and give up a few places to keep a clear lane. […]
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Choosing which buoy to take at a leeward gate, which need not be the nearer one. Four questions guide the choice: which side you want for the next beat, whether the wind has shifted on the run so that one buoy is to windward, whether you are the inside boat or should take the other buoy in less traffic, and who you are following. The tip explains each point, including the reminder that every extra length sailed downwind towards a buoy has to be sailed back upwind, and advises taking the spinnaker down early and going wide if you must give water. […]
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Step-by-step crew sequences for dropping the spinnaker at the leeward mark, for four cases: pole on the boom or on the foredeck, with either a round-up or a gybe drop. For a round-up, the sequence runs from releasing the genoa halyard coarse tensioner and mast ram and getting the runners on until the forestay is tight, through unfurling the genoa (never with a sagging forestay), to dropping the kite behind the main and rounding up. For a gybe drop, the forestay is tightened with the backstay and the runners released, and the runners are set up again after the gybe. With the pole on the foredeck, drop the pole once the spinnaker is safely in the chute. […]
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