Diggers

Diggers

Let's examine the art of digging. The "digger" is the deep finish
that is easily recognizable by the extra digit attached to your race
score. It is usually a result of bad timing, making your mistake early in the race. It's difficult for anyone to sail a mistake free race but some mistakes are more costly than others. Blowing a tack at the start or while trying to round the weather mark (places where there are more
boats around to foul or to give you
disturbed air) may hurt more than in the middle of the beat. But blowing a tack is a poor example because it is often a minor mistake on the scale of mistakes. Major mistakes usually occur based on tactical decisions. Major mistakes are made by the skipper because the skipper decides what tack to be on and how long to be on it. Remember that crews; for all the whining a skipper might do about you hurting the boat's performance by a boo boo, the big boo boos come from the back of the boat.

Timing:
If you make your mistake early in the race it can put you behind
and you feel the urgency to get it all back
quickly. That can result in
poor judgement and high risk. Meanwhile, the folks that have better
timing (they make mistakes too, but later on, and often less costly), are feeding off of you, banking you will "Compound Your Mistake" and sail yourself out of the race so they'll have one less boat to deal with. The wise sailor, the patient sailor, does not do that, they do not go into high risk mode and compound mistakes. They grind back slowly and methodically, waiting for other sailors to make their mistakes, and by golly they do come. Case in point; At the start you're second row and get shot out the back so you tack to clear your air. Good! Probably no harm in that! It's what happens next. The tendency now is to split from the fleet, sail the header too long and get out of phase. First, let's be clear on what I mean by "splitting the fleet". If the majority of the fleet is on the same tack AND that tack points them more towards the mark, the opposite tack is splitting away and going into high risk mode. If the breeze is square, often boats peel off on different tacks and the goal for those with an early mistake would be to start grinding back the boats on one side or the other (avoiding the corner). It is rare to see the whole fleet sailing a header together but it most frequently occurs when it's pin favored and the string of boats are pinning each other from tacking onto
the port lift. Now they are the ones sailing away from the mark and by the time they do tack to port, they may be on a fading lift and may have sailed themselves out of phase. That's a good time to split the fleet. That's when it's nice to be to leeward and ahead on a fading lift (aka an impending header).
So what's the answer when you're in garbage after the start?
Well clearing your air may be fine, but you must get back onto the lifted tack even if it means following behind boats and waiting for their mistakes to come. It's no good sailing real fast in clear air when it's in the wrong direction. You can sail past
some boats just by having better boatspeed and others by having better boathandling. You can pass others because they either sailed into a corner (leaving themselves only one option and it doesn't come in) or they split from you and a group of boats in an effort to make the big gain, disregarding the risk due to their angle to the buoy and end up sailing more distance and taking more time. You recover from early mistakes by keeping a clear mind and focusing on your goal; to get to the windward mark. Sometimes it's not even worth clearing your air. If you know you're on a big lift going to the mark, bad air can only hurt you a little, bad tactics can hurt you a lot.
Always
think "in the absence of other boats, what would I do". In
the absence of other boats would you really tack off a lift that
pointing you mostly towards the mark? First, know what you would do "in the absence", then decide whether a clearing tack is in order. The same holds true when you round the leeward mark, chances are you will have a boat directly in front, gassing you. This does not give you a license to tack away every time. What if you're tacking away from the velocity on the right side? What if you're tacking yourself out of phase? What if you tack to clear and are undecided when to come back and never do until you've hit the
corner? Who's to say when you go for a clearing tack around the leeward mark that the boat in front of you won't tack on top of you? Who's to say the boat in front of you won't tack out because they're sick of being gassed by the boat in front of them? Be smart, know that your goal is to get to the buoys and don't get too distracted by the boats around you or have them dictate your actions too much.
Getting behind early can make the task more difficult but the
reward for grinding back is greater. It's a big confidence boost for
you and pyschologically, it can wear on your competitors. You have to
learn to pick your spots because you
can't always be in passing mode
(tactically speaking). That's where patience is in order. Following
boats is the name of the game sometimes. The alternative can often be
deadly. I don't have to look very far to find glaring examples of
this. The evidence is littered all over our weekend races, at least the one's Jon Baker and I have seen. How often have we actually sailed outselves out of the race by tacking and ducking sterns and ending up to "windward and behind on a fading lift", destined for our bow to "come down" and the fleet to tack and cross us by tons, dropping us into double digit land or keeping us from climbing out of it. Half the time in doing so we actually compound that mistake further by overstanding the layline or at least getting there from too far away to judge it. When you overstand a layline and you are still sailing a header, that's when you know you've sailed about the longest distance possible, no wonder there are few boats behind you. Read the breeze, go to the buoy. First turn the boats around you "invisble" so you can focus on that task, then you can make them "reappear" and deal with them if necessary. When you get ahead then you have the luxury of playing off the boats a little and hoping they compound their mistakes.

Elevating your
tactical game:
Think chess here. Imagine playing a chess game at eye level?
Basically impossible, you can't see the board. Well that's what sailing coaches are asking their players to do. It's hard! If sailors can see the playing field from up higher they would have an easier time reading the breeze and a much, much easier time seeing fleet position and tactically playing off it. You need to elevate your visual game to see it better. One way of doing that is to be able to watch the same
situation from two perspectives, in the boat and from up above.
That's
the benefit in watching sailboat races whenever you can. When one
division is on the water and the other is on the dock. Elevate your
tactical game by keenly watching what your other division is doing and
learn through that. When you're on the water, visualize what the fleet
position you see might look like if you were watching it from up above.
That's how the good sailors do it. They read the fleet better and play
off them when they can (E.I. put themselves between a pack and the
mark). Of course, they still understand that the goal is to get to the
buoy and keep things in context.


Let's get rid of our diggers!


-Coach