First Place Thinking

First Place Thinking


Buds,
I gave you a handout called "First-Place Thinking" by Eric Twiname last week. Here's the little footnote blurb that goes beneath it.

"A race won is a series of decisions correctly made. When concentrating on the tactical side of fast sailing (the route decisions) the helmsman has to rely heavily on his automatic skills: he cannot for example concentrate on approaching gusts and watch the jib luff at the same time. On "sea courses" a top helmsman will spend three-quarters of his time on the conscious fast sailing skills and only a quarter on making route decisions. On "inland waters" he will spend more than half his time working out the tactics that ensure he takes the fastest route around the course. In general the left hand side of the diagram is more important on the sea, and the right (plus automatic skills) more important on inland waters.

Since I've got the page turned to Twiname...here's what he writes in conjunction with his diagram.

"The only secret to winning is that there isn't one---not a single mystical explanation anyway. The pinnacle of sailing success is supported by a vast pyramid of often quite small pieces of sailing knowledge, each one perfectly applied. A good helmsman's boat is well tuned but, much more important, he himself is tuned to win. And just as boat tune depends on getting even small details right, successful helmsmanship relies more than anything on perfecting even the most trivial-seeming techniques of sailing and combining these into a near-flawless racing ability.
Obviously there are certain things a successful helmsman does that contribute more to his success than others. Working windshifts well on the windward legs, for example, is at least twenty times as important as adjusting the centerboard correctly downwind; holding the boat within five degrees of the upright position all the time in heavy weather is a hundred times more important than adjusting the mainsail's outhaul tension correctly in the same conditions. Olympic medalist get all these things right nearly all the time. The average club helmsman gets many of them wrong all the time---wrong enough usually to keep him out of the prizes.
If you can spot windshifts and you sail on inland waters, the minutiae of boat tune will be as near irrelevant as makes no difference. In winning races there are therefore some things which are vitally important and some which should be given a much lower priority. Some knowledge of these priorities is essential for anyone who wants to improve his sailing quickly. My own experience is that if you do nothing more than re-arrange in a tail-enders mind the importance he should attribute to individual items (like jib sheet trim, mainssail luff lifting, heeling, prediction of wind shifts and so on) he immediately stops being a tail-ender.
If that seems a rash statement, test it next time you are ashore when a race is being sailed in anything over force 3. Wait 'til the boats are on the second beat and ask someone who knows nothing about sailing what differences he can see in the way the boats at the front are sailing compared with those at the back. After a few facetious replies like "faster", he will point out that the boats at the front are sailing more upright than those at the back. Nothing unusual or remarkable about that---the phenomenon is universal; dinghies at the front of fleets tend to sail upright in heavy weather, those at the back heel. So now we can ask ourselves why do helmsmen at the back persist in heeling when the advantages of sailing upright are obvious, even to a non-sailor on the shore?
I have from time to time asked some of the tail-enders and the usual answer is; "We're not heavy enough to hold her up, although we were trying to." A fair enough answer until you find that a lighter crew who finished up front were holding their boat upright. Further questioning of the tail-ender will reveal that he was trying to get as much speed upwind as possible by keeping the sails full all the time. And this is where he has his priorities wrong. Common sense or a book has told him that to get the most speed of the boat the sails should be kept full and driving. Quite right for most conditions, but keep the sails driving in heavy weather and the boat lays over on her ear. He knows that she shouldn't do this, but if the sails are full and driving, he argues, surely that's what matters. The non-sailor on shore could have told him that is not true. The first priority in heavy weather dinghy sailing is to keep the boat upright, whatever it takes. Once the back marker develops his heavy weather technique with that priority impressed in his mind, he will no longer flounder along, counting his finishing positions from the back.
That was a simple example and I could give many others, but it illustrates the point that a mistaken order of priorities is a handicap that most helmsmen carry when they start to race. The sooner they can sort out what matters most at any moment in the race, the sooner they will start to win."

---------
Okay,. there are a couple of things Twiname states that you may vary in opinion, "20 times this and 100 times that". There are items that are of less importance but easy to get right, so we take care of them. Of course, you're not tail-enders either, but then again, you're not winners. Not yet. But Twiname's point of the importance of getting priorities straight should be well taken and something you should think about when you're setting goals for this season. I can guarantee you that, in not reading and grasping Twiname's "Sail, Race, Win", you put your sailing knowledge on a lower rung than it needs to be and jeopardize the growth of your capabilities.
At this time of year, get your priorities straight and get your reading in.
There won't be time for it later.

As to priorities on the water; you tell me.
-Breeze, Buoys, Boats...
-Rig, Set, Trim ...
-Foot, PInch, Drive...
-Weight (gross), weight (centered), weight (flat), weight (level)...
-Physical, mental, emotional...
-Starting: position, speed, options...
-First shift, long shift, last shift...
-Speed vs. distance vs. fleet management...
-Boathandling, boatspeed, tactics, strategy



-Coach