Sailing Note Book

Terriers,

It's very good idea to keep a notebook for all your sailing team exploits and adventures. It should contain practice notes, regatta summaries (results, race notes, venue insights, etc.), Sailing articles and other forms of education (coach's notes, books, pictures, video). You should take the time at the end of the day or weekend to do a regatta "write-up" and include 1-3 things that you learned.
You might take it leg by leg. How were your starts? First beats? Reaches? Runs? Last beats? What worked well for you, what were your mistakes. What rule situations came into play. What tactical moves did you learn from. How was your boat speed, your boat handling. How was your communication between your partner. Did you prepare well for the regatta or just show up and wing it. How was your confidence. Who won the regatta and could you tell why? What things do you think you need to work on in practice.
There's lots of questions you can ask yourself and can relay to your team. We can learn together from our mistakes and our successes. Each week every sailor should be able to speak about something that happened at their regatta. So expect to be asked. Critiquing our race performance is a very important tool if we are to continue to progress and improve.
First off, the sailing book of my preference is Sail, Race, Win by Eric Twinname (revised by Cathy Foster). If you're only going to have one book, this is it. It's the bible. You'll note I refer to this book and a few others in some of my ramblings.


See you on the water!
If you get out there sooner perhaps you'll get in before sunset.


-Coach