Key West Race Week – Part Two – A Response!
December 27, 2009
Thanks to everyone for the great responses! There were some great offline conversations and the responses I’ve included some of those conversations below. I’ve also included two images. The first is The First Cross Visualization and the second is representative of what where I think the windward danger zones are.
NOTE: There was an error is the original visualization. Our heading is not 055M, but rather 305M. That makes a big difference in the thought process. The good thing is that most folks either realized I had made the mistake (the compass makes more sense if you are just ADDING *sigh*) or made an in interesting conclusion that was a good conversation starter.
In the last visualization I asked seven questions;
1) Should we change our set up? 2) What information can each person (helm, spin trimmer, bow) communicate in this situation to help the boat make the right call? 3) What should the two forward positions be concentrating on? 4) Should we tack? 5) Why or why not? 6) In the event that we decide not to tack, if we are in a close crossing situation with another boat, what should we call them across or make them tack? 7) If we do tack, where should we tack?
I think the following conversations should help illuminate most of these questions (responses from readers are italicized)
I do not see a reason to change setup. Btw, what are all the items considered in this category?
I would agree. The differences in the angles is probably due to the left shift that we’ve gotten, and the boats to leeward of us have gotten even more of. Speed and angle the same – so let’s make a note of what our settings are so that if we do make changes we can always come back to our “base” and at the very least match the other boats.
Items in the set up category would be Angle of attack, draft, twist for both sails as well as crew weight position.
I’m expecting everyone to update me on shifts, puffs, waves, traffic, other boat performance above, below and ahead or behind.
I think you are asking for the right information, but I would suggest that you assign information to individuals so that the information you want/need at any given time is always available and you know who to go to for it. If all of the info is up for grabs I find that teams can very easily distract themselves with one thing and the other information gets lost or isn’t available when you need it. I think I said it before, but I have my bow person talking about how we are doing performance wise on the boats to windward, as well as helping track heading info and big picture strategy. Then my spinnaker trimmer (next position back) is calling puffs and lulls as well as waves. What naturally occurs is the puff and lull info is communicated more easily to the helm due to being closer.
Unless we see something desirable to leeward or we get lifted I would tack a few boats above the last to cross to stay with the pack and have clean air.
Interesting. To get lifted here would be a really bad thing. After 8 minutes we are pretty far to the left hand side of the course.
In the diagram to the right, you can see that in the corners we are LOOKING for reasons to tack away from the layline.
Also, we were expecting there to be a left shift – a header. So a lift here, as we near the layline would mean that when we tack (and we WILL need to tack) we will be sailing on a header and all those boats that went right (or we forced to the right) would be gaining – and probably gaining big due to the leverage we built.
But I DO like where you are going with the stay with the pack with clear air thinking. Now what gets important is how do we stay connected with with this fleet.
This is a long race. We want to stay in contact with the majority, pick off boats one by one, and limit our risk. The left shift has come in. We see it on our compass, and we see it in the fact that the majority of the competition is cashing in on the shift. So in order for us to gain on the boats that are slightly ahead of us, we would need to realize MORE left shift beyond the competition. Nothing that has been presented (which we could interpret as nothing that we KNOW) says that there is more shift to the left. In fact 3/4′s of the pack we are racing think there’s little left to tap in the left. So I think there are a lot of factors that are screaming tack. But tack BEFORE the fleet crosses us rather than after.
Where are we on the course? After eight minutes we’ve probably sailed pretty far into the left hand side of the course. In fact, we’ve probably sailed about 4800 feet. In the simplest (and often the best) tactical thinking you want to sail the tack that takes you closer to the mark. At this point the other tack is pointed more directly at the mark. Simple racing principle – sail AT the next mark.
By allowing the majority of the fleet to cross us here, we put ourselves closer to the layline than our competition. Generally, we want to herd our competition towards the laylines and save the middle for ourselves in order to keep our options open. So if we duck here, then we are allowing the competition to sail to the middle while we sail to the edge. Simple racing principle – avoid the laylines.
By ducking, we’ve conceded to the other boats that they are ahead. We’ve committed to going away from the other boats in an effort to get ahead of them. So now we are gambling and every second we separate we are building risk. Conversely if we tack, we stay with our competition, if later, we decide that the edge really holds the pot of gold; we can head to it later. Simple racing principle – stick with the competition.
Monitor and adjust – We are luck to have the bulk of the fleet going the way we want and just a couple of boats going the other way. It is early, in the race, so this is one of those great opportunities to see who gets paid in this situation without risking our own bacon. By watching where the other two boats end up at the weather mark we can make an informed decision on the next weather leg.
So with all of that added up, I’d say that we tack.
Also, one of the questions was if we are going to tack, where should do it? Well, I would argue that this is a time to execute the safe leeward tack. In other words we want to tack ahead and to leeward of the boats to the left. We want to maintain a clear air “lane” and maintain the ability to tack back if we choose to. We also don’t want to tack so early that there is a lane between us and the fleet we are sticking with. That’s just too attractive to the boats we might have to duck who are coming out of the right hand corner.
OK, more to come this week.
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