Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical. Yogi Berra The big variable is your state of mind. Big differences in performance … [happen] because you sometimes draw on your sailing skills in the most productive way, and at…

One of our readers told us he sees lots of sailors losing ground because they don’t realize the importance of getting the windward mark laylines right. We were skeptical until we reviewed our recent drone videos and saw several examples…

Want to make sure you have all the bases covered before going sailing in the Optimist dinghy? In this post we provide an updated Opti pre-race checklist. Getting ready to sail an Opti can seem complex, especially for new sailors…

Ducking another boat is something you don’t want to do often. As Stuart Walker says, “Don’t let ’em cross.” But sometimes a duck can give you a strategic or tactical advantage, especially if it’s well-executed. In this article, we’ll cover…

To continue our series on keeping your lead, we turn to covering tactics on the beat. We reviewed several books and online articles and found two helpful summaries: How to Cover Upwind, by Dave Dellenbaugh (in Sailing Breezes) and Chapter…

SailZing.com is presenting a series of “Tactical IQ” sessions to help you think through common race situations. For this session, we put 8 leeward gate tactics scenarios in front of a group of scow sailors with SailZing’s model boats and…

For many readers, including your editor, losing boats on the last leg is all too common. In this series of posts, we’re going to explore how to stay ahead on the last beat. We’ll start with covering tactics at the…

If you want to maximize performance and minimize frustration, it pays to learn the best techniques to tie an Optimist sail. We pulled tips from manufacturer’s tuning guides, books, and online sources to make the process easier. We added performance…