Downwind Strategy & Tactics

In this week’s episode, Olympic Sailing Team members Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea reveal their downwind tactics secrets. There’s plenty of good stuff here for all levels of racers. Need a better way to decide how to exit the windward…

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…

What factors do you consider when choosing the leeward gate? Furthest upwind Favored side of the course for next beat Getting to the lifted tack after rounding Traffic Position of competitors Follow the guys ahead, since they must know what…

As the 2019 summer racing season gets underway, your SailZing editors have been gathering race experiences to help drive home concepts about boat speed, handling, strategy, and tactics. In the past two weeks, we found four examples of downwind strategy…

Dave Dellenbaugh’s Speed and Smarts, Issue 130 (May/June 2014) has a very informative diagram showing how to use apparent wind clues to sail faster and smarter downwind. We present Dave’s diagram as a quiz, with his answers reprinted in the…

In winds up to 10 knots, the impact of shifts downwind is enormous… A boat working the shifts will gain 10% versus a boat that ignores the shifts.  Bill Gladstone, Performance Racing Tactics Playing the shifts downwind is one part…