If you rank racing skills by degree of difficulty and potential for gain/loss, big fleet starts are at or near the top. In small fleets, it’s easier to get a good start and if you don’t, it’s easy enough to…
Starting Strategy & Tactics
This category covers starting strategy and tactics, including where to start, approaching the line, creating a gap, judging the line, accelerating, and priorities immediately after the start.
-
-
Want to improve your starts? Take this short starting tactics quiz in a video from Roble/Shea Sailing. In the video, Steph and Maggie show eight boats near the starting line with 30 seconds remaining. They ask you to decide what…
-
You’ve done your pre-race routine, decided where to start, and made your starting line approach. Now it’s time to get aggressive and execute the start. Successful sailors use four key skills: they get to the front row, fight hard for…
-
This post covers the expert wisdom on where to start. We updated the post from the original version, incorporating some new key points and adding a video from Roble/Shea Sailing on the topic. Where to Start – A Balancing Act…
-
After a decent front row start, what’s the next priority? Answer: holding your lane and going fast, so you can break out of the pack and have strategic choices. For tips on lane management after the start, we turned to…
-
Bad starts happen. As we showed in Starting Performance Observations, it’s common to see half or more of the fleet in bad air after the start. Willie McBride points out that the top three teams at the 49erFX 2017 worlds…
