Laser Cheat Sheet - Sailing Smart 1

by Doug

Cape Town - 1996

Laser Cheat Sheet

OK, I have a confession to make. My eyesight has never been good. About 20 years ago, it started to get really bad until finally a few years ago, I was legally blind. Seven procedures later, I can see detail and color, but I’ve never had depth perception and still don’t. Sailing with poor vision has forced me to get creative. The most productive thing was practicing at night to learn how to sail by feeling. Another was learning how to sail the competition. Few people knew about my vision, but I would sometimes get comments like "you only seem to win by a small margin." As Pam likes to say, it was because I was using my competition as seeing-eye dogs.

A lesson from the 1996 Cape Town Worlds was a defining moment and taught me a huge lesson. In the third race, I led 4-time world champion Keith Wilkins at the first mark and then covered him as tightly as I could. His response was punishing me by sailing through headers, going the wrong way, etc. I beat Keith by a few seconds but learned nothing from Keith because he was not sailing his own race. It was the best race of my life and, as it turned out, Keith threw out his second place as he easily went on to win his 5th Worlds.

The lesson learned was that sailing the competition is not covering one or more boats so that you prevent them from sailing their own race, but instead staying close and learning from them. I finished 5th in Cape Town, the same position as the previous Worlds in Japan. I had hit a glass ceiling because I actually thought I knew what to do. The people that are the most fun to compete with have forgotten more about the wind, clouds, tides, gradient this, and persistent that, than I will ever know. So, Cape Town helped me reinvent my sailing by understanding how to sail the competition.

Here's the key question: in a fleet of 50 boats, how many do you have to beat to win? If your answer is 49 as it was for me, then your chances of winning are slim. I tried this for years but there was just too much going on to keep track of, and I knew so little compared to the best in the world.

The correct answer is 1. Whether your goal is to win or simply move up in the fleet, all you need to do is pick your personal coach and watch and learn as he/she unknowingly teaches you everything they know. You do this without interfering but by waiting for them to make the small mistakes that everyone makes.

I did this in the next Worlds which were in Chile. The person to beat was Keith (duh). On every leg of every race, I watched him and learned from him. Each evening I'd update my journal to visualize what worked and what did not. He had led me to all the places on the race course he liked and all I had to worry about was boat speed and handling. Sailing the competition worked, and is how I won my first Worlds.

The truly great sailors know enough to sail the course and its conditions. I'm not as good and prefer to sail the competition, even with my improved vision. "Be smart" is never more important than when the winds are light because of the bigger shifts and the longer time that it takes to reposition yourself on the course when (not if) you make a mistake. It's percentage sailing at its best!

Update: got a great question about what to observe besides where your personal coach is sailing. Unlike poker where you never see the other person's hand, you can always see how someone is sailing - their controls, their body position and movement, what they are looking at, even their body language about their disposition. Lasers are close to identical so, it's easy to copy someone who may be going faster. And it's just as important to see what is different when you're going faster. Things change continuously so it's a constant refinement of what you observe and feel, especially in light air.