Sailing in the Middle of the Fleet - Sailing Downwind Part 1

By Doug

Many of these blog posts start with questions from Pam. Her latest ones were "How do you play shifts downwind" and "Why didn't you do more sailing-in-the middle-of-the-fleet for downwind?" So, here goes.

Going upwind, when everything is even neither green nor red has the advantage:

But this seldom lasts for long. When the wind shifts to the right, green is on a lift and red is on a knock (or a header) and should tack:

And then the wind shifts to the left, green is now on a knock and red is on a lift. Green should tack:

So a rule when sailing upwind is:

·         if the wind helps you to head up on a lift, that's good because you're heading closer to the mark.

·      if the wind forces you to bear away on a knock, that's bad because you're heading away from the mark and you should tack.

There's nothing new here because this is something that most middle-of-the-fleet sailors know. But when you're going downwind, the shifts are harder to feel because you're going with the wind and your sail will not stall, so it's not as sensitive to these changes. Knowing how to play the shifts represents a great opportunity for middle-of-the-fleet sailors to make gains. (A word of caution: the following is how I sail a Laser or a similar boat with just one sail - other boats will do things differently).

Going downwind when it's steady, neither green nor red has the advantage:

When the wind shifts to the right, green might trim the sail in a little and red might trim out a little:

And then the wind shifts to the left, green might trim the sail out a little and red might trim in a little:

This is one correct way to play the shifts downwind, but most middle-of-the-fleet sailors will not notice these shifts and will not make the correct adjustments. If you do, then you'll gain a little.

But when there's a bit of wind, there's a much better way to play the shifts going downwind. Let's start by looking at the fastest point of sailing - being on a reach:

Anytime that you can set your boat up for a reach you'll gain speed. Let's look at this a little more closely:

The wind flows from the leach to the luff of the sail and pushes the boat forward. But here's a really interesting fact - the same force would be generated even if the wind was coming from the the opposite direction:

So why is this important? Because if you rotate this diagram 90 degrees, red is on a run, but the force on the sail is the same as though it's on a reach:

This is called sailing 'by the lee' (leach to luff vs luff to leach) and there are so many reasons why this is really fast that we'll have to cover this in another post. But for now, just remember that that sailing on a reach is really fast.

So when the wind goes right, instead of red trimming the sail out as we have seen above, it can be much faster to trim the sail in:

The wind goes right, one red trims out....                the other trims in.

When sailing downwind, I'm always looking for a way to trim the sail in relative to the wind. Red on the right is the fastest, and green is the slowest and should jibe and sail by the lee ASAP.

And the opposite is true - when the wind goes left, instead of green trimming the sail out, it's much faster to trim the sail in:

The wind goes left, one green trims out...                  the other trims in.

So when the wind is above 10 knots, the rule when sailing downwind is:

·       sail the course that helps you keep trying to trim the sail in.

It's simple! I look for this all the time - I try to sail by the lee as much as possible because it's an easy way to look for speed. It does not always work and I probably jibe more than anyone else in the fleet, but there's always something to try to get extra boatspeed.

It's fast! Using this simple trick, a middle-of-the-fleet sailor can actually start to have the speed of a really fast sailor. How fast? Like Tom Slingsby on his way to winning the Laser Worlds in Perth:

World-class speed sailing on a run... with the sail trimmed in.

Check out this video starting at 20:00. When Tom is on a run, he does everything he can to trim the sail in to sail by the lee. Here's how the wind is moving across Tom's sail at this moment:

There are lots of other ways for middle-of-the-fleet sailors to improve when sailing downwind. We'll look at these in detail next.