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RS400 newsletter Autumn 2008 Duckhams nominations This years winners Potted information from the nationals seminars Top 10 starting tips – Nick Craig “10 Things I’ve learnt having started sailing an RS400” – Sam Parker RS400 Wave sailing – Paul Hilliar View from the fleet – Alistair and Yvette Rose
RS400 newsletter Autumn 2008 Welcome back, sorry it’s been a long time coming! What’s been going on? Well there are a lot of new faces and I think it’s fair to say that Garda and the Nationals were two awesome venues to get to know everybody! As well as the new faces, we’ve had lots of people coming back into the 400 fleet. The quality of the racing this year has, I’m told, been top notch – and certainly since I’ve been on the water from July, it’s been a lot of fun! Two early dates for the 2009 diary – the Eurocup is in Carnac week beginning 27 July and for the Nationals we’re back to Marazion and Mounts Bay sailing club for 5 days from Sunday 23 August. And just because I spend so much time with numbers, here’s some “interesting” statistics from the year for you… 76 boats took place in the Fat Face circuit 61 boats took place in the Purple Marine Northern Tour 31 boats at Garda – the biggest entry yet – be there in 2010! Over half the boats at the nationals had a girl crew or helm 6 or so of the new boats have been actively racing – LDC are up to about 1350 ish, so if there’s a new boat at you club, encourage them to come and play with the rest of us on the circuit. And congratulations must go to: John and Laurie Callaghan, who got married in September Tom Peters and AL Morris who got engaged (rather than coming to the nationals!!) Chris Gowers for coaching Goody to bring home the gold medal in the laser class
This year has been a busy year on yahoo groups. We will keep you posted as we finalise next years plans. There is demand for more events than just the circuit, on a local level, and also we shall consider how next years Fat Face circuit, which will incorporate the northern tour, can work to everyone’s advantage. Something new this year was the Fat Face night sail. Top event, awesome format, a pity we had 60 knots of breeze and ended up taking part in highly competitive team building games…. Lets hope FF come back for more next year, the forecast is kind to us and the 400 team get the prize off the B14 fleet! See you on the water Anna	©Fat Face
Duckhams nominations Things were a little quiet this year on the stupidity awards front but here are a few special mentions:  Paul Hilliar – for entering Mrs Hilliar as crew for the nationals, and then correcting this and entering with Steve Jagger (Stuart’s mother was not impressed)   Sam Parker – for wanting to get as close to possible to Calais before refuelling… And then having to run across Calais at 3am (risking missing the ferry) to find the nearest self service petrol station with a 1 mile range remaining on the car   Christian Humphrey – for missing said ferry due to shenanigans with the passport officials… because he forgot his passport (still in Garda), and then when getting home to Bristol, realising his house keys were with the passport (in Garda)
Pete Vincent – for getting stopped at Dover by border police for (apparently) towing a trailer that he had previously reported stolen.   Heather and Giles Chipperfield – a particularly boisterous night out in Garda left them sailing around feeling like they were putting themselves in danger, but then was topped off with Giles not being too sure when getting dressed after a shower, whether to put on his pants or shorts first.   Howard Farbrother – for leaving it to the night before the nationals to change his slot gasket (the reason for the rain)	©Tom Halhead
Nathan Pinch – for rigging the vang through the shackle rather than a pulley, leaving him with one strand of D12 by the end of the day   Selden masts – Nick Simmons new mast required the shrouds to be pinned in different holes on different sides. When he took the mast down the shroud terminals were an inch different in position. New mast now provided.   Special mention to Mike Allen and me for ill-health on the morning of a sailing event that last minute replacements were dialled in… due no fault of our own. And Dave Jones for managing to sail in Garda after kicking the back out of a Sunday night with 50% gin!   Mark Barnes – for stating in the B14 nationals form guide that Nick Craig would be ‘looking to be in the top 5 boats’. Well done Nick and Toby – 3 firsts and 1 second – cementing your place inside that top 5!   Henry Maples - for driving around the boat park at Grafham with a spirit level on his dashboard to find flat ground to avoid overnight spooning with a borrowed crew Any more nominations and anecdotes are always well received on yahoo groups to keep us going through the day… This years top quote from Paul Allen at Parkstone… after hearing that Jude, Louise and I had enjoyed an afternoon of cheap pimms – “there’s only one thing you had to do this weekend and that was to dolly my trolley and you didn’t even manage that”
This years winners – full information on the website Fat Face circuit: 1st Gold – Paul Hilliar and Stuart Jagger 2nd Gold – Stuart Hudson and Nigel Wakefield (and me for a day) 3rd Gold – Jim Downer and Jon Price 4th Gold – Sam Parker and Elaine Marsh/Jane Bailey/Bex Marriott/Anna Ludgate/Tim Roden 5th Gold – Mike Simms and Elliot Banks 6th Gold – Howard Farbrother and Nathan Pinch 1st Silver – Nick Simmons and Russ Morgan 2nd Silver – Fiona Bolt and Iain Lewis 3rd Silver – Tom Peters and Anna-Louise Morris 4th Silver – Simon Baker and G Hayes 5th Silver – Chris and Kathy Iles 6th Silver – Will Parrett and Chris Grosscurth
Northern Tour: 1st Gold – Paul and Mike Allen 2nd Gold – Richard and Elaine Marsh 3rd Gold – Dave Jones and Mark Hogan 1st Silver – Caroline Exley and Mark Baxter 2nd Silver – Alex Fleming and Nick Blore Garda: 1st – Nick Craig and Fiona Clark 2nd – Dave Jones and Josh Metcalfe 3rd – Richard Bone and Daniel Martin 1st Silver – James George and Matt Forbes Nationals: 1st Gold – Nick Craig and Fiona Clark 2nd Gold – Dave Jones and Mark Hogan 3rd Gold – Paul Hilliar and Stuart Jagger 1st Silver – Phil Kennard and Matt Wright 2nd Silver – James Sinclair and Tom Watson 3rd Silver – Sally and Martyn Styles 1st Bronze – Nick Barrett and Sam Macnamara 2nd Bronze – Alistair and Yvette Rose 3rd Silver – Chris and Kathy Iles	©Elaine Marsh
Brian Starr LOSSC ©Mike Rice	Nick and Fi ©Mike Rice
Potted information from the nationals seminars: Top 10 starting tips – Nick Craig 1. Get out early to the start and develop a 1st beat plan. 2. Decide where to start on the line looking not just at line bias but also linking this to the 1st beat plan 3. Mark your starting “zone” early to hopefully make space for yourself 4. Be flexible in the last couple of minutes – move around the line to find space if needed 5. In the last 30 seconds, line up bow down of boats around you so you don’t get spotted OCS & have more acceleration time 6. Practice slow speed boat handling. Boats handle very differently when the foils aren’t working so sailing slowly needs to be practiced.
7. Create a gap to leeward from about 30 seconds. Don’t be too greedy and create too much space or someone will fill it 8. Accelerate out the start using the “forces” (sail trim & boat heel to steer rather than rudder) 9. If you get a good start, consolidate early – sail free if the fleet are underneath you or sail high/tack if the fleet is above you 10. If you get a bad start, find clear air asap and get on the 1st beat plan in a clear wind lane. Ideally, find that lane early rather than hit the corner.	©Elaine Marsh
©Mike Rice	©Elaine Marsh
“10 Things I’ve learnt having started sailing an RS400” – Sam Parker 1 Kicker: Make sure its setup on a continuous system. Get an adult to help with the fid-work, its worth the money paying someone for peace of mind (unless you are a geek and actually like hanging upside down poking around under the thwart)… a) Many people underestimate the amount of kicker you need to use when its windy. See what happens if you keep pulling until the bottom batten starts to invert on the main. This is the kind of tension that should be used when its very breezy – linked with the Cunningham, see next point. b) The second point is that many people underestimate the amount that the kicker needs to be let off going downwind. The best way to appreciate this is to pull all the sails up on a light day (important – light day…). Having hoisted and set the spinnaker, go and stand 20 feet from the leeward quarter and look at the shapes of all 3 leeches. The aim is to match the twists in all three – and it’s easy to see how you can choke the “exhaust” off the A-Sail if you don’t let off enough kicker to match its shape. 2 Cunningham: A much overlooked weapon when it’s windy – especially for lighter crews. Another entertaining shorebased exercise is to see how the top 1/3 of the mainsail changes when you pull cunningham on (“on” being really hard: 2 hands required). Where this really helps is at the top of the rig, where we want the power least of all. So, when its windy, using the kicker as described above, then apply the cunningham to completely flatten the sail with the added benefit that it will solve the inverting bottom batten problem. You’re now ready to sail fast upwind! A good final pointer from Stu Jagger here: once you've reached (ideal sailing conditions!) max kicker and max cunningham, if the bottom of the main still wants to turn itself inside out in the gusts, you need to start playing the jib - easing an inch or two will then turn the main the right way around. 3 Fitness: There’s no escaping the fact that you do need to have some level of physical fitness to sail the boat properly, whether its sitting out effectively to develop maximum power, or having strong upper body for playing the main or hoisting the spinnaker. The best hiking exercise I’ve come across is the wall sit, which can be easily incorporated into the daily routine. You can do it anywhere without any equipment to help you build endurance in the lower body. Here's how to do it: 1. Stand in front of a wall (about 2 feet in front of it) and lean against it. 2. Slide down until your knees are at about 90-degree angles and hold, keeping the abs contracted, for 20-60 seconds. 3. Come back to start and repeat, holding the squat at different angles to work the lower body in different ways. 4. To add intensity, hold weights or squeeze a ball between the knees Special thanks to Fiona Clark(e) for demonstrating during the talk – for five minutes. Apparently sailors at the Laser worlds can do this for 40 minutes - Sad….
4 Toestraps: Linked with the above point is the crucial position of toestraps. These need to be in EXACTLY the right position to encourage the right posture. The most common mistake seems to be too loose which leads to drop-hiking which cannot work in waves and worst of all, leads to knee problems over time. The aim should be that you’re using the same muscles used in point 3 above to do all the sitting out work and not hanging off knee joints as the lazier alternative. There is rumour that RS will be upgrading the design of hiking toestraps in the future, to incorporate a more “sticky” underside that will remove that scary problem of getting a slip from the hiking boots when sitting out. It might only be half an inch of slippage, but you feel like you’re about to go over the side! This extra grip should improve hiking posture and technique no end – can’t wait.	Brian Starr LOSSC ©Mike Rice
5 Hydration: A long, long, long time ago, when we in Britain had “sunshine” in a season once known as “summer”, temperatures would occasionally climb into the double figures and sailors on the water would get thirsty and then drink water which is great. In the early part of this season I found a noticeable decline in performance/results during a day on the water. Arguably this was the hangover taking over from euphoria of the previous evening, but whichever way you look at it, the best insurance policy against “drying out” and then suffering mentally is to take much fluids on the water with you. So – Velcro on the halyard pouch stops the pole punching water bottles back into the boat during drops. The bicylcle-frame-type water carriers on the hoop I’ve liked as a personal choice because you can have a good slurp downwind whilst the crew hoists, trims, hikes, does tactics and tells you where to go….. 6 Starting: Nick’s talk on Saturday was stuffed full of gems on this subject. The one practical point I seized on was the handling skills you need as a team in a 400 to execute some of the clever strategies that Nick was describing. The beauty of this point is that you can develop these skills any time you choose and perfect them. You can generate a practice syllabus by recalling the last half dozen “shocking” starts and examine them individually in detail (using the analytical techniques that Howard was describing) E.g. “We didn’t have a gap to bear away into during the last 10 seconds so we couldn’t accelerate, the boat to windward sailed over us and we were forced to tack off having sat in dirty air for 30 seconds…” Breaking this down: you might therefore choose to practice: 1) How to make the boat bear away onto a beam reach without accelerating to protect your gap – so experiment with moving crew weight up to windward, use of rudder when its stalled, use of sails to turn boat at low speeds. How? With a couple of fixed points of reference: buoys, jetties etc. you can check the movement of your boat in relation to this and get some really good cues about how the boat actually behaves and therefore develop greater feel. Still within the scenario described above 2) Acceleration practice 3) Stopping the boat 4) Agreeing with crew how to communicate about a late arrival coming in to leeward. Etc. The best boat handling exercise ever taught to me in a 400 is learning to sail flawlessly round a triangular course with the rudder tethered amidships using bungy cord around the toe straps (borrowed from Adam Bowers, thank you) 7 Never give up: Races – especially Championship races, are much longer than people think and if you’re not good (yet) at point 6, then you have plenty of time to turn around a bad first beat. Best advice I’ve heard is all about breaking it into bite size chunks. I.e. on the next upwind we will try to overtake sailnumber x who rounded just ahead of us. Much more realistic than being demoralised because you are 60th but you actually want to WIN…. 8 Leave it on the water: This point applies equally to intensive periods of sailing such as championships where there little “cooling-off” time between races as well as club racing where there is the luxury of more time – perhaps in the bar. Regardless of whether you race as a couple or not, there will be times when friction can spill over and effect performance. Debriefing is the key thing to do. This boils down to open, honest feedback. But, like everything in this day and age there is a fancy way to remember it. In corporate life I manage events and have been lucky enough to work with members of the Red Arrows at conferences who are good at doing this sort of stuff and have a simple acronym to remind the hard of understanding how to do correct debriefing. They call it “LEARN”: Lead by example… it starts with you! Establish the parameters … what are you talking about Analyse the execution … what went well and why? …what went badly and why? Review the learning … capture the key learning Notify the learning …share your learning 9 Do your pre-event research: But not to the exclusion of all other things. If, for example, you plan to sail the Nationals at Mounts Bay next year, by all means sail a practice beat with your practice-mate. HOWEVER, do not – under any circumstances, attempt to sail the practice beat at the time of the warning signal. You will cross tacks with your practice-mate somewhere near the windward mark and, upon glancing under the boom, notice the entire fleet going through the gate. As sure as night follows day, and no matter how fast you can sail down wind, it is written in the scriptures that the gate boat will drop the “G” flag just as you are about to round its stern and thusly your regatta scoreline will begin with the underwhelming letters of “DNS”… 10 Winning: The learning is not quite complete on this one… As the title would suggest, I’ve only started
RS400 Wave sailing – Paul Hilliar UPWIND Helm focus: waves in next 5-8 seconds Crew focus: waves in next 8-15 seconds. Keep boat stable side to side. Underpowered 1. Ease the jib sheet by an inch or so just before the wave hits. 2. Heeling the boat a little just before the wave arrives helps to avoid the bow ‘slapping’ the wave quite so much. Powered As for light winds but you have more speed and can therefore ‘unweight’ the bow a little by a short stab of the tiller away from you just as the wave approaches. Note that this will only work if the boat is heeled a little. Overpowered To heel the boat just before the wave hits, sheet in a bit. The sheeting in and heading up (as described earlier) can happen in one motion, so your arms are like pistons, the rear arm pushing away to head the boat up as the forward arm sheets out. Once the wave has passed you can reverse the piston motion as you sheet out and bear away again. If the is boat flat then you won’t have to use the tiller very much to bear away. DOWNWIND You are looking to keep the boat smooth and stable side to side, although at times you may be making some fairly radical alterations in course. Avoid excessive use of the rudder, where possible. Helms need to realise the effect of rolling the boat around – it makes it very difficult for the crew to set the spinnaker well. If you can use a wave to make gains to leeward, this is usually just as effective as surfing to make gains forward. In some ways, more so because when you sneak a bit to leeward you cut off the tactical options of the boats ahead, because you are blocking them from gybing. Underpowered Make up your mind whether you are surfing or ignoring waves because failing to catch a wave costs you big time. Make absolutely every effort to keep the boat stable – few things slow the boat down more in these conditions than a boat that it rocking and rolling. Powered Don’t be scared to sail some really big angles in order to maintain speed and avoid sailing into the wave in front. By ‘big angles’, I mean that you will have to go pretty high to get onto a wave but then you may suddenly bear away as much as 30 degrees to almost a dead run in order to stay on the wave. Maintain good balance and steer as much as possible with your feet. Try bracing your front foot against the windward cockpit spine and your back foot against the leeward cockpit spine. Overpowered Drop the pole closer to the centreline. This allows the kite to provide a bit more lift. If you need even more lift to avoid a wave then temporarily under sheet the kite Don’t forget that undersheeting the mainsail is bad because: 1) You are risking breaking your mast. A sheeted in mainsail effectively provides a backstay and keeps your mast in the boat. 2) The end of the boom may start to catch in the water 3) The mainsail starts to push the bow down rather than dragging you forward. 4) You are messing up your slot between the sails. Try sailing with the boom just forward of the quarter of the boat, combined with a loose kicker. This means that the sails all mirror each other’s leech profiles.
View from the fleet – Alistair and Yvette Rose Our season started with the Easter Northern Circuit weekend open at Lake Bala in North Wales. Extreme wind saw the circuit attendees watching in amazement as Dave Jones crewed by Roger Gorman took to the lake to show us how it is done. An eye-popping beat up the lake saw an impressive kite-plane back down – all the more so when mid-gybe Roger suddenly exited the boat. Unperturbed (for a few mili-seconds) Dave sailed on before tipping it upside down. After being blown down the lake a bit more upside down they righted the boat for some more fun before the entire fleet retired to a nearby pub followed by “The Goat” – a legendary place combining drinking with a semi-do-it-yourself disco (nice one Richard Marsh). The Allens winning the weekend sailing when resumed the next day. We took a break to Minorca sailing where we left the glorious English sunshine for a week of rain and strong wind in the Balearics to polish us for the season ahead.
Next Northern Circuit open Bassenthwaite – camping next to the club was a giggle and the sailing was good – if challenging. The evening social was monumental with the 400 fleet helping to remove the clubs stock of draft anything and Joe H. wining the pool competition. Team Scouse lead the way in the bar and assisted by Team Elton who showed the curious how to mix snakebite and black with vodka. The evening blurs at this point… Next day saw more great racing with the Martians winning the event overall. National Championships in August at Exmouth – with a welcome if “back-to-basics” approach to camping on the nearby rugby club pitch. Fantastic sailing over the week with nightly socials made this an event not to miss. Racing was tightly packed with the usual mini-competitions through gold, silver and bronze fleets – and we were piped by one place for winning the bronze – never mind – next year…	Start action at this years Nationals ©Mike Rice
Final Northern event of the year at the home club – Windermere. Complex winds on the first day didn’t favour the local fleet any more than the visitors and a couple of OCS taking a swipe at the more eager starters saw Chris and June take the top prize of the weekend. Just preparing now for some winter sailing and planning for 2009…
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