The Keys To Speed

JustLaxin

New Member
What are the five MOST important keys to speed(in order). I am five foot two and weight 100 pounds if that helps.

1) ?
2) ?
3) ?
4) ?
5) ?

-Thanks
 
Trim
Balance
Sail Tuning
Centreboard
Course

The RYA (UK national authority) calls them the "5 Essentials" when we teach kids to sail. They apply equally well to racers. Improve your 5 Essentials and your boatspeed will increase. They are the only 5 things Ben Aislie does better than the rest of us...
 
What if we presume that what was meant by "speed" was not just instantaneous velocity, but the ultimate result - winning - or average speed over the course...

Then, it could be argued that the top five factors are:
1) Intelligence
2) Strategy
3) Technique
4) Experience
5) Physique

The first three are obviously cerebral. That may be "acceptable" or totally unacceptable, depending on where you are coming from and where you want to go. :)

I rate experience (practice) further down since you can go out and practice bad trim, bad tuning, bad strategies, etc.

Sailing technique (trim, balance, tuning, kinetıcs, etc.) is rated lower than strategy since gybing or tacking better or planing sooner and longer can gain you several boatlengths while going in the wrong direction or not knowing what "tacking on a header" means may cost you half a leg.

"Intelligence" - your ability to distill and learn fıom your own and others' knowledge base and experiences - of course leads the list.

We all lack some of these five factors, and compensate for them by capitalizing on what we have and what we can improve on most efficiently.

:))))

Shevy
 
The most important factor must be an ability to learn and improve your sailing, because we all start at the bottom and (try to at least) work up the fleet. Sailing is often described as a game of risk assessment, this is an idea I completely agree with, especially on the upwind legs, but Laser sailing does have a habit of turning into drag race - where all the boats sail around in a pack and rely on superior boat speed. (At least the UK nationals fit this pattern.) Upwind strategy is somewhat of a difficult concept to excel at because anybody can see which side is favoured, or sail the shifts up the middle and get to the top mark in the top end of the fleet.

What it comes down to is how you classify the different skills that make up sailing (eg starting, sail tuning, trim, tactics, strategy, rules etc etc) into groups.

Most sailing can be improved with practice. This experience decreases the amount you have to rely on your ability to adapt to different situations because you have a collection of known scenarios which you can apply. This experience therefore allows you to concentrate on what changes every race: boat to boat tactics, boat to group etc and wind shifts etc. To further this experience, a routine is good. Get into a strict set of steps before the start and try to get it so it becomes automatic:

Strategy assessmant.
Timers etc
Check course.
Line bias
etc etc
 
Pease try to refrain from comments like that, we're all trying hard to make relations better and forgive previous actions/sayings. All in all, no doubt will Shevy's presence enhance The Laser Forum
 

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