Very slow upwind - possible reasons?

cabalar

New Member
Hi all,

it's the second time I ask something similar, but I'm getting a bit desperate. I'm making a horrible performance in upwind legs, especially with medium wind (11-15 knots) and choppy water. By "horrible" I mean that even making a good start, I'm the last boat after the first 200 meters.

In my last regata, I was the last one among 7 lasers in all of 6 races with a huge difference with respect to the next boat. In a pair of cases, 2 or 3 boats of the radial fleet overtook me (their start was 5 minutes after standard!).

I could observe that my hull seems wavier than the others. I also got some water inside. In the beginning, I thought it could be due to a wrong trimming or sailing, but less experienced sailors also did better than me. One of them could even afford a pair of capsizes and I could not caught him anyway. So I'm mostly convinced that my boat has something wrong...

Can anybody suggest me what to focus on? What would you do?

Pedro
 
Unfortunately I don't think you can blame the boat for that kind of gap to the fleet, unless it is obviously very different from everyone elses....Most likely is operator error.

Maybe you're pinching, try sailing it a bit fatter.
Read everything you can about trim, and then try to apply it. There is a huge amount of info out there.
Fight for clear air, although once you've lost contact wit the fleet this should not be your issue.
Learn why the boats on one tack are going the 'righ' way, and all the boats on the other tack are going the 'wrong' way.

It really is impossible to dianose on the internet. Perhaps you should pay somebody to critique your technique, or make friends with the fast guys and ask them for some tips.

Good luck, and stick with it.
We all suck at the beginning!
 
Is your boat very heavy, or did you forget to put the plug in?

Other than that, I suggest that you sail side by side with another person and see what you are doing differently/wrong. You can do this as a training exercise or in between races, if there is time for that.

PS: As was mentioned, unless you are a true natural, we have all been in the back of the fleet. Often, I still am :(.
 
One of them (the one who observed that the hull was weighty) has directly suggested me to sell my boat and buy something else.

Of course, when you're the last boat, nobody "observes" the way you sail :-( I don't think I pinch too much: perhaps the problem can be the opposite one, I don't know. I just can tell that going right behind another boat and repeating all the tacks and movements, it immediately gets far, far away.

I'm not completely unexperienced: I've been sailing a laser for 3 or 4 years. As I told before, other sailors with less experience perform better. With strong wind, or very light wind, or with shorter sailing fields, I don't have such a big disadvantage. Downwind I more or less maintain the distance (I even get closer or catch the last boats).
 
Are you keeping the boat flat? Your avatar shows otherwise, but that's only a picture, I know.
 
Have you weighed your boat? How old is it? How much water drains out of it after a day of sailing?

Weee. My 1,000th post!
 
the setup of the sail could be a small difference, how is ur cunningham and outhaul setup when going upwind, u could have everything to tight/ loose?
it might even be your blades, are they in good condition?
 
When it's choppy you need more vang and less outhaul on than flat water. Make sure you're moving your body a lot. Sometimes it helps if you just watch good sailors. Maybe take a day off and watch the people in the front of the fleet from on shore or try and get a video of good sailors. The Boat Wisperer is good.
 
I'm making a horrible performance in upwind legs, especially with medium wind (11-15 knots) and choppy water. By "horrible" I mean that even making a good start, I'm the last boat after the first 200 meters.

First thing to do is relax. You're not the first to struggle and won't be the last. If you feel uptight before a race, do whatever you have to unwind - whatever you have to. If you get that tight knotted feeling in your stomach you're more likely to overtrim everything and hike harder to compensate.
The thing most people forget by never have been at the back of the fleet is you have heaps of time to watch the strategy of the forward pack, and it usually gets stale and old and stagnates. Remember what you see, because soon you'll get closer and know what they're likely to do in any given situation.

In my last regata, I was the last one among 7 lasers in all of 6 races with a huge difference with respect to the next boat. In a pair of cases, 2 or 3 boats of the radial fleet overtook me (their start was 5 minutes after standard!).

I could observe that my hull seems wavier than the others. I also got some water inside. In the beginning, I thought it could be due to a wrong trimming or sailing, but less experienced sailors also did better than me. One of them could even afford a pair of capsizes and I could not caught him anyway. So I'm mostly convinced that my boat has something wrong...

Can anybody suggest me what to focus on? What would you do?

Pedro

First simple thing is to drain your boat from the inside. Wiegh it and discover if you have a serious weight dis-advantage. Second thing is to make sure your bailer works flawlessly. Third thing is to set your outhaul to about your palm's length from the boom at it's maximum depth. Pull on your vang till the boom looks like it's tilted just a bit lower than perfectly horizontal. Pull on enough cunningham to take the wrinkles out of the luff. Then adjust your footstrap as tight as it will go. Then go sailing and everytime you get over-powered, let the main out to bring you flat. Once you're flat, trim it in a bit more, watching that the end of the tiller never goes a few inches away from the traveller cleat. If it does, let a bit of sheet out - a very little bit. Get used to trimming by inches rather than feet. Feel how the sheet effects the tiller psotion and the trim of the boat. Do that for a couple of hours or so, forget about sail controls and just feel how the boat accelerates and balances.
 
It's definately worth sailing with a buddy. Sail a beat swap boats and do it again.
That should tell you if the problem is the boat, your technique, or a bit of both.
Sailing one to one really helped me.
Good luck
 
1. Could body size be involved? How tall are you and how much do you weigh? I am 5'6" and 130 lbs. and sail a Radial. I typically sail against these other Radial sailors: 35 yrs/6'2"/160 lbs./male, 59/6'0'/155/male, 60/5'8"/150/male, and 17/5'8"/160/female (ages, heights, and weights are best guesses). Against other Radials, I find that in light air I keep up with the fleet going upwind, even the most experienced sailors; yeah, it feels good for a 43 year old guy who's been sailing for only 4 years to hit the windward mark the folks with 20+ years experience sailing dinghies. In moderate wind (10 mph'ish), I do ok in fairly flat water, but I have to work a lot harder than the others who are taller and weigh more. It really feels funny hiking hard upwind while I see that 17 yr old girl sitting upwright. If it's wavy/choppy, I make sure I catch the tops of waves and dig in with the foils by hiking out with a bit of force just as the wave starts passing under the hull, trying to shoot from wave-peak to wave peak without slamming into the wave face. Coincidentally, I learned that technique by transferring my whitewater kayaking knowledge to my sailing. When I go through a wave train in the kayak, I aim to dig into the green water at the wave peaks to pull myself across the wave, instead of having to pull myself against gravity by digging in with the paddle too soon. In heavy wind (for me 20ish), I really struggle to keep up, and have to work hard to not capsize to windward after tacking. I've gotten better in heavy wind, but when the waves are high and have very short periods, or are very choppy, I have to time my tacks perfectly, or else my low body weight is not enough to keep the boat from doing all sorts of uncontrolled movements.

2. Another biggie thing I learned is to adjust where I sit. In lighter wind, the sweet spot, the best place to put your weight to keep the boat balanced, is far forward, like with your fore-buttcheek in line with the centerboard well. As the wind increases, I slide back inch by inch till I find the new sweet spot. If you sit too far back under any condition, the boat will not be balanced and you'll have a tendency to overwork the tiller, thus creating drag, which is bad bad bad, and takes a lot of energy. If the wind is puffy, I find a good average "sweet spot" and move my hiked out upper body fore/aft to adjust for the wind variations, i.e., steering with my body. Even a change in boat speed might necessitate some balance adjustment. The most important factor is to find the sweet spot by positioning your butt where the tiller stays straight and you don't have to really work it and you can maintain speed with normal sheeting and hiking, and then tune by sliding fore/aft to adjust boat balance.
Downwind and on reaches, I FLY! My best conditions are medium wind, on a reach or downwind with waves to surf. Knowing how to kayak and surf waves has given me a good advantage downwind/reaching. Feels great smiling with a "c ya" face at those who were ahead of me on the upwind leg. Downwind, I try my best to give myself an advantage for second upwind legs; we tend to race W2, G2, and O2 courses, and the second W leg is where I either am in the lead enough from my downwind advancement to not lose too much ground or I use tactics to the best of my ability to keep ahead of however many taller/heavier sailors I'm ahead of.
3. And, yes, keep the boat flat! (Ease-hike-Trim...get that mantra into your subconscious!)
 
Hi All,

This is my first posting on this forum! Nice to meet you all...

Pedro - First things first: Don't get discouraged. Nothing sucks more than losing, but it's WAY easier to find lost minutes than it is gaining seconds in a race. There is something fundamentally wrong with either your boat or your set-up or your technique and once you figure out what it is, the gains you make will be huge. Solve this problem and you will be in the pack in no time.

First things first - Check your boat over thoroughly. If need be, take it to a sailing shop and have their rigger/builder look it over. The water in your hulls is a serious problem and needs to be addressed as you aren't going anywhere like this. It could be something as simple as your hull plug is finished and needs to be replaced, or it could be a more serious crack or a delaminating seam – have someone who knows about these things look over your boat. It's not only the extra weight of the water, but also the fact that it sloshes around the hulls that causes problems. Moving your weight around the hulls abruptly destroys your forward momentum, and sloshing water acts the same way...

Next thing - I'm not sure if this is legal on the Laser circuit (I race F-18 cats) but tuning your center-board & rudder is HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't stress this enough: Lightly sand (with very fine sand-paper: 600 - 1000) your center baord until the leading edge is nice and smooth and the trailing edge is sharp. This will eliminate turbulent water from your center board from flowing over your rudder and will not only make it easier to steer, but also will give you gains in speed. Then do the same to your rudder. Once you are done sanding, polish them with some wax and you should notice the difference immediately. Believe me, I have four foils on my boat (2 hulls x a dagger board and rudder on each) and this simple thing is an unbelievable benefit.

Once you've got this worked out, try to get yourself a GPS receiver. My partner and I use one every time we go out training because nothing gets a boat tuned faster and better than knowing exactly how something has affected your speed. We work on one thing at a time to optimize it before we move onto the next and we document EVERYTHING. You can work on technique all you want but if your boat set-up is wrong it will kill you every time - especially in ultra-competitive one-design races. Too, you may be compensating for a bad boat set set-up with incorrect technique and this will lead to forming bad habits that are tough to break.

My last piece of advice is to sail as often as you can. There is no substitute for time spent on the water with your boat...

Try to have fun and stay positive. You'll figure it out one of these days, and when you do your speed will come...

Killer B
 
Thank you for all your answers!

I'm happy to read that, perhaps, the boat is not the problem, or at least, the main problem. I was really sad when thinking about a change of boat.

Is your boat very heavy, or did you forget to put the plug in?

I can't say accurately. I used a home balance and it seems that it could be around 140/143 lbs. The sail number is 102673, so I guess it must be quite old.

As for the water inside the hull, it was the only time I got it. I went sailing a pair of times after that and it didn't happen again, although these times I didn't have waves, and that could be related. But I suspect now that the plug wasn't completely tight.

Are you keeping the boat flat? Your avatar shows otherwise, but that's only a picture, I know.

Ah, good point! Yes, the avatar was taken when I was a beginner. I liked the picture, but of course, I'm not hiking there. Still, by looking at pictures that people took me hiking recently, I had the impression that the boat was not as flat as I felt when onboard. On the other hand, when compared to other lasers, it doesn't look like I have a very different angle.

the setup of the sail could be a small difference, how is ur cunningham and outhaul setup when going upwind, u could have everything to tight/ loose?

Outhaul is, as said by Chainsaw, more or less one palm max. from the boom. Cunnigham not too tight, just a bit of tension. Vang: mine was the only boat with the old system (all the rest used XD controls). I have an extra block and the purchase system described in Tillman's book. It's harder to tight than an XD, but I think that it was more or less as tight as the others'

it might even be your blades, are they in good condition?
....
but tuning your center-board & rudder is HUGE

Nora, Killer B: good point too! No, my centerboard is not in a good condition. It has been painted by a previous owner. It is difficult to raise or move down, and I suspect that it's because it became thicker with the painting layer. Someone told me to remove the painting, sand and polish. On the other hand, it looks like it was painted because of lack of gel coat (some brown areas can be seen below the painting).

Then go sailing and everytime you get over-powered, let the main out to bring you flat. Once you're flat, trim it in a bit more, watching that the end of the tiller never goes a few inches away from the traveller cleat. If it does, let a bit of sheet out - a very little bit. Get used to trimming by inches rather than feet. Feel how the sheet effects the tiller psotion and the trim of the boat. Do that for a couple of hours or so, forget about sail controls and just feel how the boat accelerates and balances.

I more or less know the theory... I must try to avoid weather helm: no pressure on the tiller and so. But one question:

When I a puff comes I can (1) sheet out so the boat goes in the same direction and with the same inclination. But a second choice (2) is that I can head up, so the windward tell tales begin moving up and I don't sheet out (I can maintain the boom block-to-block). What's better?

Could body size be involved? How tall are you and how much do you weigh?

Weight: 187 lbs, Height: 5'9". But we had all kind of "bodies" in the fleet: short and heavy, tall and heavy, tall and light...

First thing to do is relax. You're not the first to struggle and won't be the last.
...
Don't get discouraged. Nothing sucks more than losing

Yes, yes, I know: that's what I repeat myself during the race. But when the difference is so much that you can't even catch people capsizing, you really get broken. But I won't surrender ;)
 
When I a puff comes I can (1) sheet out so the boat goes in the same direction and with the same inclination. But a second choice (2) is that I can head up, so the windward tell tales begin moving up and I don't sheet out (I can maintain the boom block-to-block). What's better?

It is much better to ease the main first as you get flat faster and don't losing your speed by heading up into waves.
 
At 140-143 your boat is about 10-13 pounds heavy. Based on the sail number/hull number your boat was built in 1983-84.

Weather you sheet out or head up or use a combination of both in a puff depends on the sea state and if you have enough weight to completly counter act the puff with hard hiking or not.

Put an inspection port in your boat and let it dry out. See if you can get the extra 10 lbs out of it.
 
Would definitely recommend you do some paired sailing with someone at your club. Tweaking your rig/looking at each persons technique till you can keep up with the faster sailor. Should really help. I sail a radial and I use to do this with the top full rig sailor at my old club. Now I'm never going to keep up with him but the tips I got this way really helped - to the extent I could take him upwind and almost keep up on a run in moderate winds. There really is no substitute for sailing with someone better than you.
I still do this nowadays (with my boyfriend in his full rig) and he is very quick - I can't keep up except on very rare occasions but my sailing has improved no end due to all the advice I get from him.
There is only so much advice you can get online as we can't see enough to give you good advice, it all has to be very general advice on here.
 
to really sort out the "is it my boat" issue, can you arrange to swap boats just for a short training session ? Persuade someone to come along a bit early one day. Spend 10 mins (1 short upwind leg) in your own boat sailing against them, then swap boats.
 
Sail trim is huge especially up wind. You are fortunate the posts here have given you great advise (I wish I had when I got started). However, your boat needs a diet. You will find it dificult to be competitive with a boat heavyer than 135 pounds, and unless you are sailing regularly in heavy wind, 15-20 knots, you might find keeping your weight under 175 lbs (max for full rig) will help quite a bit on all points of sail. Having said that, I do know a couple of guys in the 200 lb range who can trim a laser out and make them flat out scoot.
MB
 
I'm one of the 200 pounders. I find that I get exponentially faster when I get under 200 lbs. Once I get to 210 or so it's really hard to be fast in anything under 15 knots.
 
Check something that I found.

I couldn't point when I first had my boat. The mast wasn't bending like others and the cunningham was right down to the boom.

Then I found that the topmast collar rivet had sheared and the collar slipped up the topmast by about 40mm. Refixing it in the correct place made a big difference.
 
Would definitely recommend you do some paired sailing with someone at your club. Tweaking your rig/looking at each persons technique till you can keep up with the faster sailor. Should really help.

In the race there was another sailor with whom I usually sail and he has a similar technique level. Typically, he is slightly faster than me, but has less experience in buoys, tacking/gybing and tactics. We usually sail in shorter fields, so I take benefit from these little advantages to balance my lack of speed. But in that regatta, the field was larger so in each upwind leg I lost any contact with the rest of the fleet.

Again, it may be something I'm doing wrong, or that the boat has some serious problem I can't identify.

to really sort out the "is it my boat" issue, can you arrange to swap boats just for a short training session ? Persuade someone to come along a bit early one day. Spend 10 mins (1 short upwind leg) in your own boat sailing against them, then swap boats.

Yes, that seems a great idea! Although I suspect it is difficult to convince anybody to swap the boat, but I must try this. It would really help me to identify the main problem. Especially if I can manage to try the swap in similar wind/wave conditions

Sail trim is huge especially up wind. You are fortunate the posts here have given you great advise (I wish I had when I got started). However, your boat needs a diet. You will find it dificult to be competitive with a boat heavyer than 135 pounds,

I can try reducing weight by changing lines, blocks, etc. But how could I reduce the hull weight? Sanding?

and unless you are sailing regularly in heavy wind, 15-20 knots, you might find keeping your weight under 175 lbs (max for full rig) will help quite a bit on all points of sail. Having said that, I do know a couple of guys in the 200 lb range who can trim a laser out and make them flat out scoot.
MB

:( I have reduced 22 lbs in 6 months in a more or less "easy" way (I was in the 200 lbs range these Christmas). However, getting below my current weight (185 lbs) seems especially difficult. But, of course, I can try...

Check something that I found.
I couldn't point when I first had my boat. The mast wasn't bending like others and the cunningham was right down to the boom.
Then I found that the topmast collar rivet had sheared and the collar slipped up the topmast by about 40mm. Refixing it in the correct place made a big difference.

Ahhh, reading this I've just remembered another point that could be related. Some months ago, in a heavy wind day, I got a considerable bent in my upper mast section (I forgot to ease the vang downwind). Since then I've been putting the upper mast section with the bent pointing fore, so it has straigthen a bit. If the mast is not bending correctly this could clearly explain the upwind difference.

To sum up, I will try all these things:

1- Change the topmast
2- Sand the centreboard, removing all that extra painting
3- Pay more attention to keep the boat flat
4- Try to swap boats with another sailor

I'll keep you informed if any of these 4 things works (or their combination) so it perhaps could help anybody else.

Thanks again,
Pedro.
 

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