I love a windy reach but I love a downwind even more. I sailed in the 70s and early 80s and then stopped until 2010; the new downwind technique is so much fun and more challenging than a reach. Give it a try; you'll get hooked for sure.I guess maybe modern Laser sailing may not be for me. Training off Sydney heads and fanging along in swells and doing major championships in Adelaide and Melbourne with the boom clipping the swells to leeward is still a very fond memory. Getting the boat flat enought to bear away for a super long swell was very good training. As for tactics and position changes, I remember the gun sailors being able to sail through people to leeward and I was pretty quick and sometimes made up over 10 places if I got the tactics right. In one states I was buried (I was very rusty) and there was Glen Bourke next to me, very deep. By the end of the reaches he was at the front and I was further back. Reaches were a great spot for a good sailor to get through a mass of boats to leeward, that bit where the mob comes down slow and low at the end and you come in from below, with a boatlength to spare and gybe clear in front of the group, what a thrill. Best of all was the close quarter fanging, bows down, weight back, and just blatting along working out whether to go over or through, waiting for a wave to sail deeper and get through the lee. If I can't recreate the amazing rides of my youth in my youth, I should probably go race sports boats or train for Tasars, they still have long reaches.
Those are wonderful conditions, of course. But relatively few regattas are run in conditions like that.I guess maybe modern Laser sailing may not be for me. Training off Sydney heads and fanging along in swells and doing major championships in Adelaide and Melbourne with the boom clipping the swells to leeward is still a very fond memory. Getting the boat flat enought to bear away for a super long swell was very good training. As for tactics and position changes, I remember the gun sailors being able to sail through people to leeward and I was pretty quick and sometimes made up over 10 places if I got the tactics right. In one states I was buried (I was very rusty) and there was Glen Bourke next to me, very deep. By the end of the reaches he was at the front and I was further back. Reaches were a great spot for a good sailor to get through a mass of boats to leeward, that bit where the mob comes down slow and low at the end and you come in from below, with a boatlength to spare and gybe clear in front of the group, what a thrill. Best of all was the close quarter fanging, bows down, weight back, and just blatting along working out whether to go over or through, waiting for a wave to sail deeper and get through the lee. If I can't recreate the amazing rides of my youth in my youth, I should probably go race sports boats or train for Tasars, they still have long reaches.