will162878
New Member
What 5 pieces of advice would you give a sailor who has just bought a Laser and is going to start club racing?
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Tips for New Laser Sailors
- Thread starter will162878
- Start date
phantomdarkness
New Member
hmmm, what kinda shape is the boat in??
will162878
New Member
Perfect condition.
My advice (mostly learned the hard way):
-Don't spend any time reading about advanced Laser sailing/racing topics until you've spent a lot of time on the water.
-When you do start reading about advanced techniques, practice one thing at a time. Go back and re-read after you've practiced it. Repeat.
-Race as often as you can and don't worry about how you do. Don't practice new stuff in a race. Try to sail with whatever instincts you've developed and keep your eyes out of the boat.
-Assume you'll end up swimming and yell a great big "Woohoo!" every time you do (don't be afraid of a honkin' blow).
-Don't befriend anyone who attributes a competitor's success to a "fast boat".
-Don't spend any time reading about advanced Laser sailing/racing topics until you've spent a lot of time on the water.
-When you do start reading about advanced techniques, practice one thing at a time. Go back and re-read after you've practiced it. Repeat.
-Race as often as you can and don't worry about how you do. Don't practice new stuff in a race. Try to sail with whatever instincts you've developed and keep your eyes out of the boat.
-Assume you'll end up swimming and yell a great big "Woohoo!" every time you do (don't be afraid of a honkin' blow).
-Don't befriend anyone who attributes a competitor's success to a "fast boat".
I started sailing last summer in my laser, and started racing this summer.
My suggestions would depend on your experiance:
If you've never sailed alone before, it definately helps if someone can follow your around in a dinghy and give you tips.
Best thing to do is to just go out and sail around for a while, all differant points of sail. Upwind, dead downwind, differant reaches. Don't be afriad to capsize, its good on a hot day. Just keep going out in differant conditions and try to get faster, keep adjusting things till it feels right. Practice gybing without catching the mainsheet on the corners (Sheet in faster!)
Later on, you can start practicing accelerating from a stop, slowing or going backwards, stopping. All this is key to starting in a race. Also learn basic roll tacking, you don't really need roll gybing at first, but roll tacking is really helpful. It would probably be good to get a few lessons or a coach to help you with this, and just look over your general sailing style.
Practice rounding a bouy or mooring going from upwind to a reach, and from a reach to upwind.
In your first race, do things with low risk, don't over analyze, just get used to the angles the course of the course, start from the middle of the line. It may bet that one end or the other is heavily favored, but in your first race you probably won't be able to get it, so it would be better to start on the line in good air on time, than late in bad air to the favored end. Just hit the middle.
If in doubt of the rules, stay out of someone's way. Round the mark with a few feet to spare. Don't try anything that would lead to capsizing! Going slow through a gybe is better than swimming in a race.
My suggestions would depend on your experiance:
If you've never sailed alone before, it definately helps if someone can follow your around in a dinghy and give you tips.
Best thing to do is to just go out and sail around for a while, all differant points of sail. Upwind, dead downwind, differant reaches. Don't be afriad to capsize, its good on a hot day. Just keep going out in differant conditions and try to get faster, keep adjusting things till it feels right. Practice gybing without catching the mainsheet on the corners (Sheet in faster!)
Later on, you can start practicing accelerating from a stop, slowing or going backwards, stopping. All this is key to starting in a race. Also learn basic roll tacking, you don't really need roll gybing at first, but roll tacking is really helpful. It would probably be good to get a few lessons or a coach to help you with this, and just look over your general sailing style.
Practice rounding a bouy or mooring going from upwind to a reach, and from a reach to upwind.
In your first race, do things with low risk, don't over analyze, just get used to the angles the course of the course, start from the middle of the line. It may bet that one end or the other is heavily favored, but in your first race you probably won't be able to get it, so it would be better to start on the line in good air on time, than late in bad air to the favored end. Just hit the middle.
If in doubt of the rules, stay out of someone's way. Round the mark with a few feet to spare. Don't try anything that would lead to capsizing! Going slow through a gybe is better than swimming in a race.