UKLA Chair blog #65
I went for a short sail in Portland Harbour on Sunday morning. My son was doing some UKLA training and I started thinking about sailing downwind in waves.
If you can surf or half-surf on a wave you get a speed surge and that is quite important if you are racing 😊. Unless it is quite windy, waves pass under the boat, so it is all about how to better catch the wave. Firstly, your fore and aft body position is important. If your weight is too far back in the boat, it stern digs in and the boat are less likely to skid down the wave, so getting the weight forward facilitates more surfing. Of course, in steeper waves and windier conditions, the bow of the boat is likely to bury itself, filling the cockpit with water (which is very slow) so moving back in the boat is important. Then in some conditions you will need to move forward and then back all on the same wave.
Moving on from that, the faster the boat is moving, the better the chance of catching a wave and this brings us to upturns, downturns and so-called S turns. An ILCA on a broad reach or sailing by the lee is quicker than running dead downwind, so setting either course with a bit of extra speed means as you turn dead downwind you are more likely to catch the wave. To facilitate the turning, you heel the boat – heeling the boat to leeward helps steer the upturn on to a broad reach and heeling to windward helps steer the downturn as far as sailing by the lee. Linking this steering together is where the term S turn comes from. Of course, it is not as easy as that.
There is Rule 42 – Propulsion which allows actions like rocking and pumping only in certain cases (Rule 42 is probably the subject on another blog). Specifically heeling to windward to facilitate bearing away and heeling to leeward to facilitate heading up are permitted but repeated rolling not linked to wave patterns is prohibited even if the boat changes course with each roll. This means that if you getting the timing of your rolling wrong, you are breaking the rules, which is difficult if you are still learning how to do it competently. Also if there are not waves (e.g. many inland venues) then repeated rolling to facilitate steering is not allowed.
It is also worth mentioning that the degree of turning is different in all three rigs and is probably least pronounced in an ILCA4 as the boat is relatively under-powered.
The description S turn is also not accurate as you have to steer a course that maximises catching the waves and this is likely to be fairly random, looking for the best waves to turn on. It is also complicated by different waves patterns (e.g. cross waves rather those aligned directly with wind), wind shifts and gusts (both of which may help surfing in one direction more than another). Choosing the best course to steer in the waves is something top sailors are continually striving for and not always getting right as it depends on both experience and skill.
And this relates to why Masters sailors are often not as quick in waves and I can relate this to my own experience. This type of sailing in waves started prior to the 1996 Olympics when shorter races with trapezoid courses were introduced. Running before this might have been in the second hour of a two-hour race when the fleet was already well spread out. Now the running downwind starts within 10 or 12 minutes of the start and so it becomes critical to be able run faster. It was in the years leading to 1996 that the core techniques emerged. If you were a Laser sailor in the eighties (as I was) you never learnt these techniques but the nineties we did. I remember being towed upwind for miles to allow long runs back down to develop those skills. By the time of the Games in 1996 I think my running speed was as fast as anyone – check this video from Race 3 (OK it has taken me 65 blogs to mention Race 3 😊) and see how close the fleet were at the windward mark and the end of the first run. I still vividly remember that run as every time I upturned, I saw boats out of the corner on my right eye and every time in downturned I saw boats out of the corner of my left eye – all you could think was don’t miss a wave.
So why am I not so quick running downwind now compared to the younger ILCA7 sailors? Well, I am probably slightly heavier and this does makes a big difference when trying to surf. You also need to be sailing a lot in different conditions to maintain or acquire those skills and I notice this particularly at the end of longer regatta that my downwind speed starts to improve as skills are re-acquired. Developing those skills means having to sail in lots of different waves conditions, and that’s what I was thinking about Sunday morning in Portland Harbour.
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