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Friday, May 7, 2010
By Bruce Sherman
Try to minimize the amount of risk you take in sailboat racing and use boat-to-boat tactics to implement a strategic plan that will your boat get to the next mark or around the race course as fast as you can.
Those were among the messages offered by David Dellenbaugh, tactics expert and author of the popular "Speed and Smarts" newsletter, at a presentation sponsored by CYC's Thistle Fleet May 7 at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.
Rusty Lhamon, at the microphone in the foreground, of the Seattle Thistle Fleet, introduced David Dellenbaugh, by the white board, in the auditorium of the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.
The club's Sea Scout group, directed by staff commodore Bill Lieberman, handled refreshments at the gathering. Proceeds from the event went to The Sailing Foundation
Dellenbaugh, who also staged an on-the-water clinic for Thistlers on the day after the presentation, defined risk as exposing yourself to the possibility that you're going to lose something, like another boat or, if you're racing with a handicap, time.
"Everything you do in sailing carries risk," he said. "If you decide to tack there's a risk in going that way rather than this way. If you have a starting line and the windward end is incredibly favored and you start there . . . there's a risk that two boats are going to get great starts and the other 38 are going to have terrible starts."
How much risk a racer is willing to take often depends on where you are in the race or the series. At the beginning of a race or series, good sailors are inclined to take less risk, because if they need to improve their position they have plenty of time to do it.
David Dellenbaugh advised sailors to maximize strategy and minimize tactics on the racecourse.
"My favorite way to think about when you want to take risk is to ask the question, 'Are you happy or not happy?,'" Dellenbaugh said. "If you're happy because you're doing as expected or better, you want to protect what you have and you're less willing to take risk. When you're not happy because you're way back in the fleet, you're willing to take more risk, especially at the end of the race."
Other things that might influence a sailor's willingness to take risk are the amount of confidence they have in their game plan or the amount of boat speed they have compared to their competitors. Also, the best sailors minimize risk by making decisions with a high probability of a positive outcome.
Dellenbaugh made a distinction between racing strategy and tactics. He defined strategy as a plan to get to a mark or around the course as fast as possible, as if there were no other boats to contend with and sailors were participating in a "time trial."
He defined tactics as boat-on-boat moves made relative to the other boats in the fleet. Tactics help skippers implement their strategies, stay ahead of a particular boat they need to beat, or stay between another boat and the finish line at the end of a race.
"Tactics tend to be small-picture, limited in scope, usually with small gains in a relatively narrow area," Dellenbaugh. "We generally want to maximize strategy and minimize tactics . . . Every time you're maneuvering against another boat, you're losing to everybody else in the fleet."