News & Interest

413 Frostbiting

Laser fleet 413 – Nov 23 scores – fall series – You Tube.

WOW (words of wisdom) Deleveraging…you can’t escape it, even on the weekends…
Those of us who manage money for a living have been reading a lot about deleveraging lately. Deleveraging in the financial sense generally refers to reducing the amount of debt used to finance an investment. It has been argued that overvaluation and excessive leverage being unwound is what has led to the credit crisis and stock market collapse.

In sailboat racing deleveraging refers to reducing the distance between your position and the rhumb line, or your distance from the boat or boats you are competing against. Sailing World doesn’t focus as much on deleveraging as The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times, but leverage and deleveraging is a big part of risk management in sailboat racing. Leverage cuts both ways. When you have leverage and the shift goes your way you are a hero. When you have leverage and the shift goes against you, you are a zero. Hero or Zero, how to be the former and avoid being the latter?

So, what the heck does all this have to do with sailing on Sunday? The mean wind direction was WSW with 20-35 degree shifts and velocity changes of 4-6 knots on a base breeze of about 12-14. The course was very square to the mean wind direction, but 20-35 degree oscillations came through at about 90 – 120 second intervals. This meant that you had to figure out where and when to add leverage and how to keep from blowing up when the shift favored the other side of the course. Adding to the confusion the breeze from the left was not always visible on the water upwind prior to the start. For this reason you had to understand where the oscillations were in the cycle and how much leverage to employ based on where the breeze was in the cycle. Starting in the middle is a pretty good option for minimizing leverage in the early part of the race, but this is not always possible and sometimes it pays big to be at an end as a shift might endure for 60-80% of the time on a beat. On Sunday in a few races it was possible to start near the pin, get a big lefty and tack across the boats on your hip and sail close to the rhumbline for most of the beat.

In most races I tried to start with a decent hole to leeward, often at the seemingly unfavored pin end praying for the lefty to reappear after the start. When I was fortunate enough to get the big lefty I usually tried to use it to get to the middle of the course to reduce my leverage with the guys favoring the top right. In the final race the breeze seemed left, but the timing was such that I thought it was destined to go back right so I favored the boat end. This strategy was bolstered by the fact that my hiking stick broke in half during the first beat of race four. Since I was steering with my mainsheet end as a hiking stick (tied to the stub of a stick that remained) I figured it would be easier to bear off than head up. Thankfully a huge hole opened up near the boat end and I got off cleanly. The shift didn’t go back right, but instead went so far left that I was virtually on the layline. This was pure luck, but thankfully I had no leverage on the course that I was in the center of the beat (geographically) with most of the competition on my weather hip. Keeping the bow down and going fast enabled me to get to the eventual right shift and come out in touch with the leaders. Tacking was not so graceful without the hiking stick, but I came out alive.

Downwind the trick was to stay on starboard for a while and avoid bad air from the boats behind. The wind went further north as we got away from shore, or so it seemed, so I usually maintained starboard until the halfway point and gybed below everyone when I got lifted in a puff. This allowed me to come back at the fleet with a hot angle and great waves. It seemed that this was minimizing the distance sailed (and course leverage) as it was possible to reach on starboard early and gybe onto a port reach later and still be approximately on the rhumbline most of the time.

The last thing I noticed is that everyone was freezing. Thanks to my BARE kiteboarding drysuit, wetsuit socks and Ronstan wetsuit boots, EMS neoprene kayaking gloves under XL dishwashing gloves and a warm hat I was pretty toasty all afternoon. My fingers got a bit cold at times, so between races I pulled the fingers into the middle to allow them to warm up. The neoprene gloves slide easily inside the dishwashing gloves allowing you to go through the “pins and needles” routine and come out the backside with warm hands. It is essential to have good circulation, so be sure to force open drysuit seals between races to allow warm blood to get to your extremities and get dishwashing gloves that are loose enough so as not to constrict blood flow.

That’s it. Happy Thanksgiving.
Steve

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