Separation

Kids, mommy and daddy have something to tell you...

No, just kidding! This is about team racing, and to encourage you to start thinking about the separation you either want to gain from a competitor's boat, or that you want to eliminate between yourself and a competitor.

When you are trying to restrict a competitor from maneuvering, you want to minimize separation. If you are 2' away from a boat, they can't gybe without fouling you. If you are 2' away from a boat to leeward and want to gybe, you are going to need to increase the separation. If you want to prevent that boat from gybing, you don't want to let them increase separation.

Sometimes not enough separation from a boat you are trying to control is dangerous. This week already, I have seen a lot (and fallen victim myself) of fouls where a give way boat gets so close to a right of way boat that it can't keep clear (and that's a definition in the rules so it's italicized). When you're beating, and you're the boat to windward trying to slow down boat you have pinned to leeward (as when doing a pass back), you want to make sure you've got enough separation to not drift into that boat. How much is enough? Depends upon the situation.

When you are in a tacking duel, the boat behind wants to create separation enough to keep tacking to accomplish the purpose of the duel. The behind boat's purpose is often to get to the right of the boat ahead with enough separation to come back at the boat ahead on starboard, and gain starboard tack advantage. Oftentimes the boat behind is motivated to just keep tacking to slow the boat ahead, so that a team mate can sail through. You've lost a tacking duel if the boat ahead is able to close down your separation so that you can no longer tack and are pinned.

A boat behind on a run is trying not to get hooked by a boat ahead. The boat behind wants to maintain enough separation to the boat ahead to be able to engage boats behind without being engaged by the boat ahead.

If you get to a stable combination, you are trying to decrease separation to the finish line! The best route to that is generally not letting any of your pairs get too much separation away from your team.

There are a million examples of this in a team race, and they are all pretty straightforward. You might be trying to increase it, you might be trying to decrease it, or you might be trying to maintain it, but in team racing you want to think a whole whole lot about separation.

Trust the process, be patient

This post has been severely edited to make it shorter and better.

When they're learning to walk, babies get frustrated and they cry, but they don't give up. Somewhere deep in their little baby brains, they trust the process. When they fall down, they don't say "screw it, crawling works so well for my needs, I'll just get better at that!"

The sailors among you who are most committed to the process and trust it the most are the ones who will improve the most and get there the fastest.

It's easy to think "ahh, screw it, crawling works out great, I get wherever I need to go, I never fall down, why do I need to learn to walk and go through all that trouble?" From what I see, none of you took that approach as babies. Don't take it now.

Trust the process, falls and frustration and all.