(The wind articles will continue next, but I just had to publish this, since it has been waiting very patiently.)

Don’t ask, don’t tell?
How do you learn to sail better or race faster? The same as “how do you get to Carnegie Hall”, right? “Practice, practice, practice”. Well, yeeeessss, but what about asking questions of those who sail really well? This should be directly productive, but is this behavior acceptable? Should you ask what you want to know, or would it be rude? And, if you were asked to reveal some tidbit of hard-won racing knowledge that helps you to win, should you feel an obligation to share it? What is our community norm for this? When I started racing a year ago, I watched such interchanges and I absorbed a sense that the informal norm was, “don’t ask, don’t tell”. In the rare cases where questions were blurted out in public, the answers were typically pretty vague.

Vin spills wind
But clearly that’s changed. The free gesture packs and advanced racing classes are all signs of it. We can help each other and we can enjoy doing it. I personally like sharing what little I know, or think I know. Although I’m competitive, it means more to me to give than to win. So I’m going to act according to that desire and give away all I’ve learned about my favorite boat: the TruCor Beach Cat. And let me start by thanking Jacqueline Trudeau and Larinda Cordeaux for building such a fun, fast, and fascinating sailboat. Bravo!

1) Bringing Cats to heel
(Apologies to my feline brethren and sistren.) You shift position to balance the Cat, but where is the optimum position, the one that sails fastest? For most monohulls, keeping the mast as upright as possible grabs the most wind and thus sails fastest. Cats are different. Each hull has its own drag. In RL, a catamaran goes fastest on a given course with its windward hull “just kissing the wave tops”. What about in SL? Finding out is hard work. When I first got my Beach Cat, I realized that doing polars was going to be quite daunting: 16 wind angles X 7 sitting positions = 112 runs, just for the solo polars. With crew it would be 16×7x7=784! Needless to say I haven’t asked for volunteers for crewed (crude?) polars. But I did all 112 solos. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds–33 of them capsize right away, which saves time. I won’t post the resulting spreadsheet because those were the days when solo sailors had no jib, so it’s not strictly accurate any more. But it gives a clear message about flying hulls. (Yes, I’ve got to run the solos again with the jib up. Borrriiinnnggg.)

The results show that you’re generally faster with one hull flying. And surprisingly, it need not be the windward hull. Now you know why I ignore the laughter as I sail by on my trapeze at wind 120° with my LEEWARD hull far above the water and my butt getting soaked.
Think “wind-surfer”. What I concluded from the polars is that I should be on the trapeze at all points of sail except 50-70 and 130-150, where I should be hiked at “<” or “>”. The other three, more medial positions on the trampoline were never fastest at any point of sail. Don’t sit there if you’re solo! I guess Bea Woodget may have found the same thing, as her free gesture pack includes only those four outer positions, as does mine. You can find these gestures sets, along with other free sailing goodies, in the “Trudeau Racing” box at the Nantucket Yacht Club in Northport. Look either behind the clubhouse or teleport up to the sail loft. The overlap of our two gesture sets is remarkable. Makes me think there’s hope for me yet.

2) Steer or sheet?
Cory Copeland clued me in to an interesting observation about Takos: they lose ALL thrust while being turned. So you are penalized in a Tako every time you touch the tiller. But there’s no penalty for playing with the sheets in a Tako. So I steer the Tako hard through a turn, then take whatever heading I get and just sheet for it. Once I’m up to speed, I might tweak the steering once or twice and play with the sheet some more. Minimum steering. Again, the Cat is very different–she gets appropriate thrust during turns! So there’s no penalty for playing with your tiller all you want to (except that you might go blind). In fact, you can lash the tiller hard over and go endlessly around in a circle at about half the speed of the wind. Try this in a Tako and you will grind to a halt. In practice, this means I steer constantly on my Cat, instead of tweaking the sheets. I just set both sails to one of the common wind angles (36, 60, 90, 120, 150) with a gesture, and keep constantly steering to match as well as I can. On longer legs, I use gestures to tweak the sheets in 2° steps so that I can take the most direct path to the next mark. More on gestures below.

3) This side up
Capsizing costs time, yes, but the real penalty is the embarrassment. I mean, I can make a lot of dumb moves on a boat and nobody knows but me, but if I dump it, I’m advertising what a lubber I am. Nothing attracts notice like a sideways Cat. And they mouse over me and say, “OH, it’s Mariani again, the poor idiot”. But no longer. There is a foolproof way to avoid capsizing, even if you’re trapezed on the wrong hull. Ready for it? TURN. Yup, the Cat CANNOT fall over while you are turning. In fact, she will tend to come level during turning, which gets you out of trouble. So, when all hell breaks loose and you are about to go over, just keep turning while you figure out how to straighten out the mess. Turn where? Anywhere! Remember, the Cat still gets thrust during turns. Wiggling port and starboard is good. Or hard over and do a 360° turn. Whatever. Upright is better than sideways. Moving is better than dumped. Since I have learned this, I have never capsized a Cat, except to demonstrate that it can be done.

4) Press here, dummy
One of my alts in RL (I have several) works on user interface design. So I bring that perspective to my design of gestures and FKeys. When sailing in SL, a lot of brainpower is devoted to spatial and trajectory tasks and to eye-hand coordination. This leaves precious little attention left for decoding text, using memory, or doing math. Not to put too fine a point on it, we are all stupid when we are sailing. So I want my gestures to be as simple, visual and accessible as possible. I always make and use pictorial labels as a paper backdrop for all my FKeys. Here is an example for the Beach Cat. Click here for a bigger version you can resize and print. I prop the paper backdrop directly above the keys, lined up with them, so I never have to remember anything. Notice that I try to minimize text, using shapes and colors instead. When I use numbers, I use wind directions, not sail angles. This way I can read a wind direction from the HUD and punch the key that trims for that wind, without all that dividing by 2. The backdrop also shows another principle that I follow: don’t require shift or control keys for time-critical actions. The only exception in this gesture set is the sheet tweak +2. Notice that it is redundant, so it doesn’t matter whether I press shift or control. One less thing to remember.

I’m not saying that this backdrop is the best possible one. But it illustrates my key point: gestures should be mindlessly obvious, because most of your mind is very busy. A note from me, containing all these gestures and the above backdrop, is in the “Trudeau Racing” box I mentioned above.

5) Three little words: I luff you
I can’t believe I’m going to share this—I’ll never win again. If I win a Cat race, it’s usually the same pattern. I’m not always the first to cross the start line, but somehow I’m ahead by the windward mark. Then, if I don’t mess up, I keep exactly that lead for the rest of the course. So the other sailors should ask themselves, “what is he doing differently on the upwind leg?” Answer: I’m secretly luffing you. If you are used to a Tako, you strictly avoid steering upwind at less than 35° because, not only do you lose all thrust, it’s like slamming on the brakes. And that lost speed takes a long time to regain. Any luffing in a Tako is a disaster to be avoided.

But the Cat is different again. Yes, she has no thrust with the wind less than 35°, but she loses speed gradually and accelerates briskly. (This is different from the Fizz 2.02, which would lose NO speed if you kept steering.) So I trim my sails to 18° and steer for 36°. If I see 37 on my HUD, I steer up. If I happen to luff to 34, no big deal; I just twitch the tiller back down a bit. Remember: steer constantly. This is the fastest point of sail for a Cat and I often inch up on the leaders from behind, if they are not sailing quite as close-hauled as I am. And it is easy to get around them: I luff decisively and dodge to windward for a second. This looks like a big stupid steering error, until we tack later and then, “hey, how did Mariani get ahead of me? And now he’s leeward and squeezing me up!” So now you know how I did that. The lesson is simple: aim high and don’t be afraid to luff. Good advice for life in general.

So that’s all I know. Five easy pieces. Nothing would please me more than to have some of you use these ideas to pass me on the water, just so long as you shout “thank you, Vin!” as you leave me behind. Oh, and tell me: what’s your secret?