Regatta, mon amour. The boat is fine, you have spent big bucks to make it glide on the water the best it can. The hull is a bijou, the sails are state-of-the-art and adjusted to the best, you have “filed” all the weights to the bone. In an ideal world, you are ready to win your first regatta. In an ideal world, because in reality you will have to cope with a thousand variables: the cover of your opponents, the start, the buoy turns, the wind shifts.
That’s the beauty of sailing: it’s not enough to have a superboat, you also have to know how to lead and manage it in every situation. We asked Filippo Baldassari, an Olympic finnist (six national titles between Finn and Laser and a gold medal at the World Youth Team Championships), to identify five “highlight” regatta situations in a hypothetical stick course and to give us advice on how to come out on top: not a pretentious guide, but a good starting point for figuring out where to work and checking any gaps. Simply put, the basics of avoiding embarrassment in regattas as told by an ace sailor. The result is this infographic. If you want, download it and hang it in the boat!
FIVE “HOT” SITUATIONS YOU WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH IN THE REGATTA
(AND HOW TO GET OUT OF IT) – click to enlarge image
