How to slow down a racing boat. The 10 secrets of not winning

The ten secrets of not winning a regatta in Marco Cohen’s strictly semi-serious handbook*. And if you win…rest assured: it was just a fluke! Read on and let us know with a nice comment if you recognize yourself in any of the situations described…

Crocieristi, who go out with the boat with full water in the tanks and spare tanks full of diesel fuel, amateur sailors who out of laziness leave your sails rolled for longer periods than the 180-day payments given invoice by your worst customers, know that this piece is not for you.

How to slow down a racing boat

Instead, I turn to you, racers and owners, you still hopefuls with competitive ambitions, obviously not ORC World Championships, but eager to excel in mid/high-level club competitions, perhaps outperforming your fierce dock neighbor.

I know what you’re thinking, you’ve read all kinds of guides on “tuning” and the secrets of the experts and the velaires… but I ask you to follow me in my tortuous reasoning inspired by that scatterbrained Mad Hatter Hatter Hatter. In Alice’s Wonderful Land, he owned numerous clocks that marked the days and months but not the hours, making them essentially useless for real life and daily decisions.

I have summarized in this article the 10 basic points, the cornerstones for slowing down a racing boat so as to minimize the chances of winning. And should you win, don’t panic. This is pure chance (see point 1). Happy reading!

1. Victory (sooner or later, and perhaps) will come

I start with good news: even a broken clock twice a day tells the correct time. Similarly for you, even if you are wrong all the time, sooner or later, the moment of victory will come.

2. The mystery of regatta adjustments

You know those cool racing boats full of notches and cleats with numbers from the boom to the sheet points to the different adjustments scattered around the boat in the form of stickers? “35 degrees of wind, 18 degrees of slope; 12 knots of apparent trolley jib hole 4” and so on… Here my boat is full of them, with marks and notes left by the previous owner, a Breton and solo sailor. Real people, in short. Of course if I could remember where the heck I put them…. “Sorry it doesn’t look like you’re wearing well, has anyone seen the charts?”, I yell halfway up the first windward mark.

Response, “The last time I saw them they were in the chart table,” and since the last time of the talking tailer was the 2019 Giraglia pre-covid…never mind. We fucking move a couple of marks and at that point one remembers and says, “Hole 4–but was it 4 to count from the stern or from the bow which in the case is hole 6 instead?” The exciting discussion, which meanwhile distracts 80 percent of the crew from their tasks, is abruptly interrupted by the approach to the first mark on the slack side.

3. The tension of the “eternal” shrouds.

A case in point deserves the shroud and forestay tension table, which I wisely had sealed under plastic and which has been watching us from time immemorial near the outer space beside the compass.

For reasons of deviance and psychological turbulence, which I still can’t explain…and having put the tensiometer in the same compartment as the spare corkscrew, so that we can always find it, no one has ever bothered to measure and adjust them…we’ve been in medium wind trim since the last Champions Of the Inter…

4. Weights-these unknowns

The definitive phrase on the subject was said by our great sailor Roberto Westermann, who one day exclaimed as he looked at the cockpit overrun with our luggage before a long race, “I have never seen so much luggage it looks like British Airways check-in.”

I always thought weight-saving was the stuff of exalted people. Until one day (moreover it was post 151 Miglia and Giraglia) we had to completely empty my Mat 10.10 Dajenu, to do ORC International tonnage to participate in the Copa del Rey in Palma. Profanity and witch’s blows aside…we saw the submarine-style boat resurface with the classic bow knee drawn by the pencil of magician Mark Mills: wow!

5. Ghosts in the galley

I would like to talk only about solid foods, because on alcohol consumption on board I rely on the Fifth Amendment, the same one that covers me on part of the competitive results. Speaking of which: I would ask the GdV the courtesy of publishing only the names of the winners in the regatta reports, avoiding voyeuristic glances at the bottom of the rankings. So to the classic “How did it go?”, I will be able to answer “Good, mid-table.”

However, I was saying, there is a universal law in the galley: the things you bring into the boat do not re-escape on their own. So when in preparation for long transfers and overnight regattas you load up the supermarket boat with long-expiration products, remember that you might then make interesting archaeological finds such as the 12 precious packages of Rio Mare Insalatissime rediscovered under the cabinet intact and absolutely edible 24 months after purchase…

6. How (not) to train before the regatta

Training. From the dictionary: “specific and methodical preparation apt to achieve the maintenance of efficiency at a sports test or competition.” And here I call on the readers of the Sailing Newspaper and appeal to their sensibilities: but who the heck has time to do this before a regatta or a series of competitions that take you away from your family and workplace…at most it should be done during!

7. If you sail badly, you will do worse in the stern

Here we are somewhere between physical and metaphysical laws. A cross between the law Of motion on an inclined plane, in which as it progresses the body takes on more and more speed: in our case you goes backwards, obviously slowing down….

Murphy’s famous law I would I would paraphrase it this way, “If you are a dog at upwind, at the first buoy with the hoisting of the gennaker will be worse.”

8. Fucking around is the best reward in racing

Psychological concentration. Here I reveal a little trick that I hope you will enjoy. Too tiring to keep your concentration up, especially if you’re at the helm like me. Too time-consuming and complex to stay focused for the duration of a regatta (coastal or triangle).

As with chocolate bars divided into many blocks, I divide the route into smaller parts: I decide to deserve, at the end of each one, a moment or moments for comments, small joys (perhaps for an opponent overcome), a glass of wine, admiring the scenery, and so on. Do it too, and you will see that a hundred meters lost will not take away from you.

9. In regatta, follow others. Even if they are wrong

Why focus on your own boat when you can look at others? Natural consequence of point 8. Few things send my crew into a frenzy like this. Kind of like those (me first) who, even if you see a dead-end road with ravine on the navigator, they still turn because they can’t help but follow it.

For years, I confess, I have been obsessed with a boatload of sailors local tigullini (like the renowned stracchino from the Chiavari Milk Plant): the X-332 Aria di Burrasca by Franco Salmoiraghi and, although I could see clearly spots of reinforcement offshore I followed them in the shoreward edge.

10. Share and be envied

When you are doing, for once, one thing well in the boat, before you continue post it. “Stop a moment you’re beautiful,” more or less said Goethe’s Faust, who obviously did not have Instagram: but if he had I’m sure he would have been the first to want to share it with his Teutonic buddies. Plus his would have been between Frankfurt and Weimar….

Do you want to put mine who often stay in Milan in the office while I sail in the middle of the sea and in the middle of the week?

*Who is Marco Cohen

Marco Cohen, film producer and sailor, owner of the Mat 10.10 Dajenu with which he enjoys racing (with little success, he confesses) between the Tigullio Gulf and the Mediterranean, describes himself as follows: “Interist, philosopher, size 54 and in good times 56. I re-embraced sailing at the age of 37 after yet another soccer injury, when I realized that it is the only sport you can do sitting down and with a glass in your hand.

He has written several articles for the Journal of Sailing, some of them hilarious, such as the one on the “phenomenology of the Winter Championship” or the one on the “owner’s syndrome” and his handbook for participating in offshore regattas knowing you will lose.