RS Tera Southern Squads 25/26 Weekend 4 - BSC

It was our fourth weekend training session and we went to Burghfield Sailing Club and hosted alongside the Andrew Simpson Centre. The focus was mark roundings and building our routines and approaches to gain the most around this pinch point of the race course.

We had a contrasting forecast across both days with Saturday presenting lighter conditions with sunny blue skies and the Sunday with 18-25 knots with rain and freezing conditions. It was quite a shock when we arrived to the lub Sunday morning with the reservoir frozen over!

Find out your routine

We should have two routines coming into marks, a routine for the windward mark and one for the leeward mark. The sailors over the weekend tested out a set routine they created each morning for both marks starting from about 10-6 boats lengths from the mark to actually rounding. There were key tests explored by both the Pro and Sport fleet which was how different heel and different trim can either positively or negatively benefit the rounding.

Transitioning between legs

When going from upwind to downwind:

• One key term over the weekend was "getting comfy". We want a quick transition and as soon as we are around the windward mark, we need the boat settled and set for maximum speed downwind in as few boats lengths as possible.

• The squad explored when to alter their settings as there are different factors which would change when to do this such as: position in the fleet, wind conditions and angle to the mark.

When going from downwind to upwind:

• Think how busy is the mark and are we able to get a smooth mark rounding - get close enough to touch the mark with our hand.

• Think how are we coming out of the mark: are we tacking almost straight away, straight setting, tacking a few boat lengths off the mark.

• Our eyes are CONSTANTLY on the mark as we round to make sure it is perfect.

Rules recap

We went through a number of different scenarios coming into marks to highlight different outcomes and the biggest takeaways were:

1. Linking proper course to the marks

2. How a protest can move from boat to boat

3. The 'corridor' a boat on the inside is given to round a mark

We had an exercise of mass mark roundings at the leeward mark and a key tactic used and made by sailors was if you are the outside boat, try to slow yourself down and follow the pack on the inside track.

We are now well into our winter training for the southern squad and have a bit of a break coming up so keep up the good work if you can get out on the water in the mean time and work on points we have covered in the squad.

For questions or extra insight, get in touch at dylan@apexsailing.co.uk or follow @apex_sailing on Instagram and Facebook.