Got a new boat and trying to get to grips with its foibles?

Paul Brotherton recommends the holistic approach

Q: We have recently bought a new RS800 and absolutely love it. But we are having difficulty keeping it upright! Please help!

A: The trick is to learn to walk before you attempt to run!

There are several areas that need working on whenever you step into a new class of boat. Well before attempting any difficult manoeuvres, you must first attempt to understand the boat.

Learn to Listen

Just as good human relations rely on listening, so do good boat skills. The boat will be constantly giving the crew (the team) feedback. This feedback mainly comes through the rudder; every push or pull from the rudder via the tiller gives us essential information on the boat’s balance.

I define the boat as being in balance when it has a neutral feel on the rudder - the tiller is not pushing or pulling in your hand. This indicates that the centre of lateral resistance (or underwater pivot point) is directly in line with the centre of effort of the rig (above water push point) - and this is perfect balance.

But don’t worry about the fancy names. What you need to know is what effect changing the sail trim, heel angle, crew position and so forth, have on the balance of the boat. And the feel of the rudder will give you tangible evidence as to how each of these things affects the balance.

Developing this skill for listening to the boat through the feel of the tiller will allow a team to understand the boat’s personality. For example, it may be that jib trim downwind makes little difference to balance, but heel angle makes a huge difference. This would allow you to deduce that getting the correct heel angle was far more important than worrying about two or three inches of jib trim.

This exercise should be repeated through all the variables until a priority list, or personality profile is drawn up. Remember that the priority will change for each angle of sailing, i.e. if jib trim has little effect on balance downwind, it does not mean that the same would be true upwind.

Some Exercises

The helm and crew sit on the racks (ideally in about 8 to 15 knots). Sail at a comfortable reaching angle with both sails pulling and a neutral helm i.e. as little pull/push as is possible. In my experience, I would expect the boat to be almost flat to allow this neutral feel. Then slowly move inboard from the racks together. As the boat heels there will be a pull on the rudder that unless resisted will turn the boat towards the breeze. Conversely, hiking harder will cause the boat to heel to windward, the tiller will start pushing and the boat will automatically attempt to bear away, unless some correction is applied. Now you know how heel angle affects balance.

Work through mainsail trim, jib trim, spinnaker trim, heel angle, kicker, cunningham and outhaul on each (relevant) angle of sailing - all of which will affect balance and the feel of the rudder. Those which affect balance the most become your Number 1 Priority on that angle of sailing. And visa versa, the factor that has the smallest affect on balance becomes the least important.

By attending to the priorities when the boat is out of balance, you are much more likely to keep it upright.

If this all sounds like absolutely basic stuff, that’s because it is. The reason it’s so difficult to maintain good balance, especially in a quick and sensitive boat like the RS800, comes from the variables: changes in wind strength (gust or lull); changes in wind direction (header or lift); waves; other boats

When you consider how long the wind blows from exactly the same direction at exactly the same strength (probably not even two or three seconds) you start to get a feel for how hard it is to retain balance.

Learning specifics about boat handling and manoeuvres is all very well, but your ultimate aim must be to develop an automatic awareness of the boat’s balance and how each movement or control adjustment affects that balance. Therein lies your challenge. After that, keeping the boat upright will become a reflex reaction.