Catamaran technique series - part 9

A-Class World champion Glenn Ashby provides insight into how he sails the world's fastest singlehanded cat

It was his first journey overseas and he had only just turned 19 when Glenn Ashby won his first World Championships in the challenging singlehanded A-Class catamaran class. He is also the reigning World Champion, having developed his own sail to win at Martha’s Vineyard. The 26-year-old sailmaker who lives many miles from the sea inland of Melbourne, Australia, has also won five A Class European Championships. And he has stood in for John Forbes (last week’s cat expert), coming second at Barcelona Week and winning the Princess Sofia Trophy at the front end of Darren Bundock’s Tornado. But here, he tells Andy Rice about the secrets of fast A Class sailing.


Preparation

Firstly, you need good kit to be able to compete at the front of the A-Class fleet. I’ve just got a new boat, a German Flyer, in preparation for the next Worlds in February. They’re taking place at New Plymouth, on the north island of New Zealand. I’ve also got my two best masts to take, and I’m making my own sails, so my speed should be fine. My biggest issue is getting enough sailing time before then, and making sure I’m fit enough to push the boat hard. Weight is not too much of an issue because you can find a rig to suit your size. The boats can carry a weight range from 65kg to 90kg. I weigh 80kg.

You need to spend some time making sure your boat is not going to break. Boat maintenance is not my forte, but I've been lucky to have a minimum of boat breakage. I got back from one world championships, and the first three times I went sailing when I got back home, things broke, so I was closer to disaster than I realised at the time. Make sure your boat is in perfect racing order. You can't blame anyone else. If you have a big capsize you might break the mast, but all in all the boats are really strong and can take a big pounding.

The A-Class is actually a very simple boat. You’ve got mainsheet, traveller, cunningham - that's pretty much it - not too different to a Laser really. They're really easy to sail but like many boats, hard to sail fast.


Boat speed

When I get to a regatta I only ever strive to be as fast as the fastest guy in that condition. I want to be a good all rounder. I don't need to be able to blow people away to win the regatta. Just being as good rather than better still gives you the opportunity to race well and be at the front of the fleet. If I can be as fast as the fastest guy I'll be very comfortable.

Having said that, it's actually quite hard to achieve that, to be as fast as the light-weather or strong-wind experts in their favourite conditions. But I've been working really hard on developing my sails to go well in all conditions. And I'm spending a lot of time training in conditions that I'm not very good at, such as light winds. I wouldn’t say it's fun, but if you force yourself to go out in that stuff you'll raise your game. The aim is to raise my game in the light without losing my heavy weather performance.

One of my strengths is being a reasonably good singlehanded sailor, by which I mean I’m pretty self-sufficient. You haven't got a crew to help you move ropes and look around. You have to be mentally switched on 110 per cent of the time. And you need to be physically fit enough to push the boat hard all the time. One of the biggest things I've found over the past couple of years is getting the feel for your boatspeed to the point where you don't have to look at your sail trim.

You need to feel your way into the groove, so you can look around in the big regattas. It's difficult being a sailmaker and stopping yourself from looking at your sails all the time. I used to really spend a lot of time looking at my rig. But when I did that, I’d miss out on some of the basics such as the fleet position or a big shift. These days, when I'm in a serious regatta situation, I don't spend much time looking at my rig at all. I’m looking forwards, looking at shifts and stuff going on up the race track.


Sailing the A Class

They're fun to sail. I've sailed lots of boats and to jump back on the A Class in 15 knots of wind, you can’t beat it. They go high and fast - they're super efficient. Downwind is hard to get used to when you’re used to having a jib. I think of the jib on a cat as being like a supercharger in a car. It force feeds air around the engine - the mainsail. With the A-Class, you can’t steer off the jib, and it's easy to stall the mainsail. I guess it's like the long, narrow wing of a sail-plane compared with the stubby wing of a hang glider. You go fast but if you stall you drop out of the sky. On the A-Class, if you don't keep the airflow up, the boat just stops.

Because the A-Class is so light, it will tell you straight away, it will stop. But it will also accelerate quickly, and it's easy to know when you're in the groove. Because the chord length of the sail is so short, you can attach flow very quickly, and lose it very quickly. They're very good fun to sail like that. You can snap them around a lot downwind, you can turn and surf waves. You've got a 30ft carbon mast, and the boat only weighs 75kg all up. Being smooth on the cat is the key to being fast while still being aggressive.


Sailing upwind

For upwind trim, keep the boat as flat as possible, with the windward hull only just in the air. A lot of people in all forms of catamaran sail with their windward hull too far out of the water. On the A-Class you're on the trapeze in 6 knots of breeze. We’re trapezing and pulling on cunningham before the Tornado is even flying a hull. I sail depowered rather than too powered up. I pull a lot of cunningham on quite early. I prefer to go for speed rather than having any chance of staggering. I'll try to sail the boat high in the groove, but still maintaining as much pace as I can.

I trapeze very low compared with most people. In a wavy venue, my body will hit the water occasionally. But by keeping my body really low and hovering just above the water, I'm getting the most advantage out of being on trapeze. Keeping my body just out of the water is a good sign that I'm sailing at the right angle. I might hit the odd wave, but I figure I make up for that for the rest of the time. If you're high on the trapeze you're not having to concentrate as much on good steering.

Tactically, it’s worth noting that on the A-Class you can afford to tack quite a lot. It will slow down quickly but accelerate just as quickly too. If you go in fast and get through the tack cleanly you’ll be fine. You can sometimes do five or six tacks up the middle and make it pay. So if you practise your tacking it'll give you more options in the racing.


Downwind sailing

The transition from two hulls in the water to going wild is around 8 to 9 knots, so it is this mid-range windspeed that is a real grey area of downwind technique in the A-Class. In these marginal conditions, you'll often find you can make it work on one gybe and not the other. If the waves are coming more across the boat, that's when it pays to go wild in lighter conditions, because you can work the waves more effectively. When you’re going with the waves, just go two hulls and soak as low as you can, and make use of the waves coming from behind to help you surf as deep as possible.

Going from flat very quickly to going wild is particularly important in gusty conditions, because going wild is so much faster when it’s the right time to do it. For this reason, I generally try to go wild earlier than later. You'll come out pretty much the same if it doesn't work, but if it does work you'll make a massive gain. I'll try it even when most people won't. But this is an area you have to practise a lot. Sometimes, you can go straight around someone downwind by flying the hull when he's not. You can get your boat facing almost dead downwind, with the traveller in the middle, by riding the waves and the apparent wind you’ve created. You can sail from 100m behind to 100m in front of somebody, in the space of just 300m.

Crew weight positioning is vital. A lot of people sit too far back a lot of the time, with the transom dragging. The trouble is, when you move forwards in the middle of the trampoline, it becomes really difficult to steer. I’ve adopted the Laser sailor’s style of steering, with the tiller extension jammed under my armpit between my body and my elbow. It allows me to sit that bit further forward in flat water, which makes a really big difference to speed.

Gybing without a spinnaker, the boat reacts a lot differently to most cats. Getting through the gybe and getting reattached flow is crucial. Coming out of the gybe some people will have the rig stalled for too long. They try to get back into wild mode too soon without reattaching flow first. On marginal days without too much wave action, I'll uncleat the traveller and allow it to go all the way out to the end of the track after the gybe, and then gradually pull it back again to the centre. Doing a big mainsheet ease as the boat goes through the gybe and not sheeting on too soon can give you a big gain too. Remember than when you’re singlehanded you have the whole horsepower of the boat in your hand. There’s no spinnaker to haul you along, so think about the effect you’re having on the mainsail, and how you can maximise flow across the sail.