Catamaran technique series - part 8

Australian Tornado silver medallist John Forbes describes how to race cats in light breeze

John Forbes’s record in Olympic cat racing is unparalleled. Six Tornado world championships, Silver and Bronze Olympic medals with different helmsmen, he only needs the Gold in Athens to complete his set. Here, the Sydneysider tells Andy Rice about his attitude and approach to light winds.

A Tornado sailor said to me and Darren earlier this year, “You guys love light wind.” And I thought, what a strange perception of us. If sailing only took place in light wind, then we probably wouldn't go sailing. I think this guy thought that about us because we won a tricky European Championships in light winds this year at Sardinia.

We’re not slow in the light, but I certainly wouldn’t describe it as our favourite conditions either. We're by no means light as a team. We weigh 151kg combined, compared with, say, Roman Hagara at 138kg. But I don’t think that’s as much of a disadvantage in lighter winds as a lot of cat sailors think.

We don't really share that obsession with weight. Light weight is only really of importance when you’re just starting to step out on to the trapeze. Before that you've got both hulls in the water, and there's enough volume in the Tornado’s hulls to carry a decent weight. And once you get overpowered, of course, then weight becomes an advantage.

So the window of opportunity to make gains is from 7 to 10 knots - it’s a narrow band of advantage for the lightweights. That said, we basically had eight days of that at the Games [in Sydney, where Hagara/Steinacher won Gold and Bundock/Forbes won Silver]. And we have a lot of that wind strength in Europe, especially during the summer. A lot of guys target that wind strength. But we tend to hold our European or World Championships at the beginning or end of the season to get the better breeze.

The main thing for cat sailors to bear in mind in the light, is to get front row on the start line. If there’s one critical lesson, it’s this. You have to be front row at the start and ideally not in the middle of the line, because that really restricts your options. If you're at the boat end you can tack away and maintain clear air. Or if you’re at the pin end you can foot off. Clean air is the priority.

If you're in the second or third row, there's basically nothing, a wall of nothing that you’ll never fight your way through. And in just 3 or 4 knots of wind, it's extremely hard to manoeuvre a cat in those conditions. The Tornado class has its own set of championship rules, and a minimum speed of 6 knots at the start. One of those reasons is that anything below 6 knots is too shifty, and not stable. You also end up finding it very difficult to manoeuvre the cat in the pre-start, so it’s a worthwhile rule to have.

To guarantee the front row, you've got to get in there early, which means you need the skills to be able to hold position for a few minutes if necessary. If you're running down behind the front row looking for a gap at the last minute, there's only two or three knots of breeze for you to work with. You have to be extremely confident that you’re going to find something.

Clear air is the priority over any other consideration at this stage, even coming off the favoured end of the line. If there are loads of people fighting for the best spot, you’ll still come off better than most of them by starting a bit further down the line in more space and clear air.

Once you’re up and running, the key point is not to overtrim the sails. A lot of guys often trim on too hard in the light, but you want to let the boat be free and you want twist. You want to keep the air flowing over the sails for as long as possible. The wind finds it hard to stay attached on a hooked mainsail. Speed is more crucial than pointing in this stuff.

Darren is holding the mainsheet in these conditions, and is playing the main more on feel through the sheet than by looking up at the tell-tails. It’s important to have a system that you’re used to. We run an 8:1 system, with the same Ronstan ratchet block that we’ve used for years. We’ve got used to a particular feel and if we changed anything in the system it would probably throw us off our game slightly. It’s that critical, having the feel for the mainsheet tension.

As far as rig set-up goes, we're a bit different to most people in that we don't touch anything. We run the same tensions in the rigging, we keep the same battens. We're looking for something that works throughout the conditions. We don't have the facility for sidestay or forestay adjustment. We have the swaged fork and bolt them straight down to the deck. Set and forget. Obviously, when you do that it's extremely critical to have everything just right, but we know what we’re looking for. I’ve been sailing with Darren for nine years. We haven't changed the mast in that time, even if the boat has changed radically in other ways such as the gennaker and extra trapeze, but there’s no real reason to change the fundamentals. We've still got the same basic settings that we’ve been using since 1998.

We used to have a facility to pull the rig upright for light conditions, but nine times out of 10 when we changed it, the wind would fill in and we’d be on the wrong set-up. It’s more important to work with one basic setting that will see you through the range, because unless you’ve got God’s telephone number, you’ll never get what the weather forecast predicted.

To see the rest of thedailysail's catamaran series - click here.