Beam reaching in high performance cats

US Tornado sailor Charlie Ogletree winner at last week's Princess Sofia Trophy gives his top tips

Charlie Ogletree has recently qualified for the Athens Olympics, where he will crew for John Lovell in the Tornado class, the third successive Games that this team have represented the USA in the cat class. The No.1 US ranked team won Kiel Week last year, and are part of the close-knot tuning partnership with Mitch Booth/Herbert Dercksen and Leigh McMillan/Mark Bulkeley. They have won the US Tornado Nationals seven times, but last October took some time away from Olympic duties to win the Little America's Cup match racing event held in F18HTs. Last week they cleaned up at the Princess Sofia Trophy in Palma and were, up until yesterday, repeating this show of form at the Tornado Worlds, also being held in Palma Bay.

Here Charlie explains the seldom used but still vital techniques for beam reaching in high-performance cats...

Generally it is quickest to sail straight down the rhumb line, barring any windshifts. But if you're expecting a bit of a header, you can sail a little high, and if you take a lift you can afford to free off and take the extra speed.

The most vital ingredients for speed are clear air and clear water, and following right behind the boat in front is generally not the best place to be. Generally you're better to be a boat length to windward or leeward. Ride along in that space and wait for your opportunity. The best place to pounce from is riding on his windward quarter.

One of the common mistakes you see is the wind will drop a knot or two, and the natural reaction is to trim the sheets harder to keep the hull up. This is the exact opposite of what you should do. You should ease the sheet, which straightens the mast and generates more power from the sails. Generally a lull equals a header for a second, in the way that the boat reacts. If you get a bit of a lull, ease the sheets and be patient for a moment. If it's a true header, then you'll soon know, in which case pulling in the sheets is the correct solution.

Generally in a lull, when we're looking to attack, our response is to head up a couple of degrees, to sail a hotter angle, keep our speed up through the lull. This then gets you to windward of the boat ahead, and will discourage them from trying to luff you.

Sail controls

The traveller stays centred at all times, the downhaul stays on tight for strong winds, comes off a couple of notches for medium airs, or is released completely for the light. Easing outhaul we don't worry about, as a flat sail is good. The jib is one of the more overlooked items, but actually one of the most critical. Keep a hand on the jib sheet, whichever of you is not playing the main, so that you can adjust the jib when necessary. You should aim to have the bottom two tell-tails streaming and the top one lifting.

If it's going to be a long reach and is going to require a lot of mainsheet trim, I'll keep the mainsheet and Johnny will focus on steering. On short reaches such as the offset leg on a windward/leeward course, I'll just play the jib and Johnny will play the main.

As for the centreboards, we leave them both all the way down, as the boat needs all the foil it can get. If you’re doing a long reach on a beach cat, however, pull the windward one up. If it's blowing over 20 knots, it’s sometimes good to pull the leeward one up halfway, which allows the boat to side slip. In these conditions you might even want to let the traveller down a bit; the windier it gets the further down it goes.

Spinnaker

Sometimes, when we have overlaid a leeward mark flying the spinnaker, we've found it faster to let the traveller all the way to leeward and keep the spinnaker up. The main kind of waffles, but it seems to work.

Another radical use of the spinnaker, by the way, is upwind in very light airs. We can carry the spinnaker to 60 degrees apparent in light wind. If it's a long leg you would probably hoist it, and then douse it and reach up to the mark. We've experimented with this and seen other people try it when it's blowing zero to two knots to get the boat going. In practice, you don’t get to try this very often in the Tornado because we have a minimum limit of six knots. Every now and then we'll start a race, and the wind will drop out half way, so it's something that people should experiment with. In a complete drifter the gennaker can help you generate your apparent wind.