Barely Legal

© Bill Records

Crewing in light air: no pain, no gain.

We’ve all been there. The race starts in a puff, and then that puff dies … and dies … and dies. Sailors in the back of the fleet—and their coaches—start to call the race unfair. The sailors in the front of the fleet, though, aren’t waiting to hear the whistles calling off the race; instead, they’re making every single tack and gybe count more than ever.

Considering the finicky breeze that often graces many college sailing venues, light-air FJ sailing is something that every college dinghy sailor must master if they want to succeed. For crews, this means the correct mixture of delicate movements and explosiveness, and the right mental game. Sailing in under 5 knots can be extremely stressful, but when the momentum that you come out of each maneuver with—and maintaining that momentum until your next maneuver—is so key, you’ve got to keep a cool head.

Pre-start, keeping up your flow and momentum is incredibly important. While you should be communicating with your skipper about where the next puff is and how best to set up for it, you also need to make sure that your boat never stalls out. This means rolling at about 50% while you’re setting up, and maintaining some trim even when you’re “luffing.” Be even more prepared than usual for a double tack on the line if a hole opens up above you, and make sure that you’re in full racing mode by about 15 seconds. If you can come off the line with more speed and a better angle than the boats around you, you’re already winning the race—or at least your side of the course.

If you rock to head up right before GO, make sure that your body movements are perfectly timed with your skipper’s, and that you trim in the jib slowly as your boat heads up to closehauled. Especially in FJs, trimming in the jib too quickly will not only stall you out but also drag the bow down, bringing you closer to the boat to leeward and wasting some of the hole that you just fought so hard to gain. In under 5 knots, you don’t ever want to strap the jib anyway; even when you’re pinching, you need to let your sail breathe a touch or you’ll lose all flow.

For best results, time your body movements with your skipper's. Photo: Bill Records

This constant easing and trimming of your sail is something that crews should be doing the entire beat. When you get a lift, ease your sail and try to shift your weight—delicately—even more to leeward. Then trim back in again once your skipper heads up to the new direction, especially if the new breeze is a velocity lift. All of this easing and trimming is a matter of a few clicks; your movements while you’re traveling in a straight line should be so slight that they’re almost invisible.

Your body weight should be as far forward as possible, while also as low down in the boat as you can crouch to avoid disrupting airflow through the slot. It’s hard to see much of the breeze that’s coming down the course while you’re sitting backwards and trying to stay low in the boat, but you can watch your sail over your shoulder for changes in your apparent wind, and you can talk to your skipper about the fleet—not only about starboard tackers, but also about boats on port tack and relative angles and speeds of boats all over the course. If you’re one of the leaders, you need to be covering as much of the fleet as possible, especially when each puff makes such a huge difference. 

Peering around your shoulder is a pro move. Photo: Bill Records

When it’s time to tack, you should be ready to explode. I like to pretend that each tack is the last and most important tack on earth—or at least of the race. If you’re not a tiny bit afraid that you won’t be able to flatten the boat after your roll, you’re not rolling hard enough. As you begin your tack, make sure to shift a little more weight to leeward to head the boat up, then, in perfect sync with your skipper, snap your body to windward while you roll off of the centerboard trunk or the hiking straps and the opposite jib sheet. Then jump across the boat, hooking into the centerboard trunk or the traps and hitting the opposite rail with your full body weight for a fraction of a second before returning to leeward for the counter-flatten. You should be trimming your jib in to about 80% during the tack, and then slowly trimming it in the rest of the way as you counter-flatten and delicately return to your crouching position.