Work your way up with Anticipation
Did you ever drive in a situation where yo had to avoid an collision, but avoided it without any knee jerk reaction? Most likely this was becaus eyou had an idea of what was going to happen before it did… maybe the car in the intersection was creeping up with its wheels turned a certain way, maybe the light was turning from yellow to red and it looked as if the driver was going to try to run the changing yellow light… Well with this anticipation you should be ablke to react and keep your self safe. As with driving on a highway, You need to use your skills in anticipation to avoid collisons and other bad situations to work yourself up the sailing fleet.
One winter day years ago, I was sailing with the JY15 fleet at Snapper Inn. The wind was coming from a direction where the boats always seemed to head for the bulkheads to the left (on starboard), and then had to tack to port to make the mark… well of course the bulkhead was an obstruction and it is proper to call for room at an obstruction [IF YOU ARE ON THE SAME TACK!]… so try to picture this situation… i was sailing into the bulkheaded area and had to tack to port, however to weather of me, and a little further behind, was Andrew Kinsey— we were both on starboard. So I tacked and tried to cross Andrew, and called for obstruction… but at this time I was on port he was still on starboard, he had to do a crash tack, mumbled some words and said “PROTEST”… what? I didn’t understand at the time, I had an obstruction, I thought…. WELL, as I said above, you have to be on te same tack to call for obstruction… if not, then its a PORT/Starboard situation… well I did my penalty, lost a lot of boats and then asked Andrew what happened… He told me about the port starboard etc… but the most important thing I asked him was, “How could I avoid that for the future?” His answer was simple and straight to the point- “You have to ANTICIPATE what would happen.” I asked him in anohter way, “I m supposed to tell the future?” Again he said, “you have to anticipate.” I will never forget that situation… several years later, the winds blew in the same direction, and David Becker was in my old situation and sailing fast… I knew what was going to happen, waited for him to tack, called for my starboard rights, made dave tack back to port, then I tacked on teh layline and eventually won that race… Needless to say, Dave was a bit pissed, said protest to me… but I kept sailing knowing I was right. Henever followed through with the protest, but I brought it up in the bar afterwards and was confident that the prtoest would be foiund in my favor if it went to that…
Other situations will be evident that anticipation will be needed like at MARK ROUNDINGS and CROSSING SITUATIONS. This is when a little knowledge of the rules will help… If you anticipate that you are going to hit a port tack boat and they are going to have to duck you, you are anticipating what the other boat will do… now you have to make a decision on whether to use this information to let her go, or to tack in front/on top/or lee bow her.
At mark roundings it is IMPERATIVE, especially in a pack of boats, to see what will happen before it unfolds… this will help you get around the buoy as fast and unscathed most of the time… communication with that on boat who wants to sneak in but had no overlap is helpful, sometimes putting on the brakes to avoid the pile up sometimes helps…
all this comes with anticipation and repetition…
so next time you come to the race course, try to think 10-20-30 seconds ahead of time and use it to your advantage to get around the course the fastest way possible, and to avoid the driver who wants to speed through that yellow light.