You’re sailing your big event of the season. Coming off the line you’ve managed to hold your lane and half way up the first beat you seem to be knocking on the top third of the fleet. The boats out in front are getting close to the windward mark and you can see some of them making their final tack onto the starboard layline 5-6 length from the mark, setting up to round. 

You and your happy team are working hard to keep the boat going fast, hiking hard, adjusting to each change in the wind. You’re on port with a small group of boats approaching on starboard. They are all crossing just in front of you with no change in course needed on your part. Life is good. 

At this moment, you have a decision on make. Do I tack underneath the group on starboard and head back into the middle where there are more boats coming on port or sail straight on port tack, letting the group cross you and carry on out to the right? The layline is out there only a few lengths past the crossing group and it’s only 20-25 lengths to sail on starboard to the mark. 

The layline is calling. It’s saying “come on out here baby and life will be good. Tack out here on me and it’s a straight shot to the mark and all will be well. No more stressing about shifts or other boats and boatspeed, I’ll even let you take a break for a minute.”

Getting sucked in by this evil lover, you continue on port and head right to the layline and tack onto starboard. You breathe a small sigh of relief that you have navigated the first beat well and will be in decent shape at the first mark.

Except you won’t---No sooner have you tacked onto the layline when that group of port tackers who you were going to see if you have tacked earlier--below the starboard tack group--come across  and tack, slightly above the layline and right on your wind. Now you’re in bad air and slowing, bad air is coming off their sails from in front of you and so to make matters worse you are also headed. All of a sudden you are going slow and not making the mark. You tack. The group that was well behind you is now ahead and to leeward on port and setting up to tack where they think the layline is (2-3 lengths to windward of where it actually is). You have to decide in a split second to either tack to leeward or duck them and  head out even further past the layline. To be safe you duck and take your place in the line up. 

When all is said and done you’ve lost what was going to be a top 1/3rd rounding and are well below midfleet. All because of getting sucked into being on the layline too early. 

What went wrong? 

·     Failing to tack in clear air below that first group of starboard tackers was fatal in this scenario. By going beyond them you were committing to get to the layline or close to it early. Once that happens your options for a clear air approach to the mark diminish drastically.

·     As the fleet comes together at the top mark, especially the first time around the boats are close together. Your whole team at this point must be head-out-of-boat and watching everyone in front of you. It is critical to think 2-3 steps ahead which we failed to do here. 

·     Here we completely underestimated what was going to happen with the boats close in front of us. Since they were closer to the mark than we were they were more able to carry on to the layline—which we were tacking on. 

How to correct this:

·     Upwind-work to sail no closer than 80% of the way to either to port or starboard layline. 

·     Unless you have a large lead or are in the top group (that is spaced out) look for reasons to tack back towards the middle-always in clear air. 

·     Always err towards approaching on the starboard layline-- with right of way.

·     Attempt at all times to stay off the layline until you are 10 or fewer lengths from the mark. 

·     If you must approach from the port side tack at least three lengths below the port layline. See rule 18.3. Tacking from port to starboard outside the 3-length zone at a windmark makes it much less likely you will foul any approaching starboard tack boat.