REACHING
John Skye: From Fuerteventura I learnt that you need to kill people! If you get clear ahead of someone, then bear down and put them in your wake at the first opportunity. Don’t give them any chance to come back into it. I think in the lighter airs maybe it is a slightly different tactic, but I don’t have so much experience in this. Avoiding trouble and staying in clean air and water is probably the number one priority, if you don’t you are really screwed. In one heat I was right in the mix down the first reach, I had good speed against the other guys and I was looking good. Then I hit a piece of chop and lost 1m or something and the whole fleet suddenly went over me and I almost stopped after that with no way to fight back – that was a good lesson!
OVERTAKING
Matteo Iachino: I trained the whole winter on racing techniques so I can overtake. The more natural you are in the decisions, then the better you will sail. You almost need an instinct of when to make a move or not. You should not have to think about it otherwise you will lose time and lose focus. If you see your opponent gybing super inside then maybe you take an outside gybe or the opposite. Maybe you see the guy pointing up a lot so you might pass from below. I did that with Antoine one time in Fuerteventura. I try to sail as natural as possible and not think too much about it.
Pierre Mortefon: It depends on who is ahead of me – if he is fast or if he is a solid at gybing. If it is somebody like Julien Quentel who is awesome at the marks then I know I have to go full power on the leg. The opposite is a guy like Finian who is super hard to pass on the straight but a bit easier to get round at the gybe. If it’s Matteo then I have to go full power on the straight line and full power on the gybe but even then passing him is going to be very tough!
Ross Williams: I’d say the best way to stop racers overtaking is to gybe tight and force them to go underneath you, if they try to come over the top then push them up. If you gybe tight at the mark hopefully your more controlled gybe will put you in a better position for the next reach and the other racer will be wide or low.
Finian Maynard: The only time you can overtake is at the mark. It is extremely difficult to overtake on the straight. Even if you have some speed on another rider, the amount of time it takes to reach top speed is often not enough. The main work in a race is at the start and on the first leg. If you see one of the top five guys ahead of you, your chances of overtaking them are pretty slim. You have to hope that a massive bit of luck comes!
John Skye: On the reach, if you have the speed, I think the trick is to get past somebody and then put them in your dirty water. Like that there is no way back. To stop being overtaken, my main focus is not letting anyone get too close above me and also make sure I am positioned well for the gybe. Sometimes I found it was worth letting somebody actually overtake you, if it meant you had a better position at the gybe and could then come out ahead afterwards. For example, forcing someone really low into the gybe and then backing off to come upwind at the last minute means they have to gybe wide, which can leave a big gap for you upwind.