HUNGER GAMES
“It seems like every year the level of competition increases to new highs on the PWA world tour. The Winter break is no longer a time to relax; sailors are spending the whole ‘off’ season gaining strength in the gym and training on the water in locations like Tenerife or Tarifa. Every sailor is fighting harder to survive in this tough environment and the level has been raised accordingly. So how hard do you have to train? How important is the preparation? In the end, only one guy will be victorious and crowned World Champion. Contracts are made and lost on where you finish at the season’s end and you need prize money to help fund the whole mission. It’s always been tough on tour but now it really is survival of the fittest.
TESTING TIMES
My preparation for Korea began in January, a fresh start for the new year. The first step was the collection of all my new equipment for the upcoming season. My fins are ordered months prior, while I always have new masts, sails and boards that need testing. I make sure I water test each and every board and mast combination at home in the UK as it is too expensive to fly abroad just to be able to test in shorts and warmer water.
Using a testing partner is the optimum way to find your fastest racing combinations. Taking turns to change one piece of equipment, you and your partner line up together on the water with enough distances between you so that you both have clean wind, but close enough to tell if there is a difference in your respective speeds, commonly referred to as the “buddy system”. It’s a method most pros use and it works well as long as there is trust between‘buddies’ and you’re sure your mate isn’t going to sandbag you (sail slowly intentionally). I also use GPS as a reference to double check what I am feeling in the equipment and how my speed is against my mate on the water. Not that I don’t trust my testing partners, but more often than not I don’t have someone to go sailing with and time can be precious, so I will also use GPS to sail with when alone and this can be a much quicker way to work through a large amount of combinations in one session.
FINE TUNING
I start fine-tuning with the biggest items I travel with – boards. I don’t want to be carting 15 boards around the world with me all year so I make sure they are done and dusted first. I try footstrap and mastbase positions as well as fin size and model. Once I have found the best settings, then I try each board so I know its wind ranges, strengths and weaknesses and when it’s time to jump back and forth between the different sizes. Next up is masts, starting first with the new ones against my trusty masts from previous years. You can even go so far as to trying different combinations, old top/new bottom, smaller top/larger bottom, etc. After I am happy I have found my premium set ups, I will then recheck though all the fins I have, making sure I know when to use what and when to change. A key point to remember is that while these may be only small differences in your equipment, the more improvements you can find and the better you know your gear, the better your chances are out on the race course. This whole process takes a while, especially during the UK winter and took me roughly 20 hours over 3 weeks. It’s not always an option to fly away to warmer, more consistent conditions, the excess baggage alone would be crippling.
