2013/2014 Squad News

Optimist This year’s been a fantastic year for Welsh Optimist sailing and it has included some excellent results. The season started with the Optimist Spring Championships where Jemma Viney ‘whooped’ the boys and the other girls by winning overall in some challenging conditions. The 2013 Optimist World and European Selections followed soon afterwards. Unfortunately, Jemma narrowly missed out qualification for the Optimist World’s but

Jemma confortably qualified for the Optimist European Championships alongside fellow WYA sailors; Iago Davies, Will Hall and Huw Edwards. We think this is the largest Welsh representation ever in the European team! Hatty Morsley and Gethin Owen also made the Development Team that competed in Bodrum. Jamie Cook, Matthew Leary, Rhys Lewis and Hannah Robert-Straw were selected for the Irish Nationals Team where Rhys finished a fantastic 6th. Excellent work guys and girls! Phew! We then had some excellent results at the Optimist Easter International Regatta at Brassermermeer where Will Hall in 4th place, and the Optimist Nationals where Gethin Owen finished 4th, Will Hall 10th and Rhys Lewis was 3rd in the Junior fleet. Finally, the season culminated in the Optimist EOS which Will Hall won, Rhys Lewis 8th and Iago Davies 10th, and the Optimist Winters which Will Hall won (again!), Hatty Morsley was 4th, Jamie Cook 5th and Rhys Lewis 7th. All this success means WYA sailors a currently dominating IOCA rankings and there is some big WYA representation in RYA and IOCA squads; Will Hall is currently 3rd on the IOCA ranking list, Hatty Morsley 4th, Rhys Lewis 5th. A fantastic seven sailors were selected into the RYA Junior Squad, 2 sailors selected for RYA Junior Int. Squad and 6 sailors selected for the IOCA Development Squad.

Really well done everyone for a fantastic season!

Topper It’s been a foundation year for the WYA Topper Squads; many of whom are fairly new and still have a lot of time left in the class. Huge improvements were made all round and the squad is coming on leaps and bounds ready for 2014. Many of the Welsh sailors ventured to the Topper Worlds where Alex Whitfield finished 46th and Callum Elwin 52nd. Tom Renny won the Welsh Topper Championships and the Welsh Zone Championships and also earned himself a spot in the RYA Topper Junior Squad. A fantastic five sailors all qualified for the RYA Intermediate Squad –Alex Whitfield, Chloe Butterworth, Callum Elwin , Charlotte Watson and Cori MacFarlane all deserve a pat on the back – Well done guys!

Laser The WYA Laser Squad dominated the 2013 RYA Youth Nationals - Ellie Meopham won the Radial class overall and Tom Williams was second. Both qualified for the ISAF Youth Worlds in Cyprus. Micky Beckett won the Laser Standard Class Jack Preece close behind in 4th. Matt Whitfield finished 4th at the Laser Radial Nationals and finished top 10 in the last two qualifiers. Matt Viney finished 9th at the Laser 4.7 Nationals and 45th at the Laser 4.7 Europeans. Merrick Stanley finished 2nd at the Laser 4.7 Inlands followed by a 24th at the 4.7 Europa cup and 21st at the Laser 4.7 Europeans. Sam Thomas 133rd Laser 4.7 Europeans. Ellie finished 5th at the Radial Youth Europeans and Micky 2nd U19 at the Laser Standard Worlds. Wow! Fantastic achievements all round!

Wales Rule The Waves!

Double Hander The WYA double-handers have had a fantastic 2013. Highlights included Dan Whiteley and James Clementson’s 7th at the 420 Junior Europeans on home turf at Pwllheli (4th Boys) and Mari Davies and Sarah Norbury won the 420 Inlands and EOS Champs and were selected for the World and European Teams this summer. Rowan Edwards and Daniel Blight finished 8th in the silver fleet at the 29er Worlds and 14th at the 29er Nationals. Tilly James found a new crew Paddy Keech and finished top 10 in the last three 29er Grand Prix’s. We no have 8 sailors in the RYA Youth 420 & 29er squads; a huge increase from 2012! Again, excellent work guys and girls!

GBR Squads 2013/2014

RYA Optimist Junior Squad Will Hall

Rhys Lewis Hatty Morsley

Iago Davies Gethin Owen Ciaron Jones

Christopher Jones

RYA Optimist Intermediate Squad

Hannah Robert—Straw Jamie Cook

IOCA Development Squad

Matthew Shirt Mila Monaghan

Hollie Macdonald Rhys Williams Ollie Reynolds

RYA Topper Intermediate Squad

Alex Whitfield Chloe Butterworth

Callum Elwin Charlotte Watson Cori MacFarlane

RYA Topper Junior Squad Tom Renny

RYA 420 National Squad

Sarah Norbury & Mari Davies Daniel Whiteley & James

Clementson

RYA 420 Transitional Sqaud TBC

RYA 29er National Squad

Rowan Edwards & Daniel Blight Tilly James & Paddy Keech

RYA 29er Transitional Squad Huw Edwards and Josh Dawson

Alex& Tom Joesbury

HPM Alistair Dickson won the RS100 World Championships

Have you seen the 2013 WYA Montage. If not it can be viewed on the home page

at www.welshsailing.org

RYA Laser Standard National Youth Squad Micky Beckett

Jack Preece Alex Jardine

RYA Laser Radial National

Youth Squad Matt Whitfield

Rhiannon Massey

Laser Radial Transitional Squad Merrick Stanley

North—21st December Pwllheli Sailing Club Contact—Jane Butterworth Email—jane.butterworth@gmail.com Phone—

South—14th December CBYC Contact—Laura Email—laura@cbyc.co.uk Phone—02920 666627

West—14th December Fishguard Bay SC Contact—Hester Walker Email—hester.walker@welshsailing.org Phone—07824 990693

When you are not at squad training there is a lot of open training as well as your local club racing that you should attend to keep your skills you have learned fresh…..

North Pwllheli—8-9 March enquiries@firmhelm.com Clywedog—8 March onboardmatt@yahoo.co.uk Bala—1,8,15 Dec balasctraining@hotmail.com PDSC—2 days in Jan, 2 days in Feb, 2 days in March

West Neyland—1-2 Feb Fishguard—1-2 March Contact: Hester.Walker@welshsailing.org

South TaTa– 15 Feb, 1 March, 29 March End of Winter Regatta CBYC—Have an extensive number of open training days for a variety of classes, contact laura@cbyc.co.uk more info www.cbyc.co.uk

To sign up and find more info please visit www.welshsailingevents.org ‘Open Training’

2013/ 2014 Events and Training * Full Details of forthcoming events and training in your area + lots more can be found on our events site!!

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Practice as if you are the worst,

Perform as if you are the best

Packing List for Squad Training File, pen, note book Snacks (no chocolate or pop) Snack a jacks are good Cereal bars Squash Jaffa cakes (the only form of chocolate allowed) Malt Loaf Warm kit Fitness Kit Trainers Joggers Swimming kit (if residential at Plas Menai) Rule Book

Name? Sean Evans Age? 25 Learnt to Sail? Llanishen Sailing Centre in an Optimist Squads National Optimist Squad ,Welsh National Radial Squad , GBR Radial & Standard, Olympic Transitional Squad (standard) Greatest Achievement? Winning UK Youth Champs & ISAF Trials 2006 Favourite Food? Lasagne If you couldn’t Sail you would: Be Found playing 5 Aside football Currently doing: Getting ready for the cold after coaching in Bermuda Top Tip: Never neglect the opportunities that you have Most embarrassing moment: Missing the pontoon when stepping off the boat

Goal Setting– SMARTER

S—Specific M—Measurable A—Achievable R—Recordable T—Time E—Exciting R—Realistic

Power Hour—No Coach, Sailing Time, What to do?? 10 Tacks * 10 gybes 10 Trigger Pulls * 4 -360 Hover by buoy Double Tacks * 4 -720 Stop Tacks Scoop Reverse 10 minutes up wind then back down wind or 5 minutes down wind then up wind. If two or more boats—tuning runs If you are out on your own make sure there is safety cover on stand by

WYA Boats & Equipment For Sale

Ellie Meopham’s EX WYA Laser - 204538 Comes with: • 1 Radial Sail (good condition) • Spars – Radial Bottom Section • Foils and Foil Bag • Top and Bottom cover • Trolley • Laser XD Kit • Very good condition

Price - £3,400 Apply by the 7th January 2014 – see www.welshsailingevents.org

To Register your interest please go to www.welshsailingevents.org ‘WYA Boat & Equipment Sales’ Please ensure you read the Asset

Disposal Policy

- Laser Standard 202448 Comes with: • 1 Full Rig Sail (average condition) • Spars – Standard Top Section • Foils and Foil Bag • Top and Bottom cover • Trolley • Laser XD Kit • Good condition but raced hard!

Price - £2,900 Apply by the 7th January 2014

1. How have you found the jump up from Youth to PP/Olympic sailing? I have found the jump great to make, an achievement I could really relate to as ultimately it has been my goal for many years, even if wasn't a direct focus until more recently. Practically it has been great as well as I am now working within an incredibly comprehensive support programme, the PP programme is a very professional set up which is great to be part of. It has also coincided with me moving to university in Southampton which has increased the challenge to keep progressing by quite a bit, as I now have a much bigger workload. 2. Tell us a bit about one of your World cup/Olympic level competitions this year. How hard was it? What was the competition like? My first world cup event was Hyeres in the south of France, which was just after the Youth Nationals in Largs, so a welcome change of climate! I took a week off school, flew out and borrowed a boat. Obviously I was expecting it to be hard, it was every bit of that. It took 9 races until I had a start which I wasn't embarrassed to tell people about. The event was a massive game changer as it completely changed the way I looked at everything; I had to develop completely new perceptions of how I was doing and what was going well or less well. The bar had moved a lot, but it was great to have something new to aim for. Reassuringly I climbed around 30 places from the end of the first day. 3. Tell us a bit of what a typical day at a PP camp involves… A typical day at a PP camp is highly structured. There is no longer morning fitness sessions as it was felt that this hindered on the water progress. After breakfast there is a 45 minute theory session, meteorology, health & hygiene, goal setting, etc. The groups for the sessions are split between those people with academic pressures and those full time so there is a lot you can take from it. 9 - 5 is a coach led programme so on the water training, the focus is always on high quality sessions over hours and hours so usually two shorter sessions, especially in winter. The evening is then a recovery sessions and a talk to the whole team after dinner with useful information regarding the programme of the year. 4. How has the coaching and support changed? The support we receive is now much more geared towards supporting us in everything we do, so we receive a lot of support for those of us at uni to make sure we are working and communicating as efficiently as possible. The physiology support focuses a lot on recovery and health, usually there is a session lead in the evening based on recovering after a day on the water, which is really useful to get in the habit of. 5. How has demands on fitness and physical training changed since being in the Olympic Programme? The physical side of things has always been an increasing challenge since I started sailing. The main focus at the moment is trying to complete a fitness programme that is sustainable for a year. Sometimes I have done loads of fitness over a few months which was great, but I used to loose it quite quickly by doing too much, getting ill or just not having the time. What I am looking at present is trying to be at my best next summer, so trying to just gradually build up to then without too many physiological dramas!

Transitional from Youth to Podium Potential ( Olympic Development Squad)

6. How are you finding balancing the demands of university with your sailing commitments? The biggest challenge at the moment is definitely balancing Uni and sailing. I really enjoy my course which can almost be counter productive at times as it can reduce the drive to take time off to go sailing. This summer I had a period of basically 3 months of mostly racing and training with no real distractions which was awesome, I had a huge number of hours on the water and it was great to be out on the water with such good boat handling and speed. Now I am sometimes not even getting out every week, it is a real challenge to keep improving while not getting as many hours in as I'd like. 7. If you could have your time in youth and junior again, is there anything you would do differently? If I went through Youth and Junior programmes again I would try and be a bit more ambitious, it is really easy to judge your progress against the small group of people around you, I think I probably set myself limits on how fast I could make a boat go because I didn't spend enough time looking at foreign sailors and being more imaginative. Training through the winter is great but if a group of you are similar in strengths and weaknesses then they won't necessarily be highlighted. 8. What do you think the key bits of youth and junior racing are? i.e. What should youth and junior sailors concentrate on? The key parts of youth sailing for me would definitely be 'going for it', but then always being honest with yourself afterwards. Probably one of the most important things you could learn to do is analyse yourself productively. Use the knowledge of the coaches and people around you and learn to apply it to yourself in an honest, critical but most importantly a productive manner. 9. Any words of advice for aspiring Olympic programme sailors? I think my best advice would be to make a plan. Start by deciding your goals, then put them on some kind of time scale. Then try and brake it down, what do you need to do to make it work? What's in between you and achieving these goals right now? And what is likely to make it hard? The more comprehensive you can be about what your trying to achieve and how you're going about it, the more likely it is you'll be able to make it work. 10. What are your goals and ambitions for 2014 and onwards? 2014 for me is about trying to get a medal at the under 21 Worlds or Europeans and gold fleet at the senior world cup events. After that I am just trying to get through uni with as much international experience as possible until I graduate then I hope to be able to go full time sailing.

Finally… We would like to say thank you to Piers Beckett (father of Micky and Stevie), who’s allowed us to re-publish this article that originally featured in the Topper Times. Although it is written with Topper parents in mind, it gives some really good tips for all parents who are new on the sailing circuit….

Things I learnt on the Road Piers Beckett

I never planned on being a sailing parent, but you know how it is. One thing leads to another and before you know it you're loading up the car, checking the trailer bearings and heading off down the Road. Weymouth, Rutland, Pwllheli, Hayling Island, you get to know all of them in the end. We had good times, not-good times, adventures, laughs, and disasters. I met people who I could never have met in normal life and some of them I still count as friends. All our lives are richer for the experience.

Now and then I blundered, and I'd like to pass on some of the things I found out. Most of them are obvious, but it might help someone, somewhere. Kit A cold sailor will will learn nothing and perform poorly. Worse, they will quickly come to hate sailing, and your investment in training, travel and accommodation will be wasted. Don't skimp or make-do. At first site the cost of proper hikers, spray tops, boots and the rest is intimidating, but without it your efforts will come to nothing. Until they are seriously competing at the front of the fleet it's pointless spending silly money on the latest go-faster widget. They need a reliable, solid boat that won't break. It’s useless meeting the costs of taking them to training or an event if the boom breaks in the first race. It is often said of Topper sailing that the cheapest part of the package is the boat, and it’s true. If fittings or spars show any sign of cracks, buy new ones, or put up with the heartache of a breakage at precisely the worst moment. Accommodation. Check your address book for long-lost relatives who live near venues. Camper vans suit some and not others, likewise B & Bs. Most Topper venues are perfectly set up for camping, and many of my happiest memories involve tents, head torches and airbeds. If you start going to Laser Qualifiers, trust me, this no longer works. Bye bye happy campers, hello Lenny Henry and a well-known hotel chain. Check the web for deals. Ambition Try to work out how deep you want to go. Once on the first well-polished rung of the ladder the system sucks you in and it's hard to get off. When we went to our first Nationwide I didn't realise that out of about 200 sailors, probably 80 or so were undergoing some fairly heavy-duty training. A newcomer to the event is doing very well to break into that, so don't have unreal expectations. If he or she is happy competing on an occasional basis and finishing in the hundreds that's fine. If not, you are going to have to get some coaching. But remember, there is more to sailing than trying to be the first of 300 sailors to get around a trapezoid. The Topper is a fantastic boat for mucking around in and many families have huge fun without it taking over their lives. Make a plan even if you don't stick to it. Sailors need to start young if they are to have any chance of progressing into National squads. Do some research, check out what age they need to be to be for the squad they have their eyes on and work backwards from there. Understand how sailing ages work. Every year children strive to gain entry to a certain squad only to discover that because their birthday is in December they are too old for selection. I think that if you are aiming at one of the top squads you probably need to be looking at dipping your toe in the Nationwide water aged eleven or so. The sailor must make his or her own choices. Getting to the top of a National Class fleet takes huge effort, and if the sailor's heart isn't in it they'll never make it. Your function is to make it possible. Trying to get a sailor to do stuff he doesn't like in order to massage your ambitions is to surf a tidal wave of unhappiness. Sooner or later you'll fall in.

Coaches are very variable, despite what you will be told. I found a useful rule of thumb was that if a coach is prepared to talk frankly and honestly with you as a parent they are probably good. You spend far more time with your offspring than they ever will. You are the one who sits for hours in the car with them, shares their accommodation, cooks their pasta and picks up the bits when it all goes wrong. A good coach recognises this and talks to you, but you will find coaches who seem to think they hold the key to an arcane magic which must remain a secret between them and their students. They're wrong, and probably not very good at their job. Sailors know which way is up - if they like and trust a particular coach then that is the right coach for them. If they don't, stop going. Glitches Things go wrong. Prizegivings are delayed, results go astray, race officers have bad days, mistakes are made. Its called life. The people who run these events (the ITCA GBR ones anyway) are generally a pretty competent and hard-working bunch doing their best to get it right for not much reward. Things may seem disorganised and sometimes even shambolic, particularly to newcomers, but try not to moan. (I was not very good at this). To watch or not to watch? A very experienced parent once told me the key to enjoying events was not to look at the results. It works for him. Personally, I'm a sailor and I don't like shopping, so if there is a sailing race going on I'm going to watch it. One of the boys said he liked me watching because when he came ashore he didn't have to tell me what had gone wrong. Some sailors hate their parents watching them; try to reach a deal that suits you both.

Guess Who, and his then age

eNews # 30 Club Guest – Ron Rosenberg We are joined this month by Ron Rosenberg of Redmond, Washington State, USA. Ronnie is a professional sailor and coach who has worked on numerous America’s Cups and Olympics and was captain of the US Sailing Team for the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. With many world titles and other campaign wins to his name he now does extensive work to help large professional teams with boat tuning, training and campaign preparation / management as well as working in other areas of the sailing world including the development of products for Harken and Sailkote. He gives us an insight into some of the incredible results from San Francisco earlier this year as Team Oracle USA overturned an 8-1 deficit to beat Emirates Team New Zealand to win the AC. Here’s Ron’s view on sailing, and ‘that’ series in San Francisco. LSC: Ron, tell us how you got started. RR: Jeez – that’s a big one. I guess I’ve always lived my life by the water – just as I do now. Sailing was just something we did as young kids and when there wasn’t any wind we’d find something else to do afloat. My parents gave me a huge amount of support and encouragement and from there I got to know some wonderful people and some very good sailors. They were happy to have my input and were kind enough to take me along and I always gave it everything I could. For me it was a passion and I took every opportunity I could. Before long I found people were coming to me, instead of the other way around and the rest is history. Here I am now, doing the exact same things that my folks did all those years ago. My son and I kayak or paddle board whenever we can and we have some super water around us, the lakes nearby as well as the open water at Seattle where we get to see all sorts of things, whales and dolphins; and of course we go sailing as much as we can. LSC: So sailing has been your life – what are the more memorable events for you? RR: The Atlanta Games was a huge one. It was an immense privilege to go to Savannah with that team with so many talented sailors. US Sailing – or Team USA as we are now – was huge back then. We had some regattas in Miami through ’95 with just hundreds and hundreds of people there. It was a special time. But to be honest I’ve done so many events around the world over the years and I can’t single any out. They’re all special in their own ways. Whether sailing or whether I go as a coach or advisor no events are the same. I enjoy each time I go and I always look forward to the next. Americas Cups are always special – they’re unique and they don’t come around so often so we always have big expectations – and we’re rarely let down! LSC: So let’s cut to the chase… That was some come-back by Oracle Team USA. You can’t just switch a tactician and overturn a deficit like that. You’re close to the camp – what’s your take on it all..? RR: Whooo…. Where do I start? (Laughs) Well I guess first of all, while it came as a surprise to some – seeing it all unfold like that – I think it was less of a surprise to the team. You know, if you were just a guy watching, a sailor, looking on from somewhere around the globe watching it on TV, you saw an achievement against all the odds. But for the team I don’t think they saw it like that. Sure they had some tough odds but they were shortening them all the time and they never once accepted that they wouldn’t win. The mind-set, the structure and the preparation of that team was just awesome. LSC: But to come back like they did takes work, tell us how you do that, how do you shorten the odds? RR: Well… First of all they had a really great onshore coaching team who were analysing absolutely everything the Kiwis did. I mean everything. They filmed in high FPS footage everything that went on and broke every single manoeuvre down into slow-motion and analysed the heck out of it. Where New Zealand did things well they simply copied it. No surprises there. Take the Kiwi tack and gybe – they were much (looks around before raising voice) MUCH better than Oracle at the start of the campaign. Oracle knew they would be coming in cold and planned for it as they knew they’d need to develop quickly. Early in the week Oracle’s tacks saw them ‘planting’ too much (onto the two hulls) and they focussed on reducing that aiming for hull-to-hull tacking. They worked on getting the windward hull out of the water as quickly as possible – a lot to do with upper wing trim. But they were totally prepared for that situation, analysed New Zealand, took the technique away and improved it. People were working 24 hours around the clock – and the next day, there’s a quantum leap… People were asking how they did that, the press, everybody. But to people in the team there were no surprises. eNews # 30 LSC: So did they change the boat at all? RR: Yeah – big time. Where they were allowed to. And again they learned heaps from New Zealand. They changed to a manual wing control system to be faster out of the tacks. This was something they changed quite early on. They had a hi-tech system via computer software but eventually went for good old fashioned man-power and threw more bananas into the pit… They saw this on the Kiwi boat and could see through the slow-mo film footage that they could develop the power out of the tacks a lot quicker if it was done manually. The trim on the upper wing was light-years quicker. They weren’t afraid to change and they weren’t arrogant. If it was better, they just went ahead and did it. Then they also made a big bunch of changes and linked them closely together both manually and through software adjustments. So they switched to slim foils and brought them more aft on the hull for each increase in the conditions. Early on, the original fat shaped foils on Oracle were pretty much kept in one place. By mid campaign they were doing a lot more tuning of the foil position fore / aft for the conditions. It’s just applying the knowledge of foiling and developing it pretty fast! They also raked the wing considerably more aft once they had more than 12 knots of wind. That gave them an awesome turn of power in their low/fast mode upwind. What that did is give them some serious options – you could turn it on and off – a handful of degrees lower, pop up, and add 5 knots. If you need to hang a big leg into one side of the course or get in to cover them they could do it. They also flattened and twisted the wing more each day when at maximum boat-speed. You saw their top-end averages going up each day that the cup went on. There was a whole bunch of stuff. Oh yeah – we also re-tuned and adjusted all the wing and foil systems to work more aggressively and more in sync with each other. It’s difficult to describe but there’s a kind of damping system going on and they basically took it away altogether. That helped transition more quickly and especially when moving between low/fast mode and high/slow modes. So it was more rake, tuning the foils more, manual controls that are ultra-fast response… It was tough on the guys but they were pretty awesome. Then of course there’s teamwork and practice time. If you think about it – only a few days into racing they had effectively doubled their team-work practice time on the race course – in a live competitive situation. It was always going to get sharper for them. You saw Spithill begin to dominate the starts more and more as they all got things together. LSC: So talk to us about Ainslie… What’s your view? He was feted in the UK press for his role… eNews # 30 RR: Man yeah… No doubt about it he played every trick in the book and everything he knew – and was little short of incredible. And there are a few things for me that marked him out… He was just awesome at getting the splits right and calling the modes so the team were setting the boat up to use their speed or height to pretty devastating effect. When Kostecki was on the boat they were much slower all round and he desperately tried to minimise tacks and gybes as they were just awful in the early days compared to New Zealand. You have to admit he didn’t have much going in his favour (Kostecki) and it was tough on him… Once they’d changed trim response and reverted to manual, Ainslie could call trim options and along with calling the splits perfectly everything slotted into place. There was the occasion in race 14 I think when New Zealand came back across on starboard tack from the triangle beneath Alcatraz. They needed to get back to the right and tacked under Team USA. Tough call man… Tack too close and New Zealand get rolled while popping out of the tack, so they had to give themselves some room. They tacked a bit sooner and then boom! Ben gives the call to Jimmy (Spithill) to get the bow down and they just launched – a few degrees lower and they added several knots and that was it. They made nearly a hundred yards just like that and sailed straight into New Zealand’s face. It wasn’t good VMG going upwind but it was about getting themselves into control. On the TV they had all these numbers telling you about VMG upwind and all sorts of stuff but it couldn’t pick this sort of stuff out. They just went into overdrive for about 2 minutes and foiled on over to New Zealand and that was that. It made him (Ben Ainslie) look pretty smart! But I can tell you – that guy is pure class. In that last race coming into the leeward gate… Man! I guess you have to be on board to appreciate the speed but we were astern, one beat left and both going into the gate on port gybe at 35 knots. Dean Barker continues and Ainslie has to make a HUGE call to gybe away to take the right hand buoy and split. On TV that looked like a pretty regular move but when you’ve got maybe 10 boat-lengths and you’re doing 30 knots, borderline overlapped which would have prevented the move… that required decision speed that was pretty damn impressive. Ainslie would have had to make that decision and figure out the upwind split in a fraction of a second. Now if you want to know why that’s pretty awesome next time you’re sailing think about how you approach a downwind gate. Most of us, even really good sailors, begin to line up a leeward rounding some way out from the gate and start mentally preparing the manoeuvre. The better you are the later you can make your calls as your boat-handling and decision speed means you can figure things out over a much narrower window of time. That gives you options. Now put yourself at the back of a 72 foot cat travelling at 30 knots with ten boat-lengths to go… I’ve never seen anything like that… LSC: It’s a fascinating insight - what else is there Ron? RR: They also minimised friction on all of the wing controls. Again this was all about responsiveness. They could see the responsiveness of the Kiwi boat was just superior in the first part of the Cup. They worked on taking the friction away – especially once it had become manual job. There wasn’t a lot of science to it just industrial quantities of Sailkote! And they aggressively re-geared the grinding systems on the boat too, again all aimed towards better manual control and speed of response. It meant they could improve the boat handling and respond more quickly. By the end, they could get the boat to ‘pop’ at will, whereas at the start of the cup, foiling was something that took a little while to get going. The Kiwis showed them, they looked into it, and pretty soon they’d got a boat that could respond much quicker. My own view on it all is that Oracle really maximised their opportunities to learn. They knew they’d have to, planned for it and did it. LSC: It’s amazing to hear about all of this. You make it sound as though it was all so fundamental and easy. RR: Whoa! I never said it was easy… It was hard work, around the clock, by a huge team. But they were prepared for it and knew they’d need to do all of this. That ability to raise their game was what won it in my opinion. LSC: So let’s get back to some real sailing – and a bit of advice. What’s your top tip or best advice for young sailors? RR: Well everyone who answers that question is gonna say “have fun and enjoy it”… We always do. But to do that you’ve got to have some confidence to get afloat and you have to know a little bit about what to do – how to sail basically. Whether you’re a young kid eNews # 30 With no new pics from this year here’s an older one of the EPS fleet at Llangorse! starting out or you’ve sailed for a while, the bottom line is that learning something new isn’t always a lot of fun – no matter who your coach is or how supportive they are. So my tip is to break things down into three simple steps. That will help young sailors learn by giving a methodical approach to things that are otherwise pretty complicated. And that will help make their sailing more fun. Coaches can help kids do this but it doesn’t matter what it is – tacking, heavy-weather gybing, starting – if you break it down into simple chunks it gets easier. Or kids can do this themselves. I mean, you can’t just go sailing and say “I’m gonna get better at gybing today” as there’s a heap of stuff involved in doing that well. So if you break it down and practice each step suddenly it all slots together. So here’s what you do: You take whatever it is you’re doing and break it down into three things. Three steps. Three is easy to remember, and it’s easy to slot together into the whole thing. And those three things can be personal to you… So take tacking: It will be different for each person so coaches may need to help here but for one sailor they may break it down into “push, wait, step” and for another it may be “tack, step, pause (before swapping hands)”. It doesn’t matter what it is, you just chunk it down into simple steps. They’re easy to remember and then your sailing improves and you get to have the fun we always talk about. That’s my tip… LSC: Ron – thank-you. We’re timing out pretty soon. RR: No thank-you. It has been a pleasure and I wish everyone at your club in Wales good winds and good luck!

Ron Rosenberg We would like to thank Llangorse SC for allowing us to re-publish this interview with Ron Rosenberg of Redmond, Washington State, USA. Ronnie is a professional sailor and coach who has worked on numerous America’s Cups and Olympics and was captain of the US Sailing Team for the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. With many world titles and other campaign wins to his name he now does extensive work to help large professional teams with boat tuning, training and campaign preparation / management as well as working in other areas of the sailing world including the development of products for Harken and Sailkote. He gives us an insight into some of the incredible results from San Francisco earlier this year as Team Oracle USA overturned an 8-1 deficit to beat Emirates Team New Zealand to win the AC. Here’s Ron’s view on sailing, and ‘that’ series in San Francisco. LSC: Ron, tell us how you got started. RR: Jeez – that’s a big one. I guess I’ve always lived my life by the water – just as I do now. Sailing was just something we did as young kids and when there wasn’t any wind we’d find something else to do afloat. My parents gave me a huge amount of support and encouragement and from there I got to know some wonderful people and some very good sailors. They were happy to have my input and were kind enough to take me along and I always gave it everything I could. For me it was a passion and I took every opportunity I could. Before long I found people were coming to me, instead of the other way around and the rest is history. Here I am now, doing the exact same things that my folks did all those years ago. My son and I kayak or paddle board whenever we can and we have some super water around us, the lakes nearby as well as the open water at Seattle where we get to see all sorts of things, whales and dolphins; and of course we go sailing as much as we can. LSC: So sailing has been your life – what are the more memorable events for you? RR: The Atlanta Games was a huge one. It was an immense privilege to go to Savannah with that team with so many talented sailors. US Sailing – or Team USA as we are now – was huge back then. We had some regattas in Miami through ’95 with just hundreds and hundreds of people there. It was a special time. But to be honest I’ve done so many events around the world over the years and I can’t single any out. They’re all special in their own ways. Whether sailing or whether I go as a coach or advisor no events are the same. I enjoy each time I go and I always look forward to the next. Americas Cups are always special – they’re unique and they don’t come around so often so we always have big expectations – and we’re rarely let down! LSC: So let’s cut to the chase… That was some come-back by Oracle Team USA. You can’t just switch a tactician and overturn a deficit like that. You’re close to the camp – what’s your take on it all..? RR: Whooo…. Where do I start? (Laughs) Well I guess first of all, while it came as a surprise to some – seeing it all unfold like that – I think it was less of a surprise to the team. You know, if you were just a guy watching, a sailor, looking on from somewhere around the globe watching it on TV, you saw an achievement against all the odds. But for the team I don’t think they saw it like that. Sure they had some tough odds but they were shortening them all the time and they never once accepted that they wouldn’t win. The mind-set, the structure and the preparation of that team was just awesome. LSC: But to come back like they did takes work, tell us how you do that, how do you shorten the odds? RR: Well… First of all they had a really great onshore coaching team who were analysing absolutely everything the Kiwis did. I mean everything. They filmed in high FPS footage everything that went on and broke every single manoeuvre down into slow-motion and analysed the heck out of it. Where New Zealand did things well they simply copied it. No surprises there. Take the Kiwi tack and gybe – they were much (looks around before raising voice) MUCH better than Oracle at the start of the campaign. Oracle knew they would be coming in cold and planned for it as they knew they’d need to Develop quickly. Early in the Week Oracle’s tacks saw them ‘planting’ too much (onto the two hulls) and they focussed on reducing that aiming for hull-to-hull tacking. They worked on getting the windward hull out of the water as quickly as possible – a lot to do with upper wing trim. But they were totally prepared for that situation, analysed New Zealand, took the technique away and improved it. People were working 24 hours around the clock – and the next day, there’s a quantum leap… People were asking how they did that, the press, everybody. But to people in the team there were no surprises.

LSC: So did they change the boat at all? RR: Yeah – big time. Where they were allowed to. And again they learned heaps from New Zealand. They changed to a manual wing control system to be faster out of the tacks. This was something they changed quite early on. They had a hi-tech system via computer software but eventually went for good old fashioned man-power and threw more bananas into the pit… They saw this on the Kiwi boat and could see through the slow-mo film footage that they could develop the power out of the tacks a lot quicker if it was done manually. The trim on the upper wing was light-years quicker. They weren’t afraid to change and they weren’t arrogant. If it was better, they just went ahead and did it. Then they also made a big bunch of changes and linked them closely together both manually and through software adjustments. So they switched to slim foils and brought them more aft on the hull for each increase in the conditions. Early on, the original fat shaped foils on Oracle were pretty much kept in one place. By mid campaign they were doing a lot more tuning of the foil position fore / aft for the conditions. It’s just applying the knowledge of foiling and developing it pretty fast! They also raked the wing considerably more aft once they had more than 12 knots of wind. That gave them an awesome turn of power in their low/fast mode upwind. What that did is give them some serious options – you could turn it on and off – a handful of degrees lower, pop up, and add 5 knots. If you need to hang a big leg into one side of the course or get in to cover them they could do it. They also flattened and twisted the wing more each day when at maximum boat-speed. You saw their top-end averages going up each day that the cup went on. There was a whole bunch of stuff. Oh yeah – we also re-tuned and adjusted all the wing and foil systems to work more aggressively and more in sync with each other. It’s difficult to describe but there’s a kind of damping system going on and they basically took it away altogether. That helped transition more quickly and especially when moving between low/fast mode and high/slow modes. So it was more rake, tuning the foils more, manual controls that are ultra-fast response… It was tough on the guys but they were pretty awesome. Then of course there’s teamwork and practice time. If you think about it – only a few days into racing they had effectively doubled their team-work practice time on the race course – in a live competitive situation. It was always going to get sharper for them. You saw Spithill begin to dominate the starts more and more as they all got things together. LSC: So talk to us about Ainslie… What’s your view? He was feted in the UK press for his role…

RR: Man yeah… No doubt about it he played every trick in the book and everything he knew – and was little short of incredible. And there are a few things for me that marked him out… He was just awesome at getting the splits right and calling the modes so the team were setting the boat up to use their speed or height to pretty devastating effect. When Kostecki was on the boat they were much slower all round and he desperately tried to minimise tacks and gybes as they were just awful in the early days compared to New Zealand. You have to admit he didn’t have much going in his favour (Kostecki) and it was tough on him… Once they’d changed trim response and reverted to manual, Ainslie could call trim options and along with calling the splits perfectly everything slotted into place. There was the occasion in race 14 I think when New Zealand came back across on starboard tack from the triangle beneath Alcatraz. They needed to get back to the right and tacked under Team USA. Tough call man… Tack too close and New Zealand get rolled while popping out of the tack, so they had to give themselves some room. They tacked a bit sooner and then boom! Ben gives the call to Jimmy (Spithill) to get the bow down and they just launched – a few degrees lower and they added several knots and that was it. They made nearly a hundred yards just like that and sailed straight into New Zealand’s face. It wasn’t good VMG going upwind but it was about getting themselves into control. On the TV they had all these numbers telling you about VMG upwind and all sorts of stuff but it couldn’t pick this sort of stuff out. They just went into overdrive for about 2 minutes and foiled on over to New Zealand and that was that. It made him (Ben Ainslie) look pretty smart! But I can tell you – that guy is pure class. In that last race coming into the leeward gate… Man! I guess you have to be on board to appreciate the speed but we were astern, one beat left and both going into the gate on port gybe at 35 knots. Dean Barker continues and Ainslie has to make a HUGE call to gybe away to take the right hand buoy and split. On TV that looked like a pretty regular move but when you’ve got maybe 10 boat-lengths and you’re doing 30 knots, borderline overlapped which would have prevented the move… that required decision speed that was pretty damn impressive. Ainslie would have had to make that decision and figure out the upwind split in a fraction of a second. Now if you want to know why that’s pretty awesome next time you’re sailing think about how you approach a downwind gate. Most of us, even really good sailors, begin to line up a leeward rounding some way out from the gate and start mentally preparing the manoeuvre. The better you are the later you can make your calls as your boat-handling and decision speed means you can figure things out over a much narrower window of time. That gives you options. Now put yourself at the back of a 72 foot cat travelling at 30 knots with ten boat-lengths to go… I’ve never seen anything like that… LSC: It’s a fascinating insight - what else is there Ron? RR: They also minimised friction on all of the wing controls. Again this was all about responsiveness. They could see the responsiveness of the Kiwi boat was just superior in the first part of the Cup. They worked on taking the friction away – especially once it had become manual job. There wasn’t a lot of science to it just industrial quantities of Sailkote! And they aggressively re-geared the grinding systems on the boat too, again all aimed towards better manual control and speed of response. It meant they could improve the boat handling and respond more quickly. By the end, they could get the boat to ‘pop’ at will, whereas at the start of the cup, foiling was something that took a little while to get going. The Kiwis showed them, they looked into it, and pretty soon they’d got a boat that could respond much quicker. My own view on it all is that Oracle really maximised their opportunities to learn. They knew they’d have to, planned for it and did it.

LSC: It’s amazing to hear about all of this. You make it sound as though it was all so fundamental and easy. RR: Whoa! I never said it was easy… It was hard work, around the clock, by a huge team. But they were prepared for it and knew they’d need to do all of this. That ability to raise their game was what won it in my opinion. LSC: So let’s get back to some real sailing – and a bit of advice. What’s your top tip or best advice for young sailors? RR: Well everyone who answers that question is gonna say “have fun and enjoy it”… We always do. But to do that you’ve got to have some confidence to get afloat and you have to know a little bit about what to do – how to sail basically. Whether you’re a young kid starting out or you’ve sailed for a while, the bottom line is that learning something new isn’t always a lot of fun – no matter who your coach is or how supportive they are.

So my tip is to break things down into three simple steps. That will help young sailors learn by giving a methodical approach to things that are otherwise pretty complicated. And that will help make their sailing more fun. Coaches can help kids do this but it doesn’t matter what it is – tacking, heavy-weather gybing, starting – if you break it down into simple chunks it gets easier. Or kids can do this themselves. I mean, you can’t just go sailing and say “I’m gonna get better at gybing today” as there’s a heap of stuff involved in doing that well. So if you break it down and practice each step suddenly it all slots together. So here’s what you do: You take whatever it is you’re doing and break it down into three things. Three steps. Three is easy to remember, and it’s easy to slot together into the whole thing. And those three things can be personal to you… So take tacking: It will be different for each person so coaches may need to help here but for one sailor they may break it down into “push, wait, step” and for another it may be “tack, step, pause (before swapping hands)”. It doesn’t matter what it is, you just chunk it down into simple steps. They’re easy to remember and then your sailing improves and you get to have the fun we always talk about. That’s my tip… LSC: Ron – thank-you. We’re timing out pretty soon. RR: No thank-you. It has been a pleasure and I wish everyone at your club in Wales good winds and good luck!