Race to Win Sailing Podcast

Did you know that you can watch raceQs' replays on your phone or tablet?  Just open your internet browser, and click on a replay!  We look at the 2015 Lipton Cup and show you just how powerful this tool can be for your post-race analysis.

Are you ready to get all the power of raceQs analytics, on your wrist? The new raceQs' sailing app for Pebble gives you: Vibrating Alerts for OCS, Laylines, Wind shifts, and Course Instability Mark Navigation: Bearing, Time to Mark, Distance to mark Time and Distance to the starting line (Perfect Start) All you need is your smart phone, the raceQs' apps, and a Pebble smart watch. Learn more at raceqs.com/smart-watch  

Using the unique Bavaria Cup regatta, this podcast explores how raceQs' sailing app calculates the wind direction without any input from wind instruments.  

Running aground is not fun. But, it happens to EVERYONE. So, when it happens to you, be ready to react quickly and get back in the race as soon as possible. Maybe no one will notice. Or, if you were in Jazz Cup, 2015, Pressure Drop will take some awesome photos so that we can all remember that glorious day, forever. On the internet. Names and faces have NOT been changed to protect the "innocent". Happy Holidays, and go double check your depth sounders!

Handicaps are always a hot issue in sailboat racing.  Recently, raceQs' upgraded our interface to calculate corrected times for handicapped boats that use our app.  Check out this podcast to get a basic understanding of sailing handicaps, and how to use the new handicap features in raceQs.

As technology evolves protest hearings are evolving as well. If you plan to use a raceQs' GPS track at your protest hearing, be armed with all the facts. Since most cell phone GPS positions aren't perfect, you can expect a geographic position variation of +/- 3 meters. Watch the video to learn more about the best way to present your case.

The choreography of a perfect tack requires every team member to perform their job flawlessly. We can break those jobs down into five parts:  Preparation, Pre-Release, Release, Grinding, and Trimming. Watch the episode to learn how much time is lost when we make mistakes, and what we should focus on to improve tacking performance.

Sailors at every level can benefit from having a Professional Sailor on board during a race. However, it's just not feasible for most Corinthian sailors. That's one of the reasons we built GeoVids. Check out this podcast, where we eavesdrop on a coaching session between Will Paxton, and one of this clients. Contact us to find out about testing our online coaching for your boat. We are also interested in sharing your favorite sailing stories that you recorded with raceQs.

In this podcast, we tell the story of a boat that experienced serious structural damage from a very common type of accident. Speaking directly to one of the boat owners, we get a first hand account of how they turned a potential disaster, into nothing more than another day on the water.

Will Paxton uses raceQs' Groove Analysis, Tacking Data, and Geovids to analyze his winning performance at the Resin Regatta.  He makes a few discoveries about his sail trim and tacking patterns using footage from his GoPro that is synced with his raceQs' 3D Replay.

Will Paxton breaks down one of his races in the St.Francis Spring series, and shows us how the pros keep calm and battle back from a rough start. We discuss tack and duck, tactics in a strong tide upwind, the "proper course" rule, and some tips for creating passing lanes downwind. 42.

Finally, we found a race that Will Paxton didn't win!  Of course, he claims that was his plan all along, since he was five points ahead in the series.  In this podcast, Will gives us some tips for surviving a "Parade Race", demonstrates trimming for speed when you've overstood the mark, and drives home the importance of doing your pre-race homework.

Have you ever been drifting around a race course, when suddenly, a boat ghosts by as if powered by an ungodly force?  It can seem unnatural.  We recorded such a phenomenon in this race, when Will Paxton sneaks by the entire fleet in less than three knots of wind.  Even better, we got him to tell us just how he did it.

Watch the highlights of a thrilling duel between Peter Burling and Nathan Outteridge during the final race of the 2015 Moth Worlds.  These two rockstars pull far ahead of the fleet as they battle for ultimate bragging rights in the world renowned Moth Mach 2.

Beautiful Sorrento, Australia was the venue for the 2015 Moth World Championships. Check out this highlight reel from first official day of the Worlds, where competitors sails just one race, due to poor conditions.  Still, there was plenty of excitement on the course, with a suprising upset in the last seconds of the race during a heated battle for first place.  Special thanks to Beau Outteridge Productions for use of their video.

Allan Terhune takes us through a recent race aboard his J/70, "Dazzler".  He walks us through his tactics and gives some trim tips for the J/70.    Allan Terhune is a National and World champion in several classes, and the Global One Design Director for Quantum Sails.

We sit down once again with six time national champ and Quantum Sailmaker Will Paxton, to pick his brain.  In this episode, Paxton explains the thought processes behind his winning tactics in an Express 27 race on San Francisco Bay.

We sit down with six time national champion, Will Paxton, to discuss both upwind and downwind sail trim.  Watch Paxton's raceQs' Geovid as the Quantum sailmaker and designer gives a breakdown of his performance during a one design Express 27 race.

We analyze two races on the same day and show just how much it changes your race to try and punch through headers, instead of tacking in them. With raceQs' built-in analytic tools, it's easy to see how the decisions you make on the race course affect your race statistics and overall performance. Missing just one header can change the geometry of the entire upwind leg as you sail sideways across the race course, instead of making the progress you need upwind.   

 Review the five gears of sailing, each designed for a different set of conditions or goals. Remember, just sitting in the groove doesn't win races. Experienced racers constantly change gears and make adjustments to get most out of every puff, lull, and shift.  

You can use your boat's wind wash to disturb the air of a sailboat by tacking directly underneath them, and slightly ahead of their bow. This is the "lee bow zone", and is a great way to catapult yourself to a better position in the race. In order to lee bow someone, you must tack directly underneath them, as close as physically and legally possible. When you complete the tack, your boat should be very close to the competitor, and about a half of a boat length ahead of them. 

A great introduction on how to use your wind shadow to cover someone, and how to escape a cover without losing too much ground. We introduce a new wind shadow feature in the raceQs' replay that changes size with the speed of the wind. The wind shadows project with the apparent wind angle, and add a whole new dimension to the 3D replays.  

The VMG polar charts in raceQs are a great tool to evaluate how quickly you complete and recover from your tacks. The VMG overlay is visible in “match mode”, and tracks your progress through the tack on a polar chart with the true wind angle as the vertical axis, shows your course as the angle of the vector, and your speed as the length of the vector. Each second, a colored dot indicating your VMG appears on the chart, showing your VMG for that last two minutes in a color-coded cloud.  

This podcast goes over the six gadgets in the raceQs replay dashboard: VMG, Course Over Ground, Speed Over Ground, Drift, Compass Heading, and Heel. The raceQs' phone app records data every second. After the replay is uploaded to the website, you can watch the replay and see your performance data displayed as a color coded histograms showing the last two minutes. A glance at the histogram color distribution makes it easy to evaluate your race performance.

Finishing out our four part series is this brief podcast on Jib draft depth and position.  We also talk about how to see the jib twist, and how the car position and sheet tensions affect trim.   This series is a great guide on how integrating a top view video with raceQs' Geovids will improve your racing analysis, and performance.  The view from the top gives us so much information about our sail trim, it took four podcasts!

Now you can finally tell when a tack is really good, or really terrible, and why.  In this podcast we review the basics of raceQs' tacking data and discuss the primary goal of tacking: lose as little time as possible.  We'll explain how you can measure your tacking angle and how slow you get.   

In this podcast we look at the the draft depth and draft position of the upper, middle, and lower parts of the main. Because GeoVids are synced with sailing data, we can search for moments of good VMG and evaluate how we trimmed our sails to get those positive results. We can also look at how our trim adjustments played out over time.     Using the mast view GeoVid, we have clear view of the draft stripe so we can use “AccuMeasure” to get exact figures for the draft position, depth, and even the mainsail twist. Comparing these numbers to our speed and VMG at different points in our race is a great teaching tool. Over time, we can get hard data for our trimmers on exactly what we need to do to excel in every condition.  

We continue the series on creating GeoVids using a camera mounted at the top of the mast.  In this episode, we discuss how to evaluate Weather Helm, Steering, and have an introduction to Mainsail Twist. 

Watch two professional skippers vie to be first to the windward mark in this superb race from the Adriatic Sea. We use this race to demonstrate many of the basic interface and analysis tools available in raceQs replays.

We have designed a cheap way to send your GoPro to to the top of the mast and record your race from the "top".  This angle is a great way to analyze  jib trim, car placement, helm position, and the shape of your sails.  In this Podcast, Julia demonstrates how to create a masthead GeoVid, and how to use a free online tool that calculates sail shape and draft position.

In this podcast we review VMG, or velocity made good, and essential concept that describes a boat progress to windward or to leeward.  We show how to use the raceQs tool to monitor your boats VMG, and discuss the difference between VMG and VMC, or velocity made to course.

In this Podcast, Julia shows you how to use raceQs' Geovids to evaluate your situational awareness on the water.  Using our tips, GeoVids can help you train yourself to improve your judgment of distances and make better tactical decisions in the heat of the moment.  Also, we discuss the applicability of these new technologies as evidence in protest hearings.  Most people are overly conservative when evaluating the size of the "three boat length zone", near the mark.  There is a simple test you can do to see how well you are doing with this crucial estimate. Watch the Podcast to learn more!    

In this podcast, we review how to make sure you're sailing the least possible amount of distance by always being on the lifted tack, and we show that trading height for speed on the upwind leg is rarely worth it.   We compare three boats, one which sails a very tight close-hauled course and tacks only on the headers, to two others, one which sails a much broader close-hauled course, and one which tacks onto the headed tack.  Predictably, the boat that sails high and stays on the lifted tack wins the windward leg

This short podcast uses raceQs GeoVids to explore ways to avoid hitting the mark, and how to recover from this common mistake.  GeoVids are videos that are synced with raceQs' 3D replays to provide more advanced post-race analysis.  This powerful tool helps to determine the cascade of small failrues that leads to a mistake like hitting the mark.  Also, we breakdown the number of penalty turns required for breaking the rules while rounding a mark.

In this podcast, we review how to make sure you're sailing the least possible amount of distance by always being on the lifted tack, and we show that trading height for speed on the upwind leg is rarely worth it.

In this podcast, we expand the upwind race geometry series by talking about the ladder rungs, the rhumb line, and building leverage. With a clear picture of the risk/benefit tradeoff of various upwind strategies, sailors who understand the geometry can make the right call for any given conditions, as well as analyze poor performances with a better understanding of where the race went awry.

This daring strategy takes advantage of the natural holes in the fleet that develop just before the start.   While some sailors consider the port tack approach more of a back-up plan than a strategy, it can be very useful in a crowded fleet. While appearing simple to execute, the elegance of this strategy is in the finer points.  For example, it's important to follow through with the maneuver, and carry the port tack all the way to the windward side of the starting line gap.  If you chicken out and tack too soon, you will have wasted a slot of clear air at a critical moment.  Properly executed, the port tack approach leaves the skipper space on the line to foot down and accelerate for a start with full speed, in clear air.       

In this podcast, we review laylines, ladder rungs, and the danger of getting to close to the edge of the course.

This installment of the sailboat race starting series teaches you how to execute and avoid the pitfalls of the common dinghy race start.  Also, get a quick tip on how to figure out which end of the starting line is favored.

In this podcast, we break down a chaotic rounding at a leeward gate.  The conclusion:  in your attempt to make a wide-and-tight rounding, or to get your spinnaker down, never leave the zone.

This short podcast shows how to avoid the crowd of “Reaching In, Reaching Out” starters and get clear air.  The Vanderbilt start begins with a broad reach away from the line, instead of a typical beam reach strategy.  After making a jibe for the start,  you approach attach the starting line with a confident full speed approach.   This strategy is easy to adjust if you misjudge the distance to the start, and using full speed gives the helm a lot of control to gain tactical advantage over other boats.

We demonstrate the cardinal rule of leeward-mark roundings: start wide and finish tight. Using an example from the 2013 Melges 24 World Championships, we show how failing to start wide and finish tight at the leeward mark puts a boat in a lower lane than her competitors: in that lower lane, she starts the windward leg at a serious disadvantage.  It's a great lesson and an eye-popping example of some of the world's best sailors making a classic mistake.  

This podcast is the first in the series about starting strategies. Reaching Out and Reaching In is a classic starting strategy, the first one that you learn.