Audio (6 minutes) and text: James Spithill is best known as Oracle Team USA's winning skipper in the America's Cup and for his prowess on the match racing scene, but he's a pretty mean fleet racer too, having won the Melges 24 Worlds for example. In this interview the Australian professional looks at how to fight you way through the pack, and why it's the cool cats that win out in the end...
A five-time winner of the Fireball World Championships, Vyv Townend is the most successful Fireball sailor ever. He has also won a few big handicap racing events sailing against all types of other dinghies. Here Vyv shares his tips for battling your way through a fleet of unevenly matched boats and coming out on top....
With limited visibility steering the Skud keelboat, multiple World Champion in the Paralympic keelboat, Alex Rickham talks about the challenge of looking for breeze and getting the tactics and strategy right downwind...
One-design racing is the purest measure of sailing prowess, but if you spend most of your sailing doing club races, then doubtless you will be spending much of your time racing under handicap. So of course you want to know how to 'milk' the system! Indeed, some sailors even choose their boat according to its perceived performance under handicap. Now, that's what you call pot hunting...
There is a beautiful simplicity to the concept of a pursuit race. Set the tortoises off first, then release the hares, and in a perfect race all competitors would finish across the line at the same time. Reality is very different, however, with only a handful of boats in the running by the closing stages. So how do you make sure you are in one of those boats with a fighting chance of winning?