Stop BLAMING the rating ...13 ways to go faster offshore

Stuart Greenfield | Yacht Racing Performance Coach After enough miles offshore, the kind where the watch system stops feeling fresh around day two and the decisions start to blur — you stop pushing for every last tenth of a knot because looking after the team and keeping the spirit and energy up is so much more important than everything else. Most boats don’t lose significant ground because something goes catastrophically wrong. They lose it because that constant push for trimming and speed drifts. Sheets are cleated and attention drift to snacks and sleep. And over 200 to 600 miles, that’s more than enough. This is what makes offshore racing genuinely difficult to coach, and difficult to self-diagnose. The problems aren’t obvious. They don’t announce themselves. They accumulate in small, politely invisible ways — a degree of heel, half a knot through a transition, a sail change held fifteen minutes too long, a watch handover that lost ten minutes of focus — and by the time you’re plotting your positions in the morning a lot of those AIS plots have disappeared. Are you miles ahead or miles behind? What follows is a working list of the areas where I see offshore campaign consistently lose time. Not catastrophically. Just persistently. A mechanical and a human issue - one easy one hard My experience seems to explain how speed is lost, and it seems to breaks into two distinct categories. The first is physical: things you can fix before you leave the dock. The second is human: decision-making, crew behaviour, fatigue, and leadership under pressure. They require ongoing work, every season, on every race. Easy fixes - Physcial • Hull surface — the biggest controllable drag source before the start • Excess displacement — most boats race heavier than the owner thinks • Weight in the ends — pitching costs more than weight amidships • Keel & rudder alignment — misalignment adds leeway on every tack • Propeller drag — unchecked props are a permanent, invisible tax • Rig tune mismatched to forecast — wrong setup costs everything downstream • Instrument calibration — bad data corrupts every decision that follows Hard fixes - Human • No defined performance mode — targets not known lose most time • Wrong sail held too long — hesitation costs more than the change • Fatigue after dark — trim degrades before anyone notices • Poor start position — early compromise compounds over 200 miles • No scenario-based race plan — not understanding the information or its out of date • Information overload — too many inputs slow every call that matters- too many voices

1. Weight — and more importantly, where it sits Almost every offshore boat I step aboard is carrying more than it needs. That part’s fairly well understood. But the weight conversation usually stops too soon, because it’s not just about how much — it’s about where. Weight concentrated in the ends of the boat increases pitching moment, and pitching is expensive. Through waves it scrubs speed, disrupts the flow over the foils, makes the boat harder to push into a groove and keep there. You don’t experience it as obviously slow. You experience it as sticky. Slightly reluctant. Slightly more physical than it should be. That friction compounds over distance. It’s not one bad wave, it’s two days of marginally harder work for marginally less result. So check the weather and ensure the crew have the correct but minimum gear. For a 24hour race maybe 10kg per person is adequate! (and they shoule be wearing most of it when on the rail) 2. A hull that isn’t clean enough Very few offshore boats are obviously slow through the water. Most are just not quite clean enough, and there’s a meaningful difference between those two things. A surface that’s slightly imperfect — preparation that’s good but not obsessive — disturbs flow at a level you cannot feel on a daysail but absolutely feel over a race. It shows up in light airs, where you can’t buy your way out with pressure. It shows up in transitions, where acceleration is the currency. It shows up in the moments after a manoeuvre, when a well-prepared hull recovers faster than one that isn’t. It’s not glamorous preparation. It rarely gets talked about at the debrief. But it’s foundational. Key points, diver down before each race, 3000 grade finish is the target. Skinb fittings closed, propellor checked to ensure it closes or feathers in all conditions. Check rudder alignment especiallt toe in and out on a dual rudder yacht.

3. Crew consistency, not crew quality This is one worth spending time on, because most owner-campaigned offshore boats don’t lack talent. They lack consistency. There’s a difference. You can assemble a competent crew from a solid pool and still have a boat that underperforms, because the unit hasn’t stabilised. Different combinations across races means different interpretations of roles, different communication habits, different standards at the margins. Each individual is capable. But the system is slightly noisy. The cost isn’t one big error. It’s a thousand micro-delays — a manoeuvre that takes a beat longer than it should, a trim call that needs confirming, a situation that requires verbal negotiation rather than silent execution. Over 200 miles, that noise turns into distance. The best offshore crews I’ve been around behave less like groups of good sailors and more like organisms. That doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen quickly. It’s built by repetition, by stable combinations, and by debriefing the small stuff relentlessly. 4. The boat is not in a defined mode This is probably where more offshore time is lost than anywhere else — and it’s almost invisible when it’s happening. The boat feels fine. Speed feels reasonable. The helm isn’t fighting anything obvious. But the boat isn’t locked into a performance mode with defined targets that the crew is actively defending. Instead, speed wanders. Angle wanders. Trim is reactive — adjusting to conditions rather than holding a position against them. The boats I’ve seen win offshore races consistently have something specific in common: they know their targets. Target heel angle for the conditions. Target boatspeed for the mode. Target VMG angle. And critically — they hold them. When the boat slips out of mode, someone notices, and it’s brought back. Not dramatically. Just steadily. The rest of the fleet drifts. Not far. Just enough.

5. Starts that are acceptable rather than good Very few offshore starts are outright disasters. Most are just slightly off — a fraction late, slightly buried, not quite where you intended to be. And because nothing has gone dramatically wrong, the conversation moves on. But from a slightly wrong starting position, you’re in compromised air early, you’re reacting rather than leading, and you’ve conceded the tactical initiative in the first few minutes of what might be a five-day race. Offshore, early loss compounds. The boats that establish clear air and early lanes control their own destiny from the first hour. The ones that don’t are managing damage they often don’t fully account for. Starts are trainable. They get better with dedicated practice. Most offshore campaigns don’t give them nearly enough.

6. Sail changes that come too late Modern offshore sails are remarkably good. The range of conditions any given sail can handle has expanded significantly. But this has a side effect that I see regularly: it makes it easier to justify staying in a sail a bit longer. The internal conversation goes something like — let’s hold this a bit longer, it might come back, we’re still moving well enough. And you stay. And it does come back, sometimes. But often it doesn’t, and the issue isn’t the decision to hold — it’s the time spent sailing in a compromised mode before finally committing to the change. The cost isn’t the manoeuvre. A well-drilled sail change costs minutes. The cost is the thirty or forty minutes of underperformance beforehand, sailed in the wrong sail on the wrong settings, because nobody wanted to make the call. That’s where the time goes. Decisive sail changes, executed early, are almost always faster than held positions that eventually force the issue.

7. No real race plan — only data Most offshore programmes have access to more weather information than they know what to do with. Models, GRIB files, routing tools, updated forecasts every six hours. The data is not the problem. The problem is that data without a plan is just noise. A good offshore race plan isn’t a single optimal route — it’s a set of scenarios with defined decision points. What happens if the pressure fills earlier than forecast? What’s the trigger to commit left? At what wind angle does the rhumb line stop making sense? These decisions, made in advance and clearly owned by someone on board, are what separate boats that sail their race from boats that react to everyone else’s. Without that structure, the race becomes a series of responses. And responsive racing, offshore, is very difficult to win. Note: With the whole crew downloading routing software onto their phones everyone on board thinks they have a plan for the race and they do for the first six hours. During that time you can see everyone on AIS the best route may become obvious. But once 12 miles offshore or less and with phones running out of power and night approching all those ideas and plans are gone. If you don’t have access to satellite data streams then it is time to look back at the pre-race information, listen on VHF or long wave radio to the weather forecast. Use your routing software in a different way by putting in the wind speed and direction manually and using your own knowledge to determine the routing. When you have lost all the fleet apart from those 12miles away on AIS you then start really offshore racing. That means ensuring you are making maximum VMC (or VMG if a straight beat or run- which is rare so VMC is much more important). This is the moment when the navigator, tactician or skipper - but just one person has to make firm and direct decisions on heading, sail choice and routing.

8. Following rather than leading There’s a version of offshore racing that feels safe because you’re sailing with the fleet. You’re not exposed. Nobody’s going somewhere you haven’t seen. But following, tactically, is a losing position dressed up as prudence. When you follow, you lose leverage. You concede clear air. You give up control of your own race. The decisions stop being yours. The best offshore boats I’ve raced on and against don’t always go a different way. But they go deliberately. Their positioning is chosen, not inherited. There’s a meaningful difference, and it shows up in the standings.

9. Fatigue — the quiet race loser after dark This is where offshore races are most quietly decided, and it’s the least talked-about factor in most debriefs. In the early stages, everyone is alert, communication is crisp, trim is active, and decisions are made at pace. After dark on day two, particularly if the passage has been physical, the picture changes. Decisions slow. Watch handovers shorten the briefing. Trim degrades because nobody is quite sharp enough to chase the last two per cent. And in that degraded state, the boat stops converting opportunity. You’re still moving. Nothing is obviously wrong. But you’ve stopped sailing the race at the level you started it. The best offshore programmes manage energy as deliberately as they manage sail inventory. They think about sleep rotations early, protect key decision-makers through difficult passages, and build rest into the programme rather than hoping people recover on the go. This is a coaching and leadership function as much as a sailing one.

10. Too much information at the wrong moment Modern racing cockpits have more data available than most crews can effectively process. Instruments, models, targets, competitor positions, AIS, weather updates. In theory, more information means better decisions. In practice, more information often means slower decisions — or paralysis disguised as analysis. I’ve seen boats hold a position for an hour longer than they should have because three different models were pointing three different directions and nobody had the framework to adjudicate between them. The best boats I’ve worked with are disciplined about simplification under pressure. They decide in advance which inputs matter most, and they trust those inputs. They have a hierarchy. The rest gets filtered. More data is only useful if the crew is set up to act on it. Otherwise it’s just noise with an impressive interface.

11. Rig tune not matched to race conditions Rig tune tends to get addressed in setup and then left alone — or adjusted reactively in the race when the boat starts misbehaving. This is backwards, and it’s more costly than most crews realise. A rig that’s set for average conditions rather than the actual conditions you’re racing in affects everything downstream: helm balance, sail shape, the boat’s willingness to settle in a groove. When it’s wrong, you feel it as effort. The helm is slightly heavy. The boat won’t quite lock in. You end up managing the boat rather than sailing it. Rig tune for an offshore race should be part of the race plan — considered in light of the forecast, discussed, and set deliberately before the start. Adjustments during the race should be informed decisions, not responses to discomfort. What I reguarly see is boats which are under raked and over shrouded so the rig cannot be altered enough by backstay controls and the centre of effort does not move enough. The boat feels stiff, accelertion in slow and the sales are too flat for most conditions. Poor acceleration offshore is the killer in a seaway over just a few hour. Note: Modern moulded sails are designed for a TWS range and generally they need to be carefully trimmed in the lighter end of their wind range otherwise both the mainsail and jib will be underpowered this plus not enough twist especially in moderate sea states will kill your speed and accelleration. You could easily be high and fast in the Solent where the boat will get up to target fast in a flat sea but offshore if you do not have enough drive and enough twist you will never get to your target. 12. Poor calibration and distrusted data If your numbers are wrong, your decisions are wrong. That’s a simple chain, but it’s broken in two different directions more often than people admit. Some boats don’t trust their instruments and sail by feel — which sounds noble but means they’re operating without reference points. Others trust their data completely without having verified it which means they’re optimising against inaccurate targets and don’t know it. Performance sailing requires accurate inputs and genuine confidence in them. Getting there requires time spent calibrating, cross-checking, and building an evidence base. It’s not exciting work. But it’s the foundation that makes everything else meaningful. Note: Instrument calibration is pre-season work, done on the water in controlled conditions. Boatspeed calibration should be verified at multiple wind angles and speeds. Leeway should be measured and modelled. Upwash corrections on the wind angle should be checked against known reference points. This is not exciting work. It is foundational work. The crew that sails to accurate polars consistently outperforms the crew that sails by feel. 13. A sail inventory without clarity Most offshore campaigns have the sails they need. What they frequently lack is a clear, shared understanding of when to use them and why and what the next sail is when conditions shift. That lack of clarity creates hesitation at exactly the moments when decisiveness is most expensive to lose. Someone has a view. Someone else has a different view. The discussion happens in the cockpit while the boat sails the wrong sail. By the time the decision is made, the window may have passed. Sail selection protocols, clear trigger points, defined handoffs, practised decisions, remove this friction. They don’t need to be elaborate. They need to be agreed, understood, and owned. The gap offshore is rarely dramatic. What separates the front of the fleet from the middle of it over 200 to 600 miles is almost never one thing. It’s not a single great strategic call, a spectacular boat speed advantage, or one catastrophic error by a competitor. It’s everything — managed slightly better. The boats at the front carry less drag. They make earlier decisions. They hold their mode longer. They maintain standards later into the race. They stay clearer under pressure at the moments when pressure is highest. The rest are usually closer than they think. But not quite close enough. And closing that gap requires being honest about where, specifically, the time is going — rather than attributing the result to conditions, competitors, or luck.