You can read a lot of books (and you should) but you cannot replace time on the water. Early in my sailing life, before racing, I was told by one old salt, "You should race, you will learn more about sailing in one year of racing than in 10 years of cruising."
EXACTLY, experience is the only real teacher.
The DVDs, Ricks books, and other mentioned are excellent refreshers for the newer sailor. For me at least, the points made in these only became clear after I happened to experience, in a bad way, their reason for being on the race course. Basic moves, some stratagy and sequences for manouvers tike tacks and jibes can all be found in these and are the basics for getting around the course.
The very good sailors sail by instict and drummed in repetition and do not spend any mental effort in handling their boat, they feel it and keep it moving. Just as in a tack, though, there are a sequence of events that they go through during every wind shift, puff etc, that makes them fast. The basic theory (advanced baot speed, I call it) of how to keep your boat going fast, I have never encountered. You can read about wind patterns, and tactics, sail shape, boat tuning, but....
Here's the scenario.
2 boats clear of eachother and identically rigged heading up wind. They both see a small puff heading their way. The less experience crew, when the puff hits has their hull fly up in the air, They then pay out a bunch of sheet, and/or round up to keep the boat in control and feel like they are pointing higher in the puff. When the excitement of the puff has passed, they realize that the more experienced crew is now gained 1 to 1 1/2 boat lengths on them and manged to clime another boat length higher, all while to the appearance of the less experienced crew, the other boat's crew did not appear to expend any effort, their boat stayed flat and ended up higher and faster.
It has nothing to due with tuning, but they went through a sequence of adjusting the sheet with good anticipation of the pressure, moved the tiller in sequence to gain speed with the pressure and likely subtlely ajusted their weight ballance along the way. Running fast down wind there is a like sequence. When do you move the tiller to ajust angles and when should the sails be trimmed to keep up the maximum boat speed. The books I have read all talk about angles and trim. There is a rythum when it is all working correctly. Some feel it naturally, others with a lot of practice. It has taken me years to be in the lot of practise group and I still have a very long way to go. There is no substitution to actually feeling it and no amount of reading will get you there, but some description of the sequence of steps and what things to look for to decide which control to adjust in what order would go a long way to accelerating a lot of peoeple's learning curve from just getting around the course safely, to actually going fast.
Matt
