I'm used to sheet my sail to the right place, cleating it and then steering to keep it in the groove.

This works well on the flat pond I sail on usually but it failed spectacularly two week-ends ago in the short chop on the Blackwater estuary. I found there that steering for the waves and playing with the sheet to keep the main in the groove worked better. Way better. Average speed was 6 knots trying to steer around and jumped to 9.5 knots once I figured out I needed to change the technique.