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Sailing Your Laser Flat
It isn’t very cool to mount an inclinometer (a crescent-shaped level that mounts on a thwartship bulkhead and reads angle of heel in degrees) on your Laser, so how do you tell when you’ve got it flat enough? The great Buddy Melges says to compare your mast to the horizon and keep them perpendicular to each other.
Now if I tried that while sailing on certain tacks on Crystal Lake in Gilmanton, NH, I might find myself having to pull the boat over on top of me to keep the mast perpendicular to the hills that surround the lake. Buddy sails a lot in the Midwest; the geography may help his technique. To be fair, Buddy’s technique works well if you can get a feel for the horizon, which can be tougher on a small lake or in big waves.
Flat isn’t easy to tell or to maintain. Skippers seemed to like the feel of a bit of pull on the tiller, it just seems “right;” the same with being able to lean a bit into a heel. And overall, the boat feels more stable when it’s sailed with some heel, so we tend to hedge our bets toward keeping the hull a bit off of perfectly flat. It’s as if all our natural instincts encourage us to let it heel; but heeling is slow most of the time.
And if you can’t trust your sense of balance, then are we back to the visual sense? Well, at least some of the time visual readings will be vague. For instance, when you’re hiked-out your angle of sight on the mast is closer to being in-line with its motion and therefore it’s much harder to read the exact angle. It is easier when the air is light and you can sit up in the boat and sight the mast at an angle of travel that shows a much finer detail of motion.
So, some tricks to know when it’s flat:
· Picture the mast sticking straight out of the water. The longer the length you can see, the easy to see the angle to the water. When you look up, the water disappears, so try picturing more of the mast down low to give yourself a clearer reading on the angle off perpendicular. It can be helpful to picture the mast starting down deep in its mast well so that you get the more accurate sense of what’s upright.
· Keep the deck parallel to the water. The deck is curved, but there is also enough flat area to give you a feel. Try using the aft deck too. Remember that it will be much harder to see small differences if you’re looking out abeam verses fore or aft.
· In non-hiking situations, ask yourself, “If I stopped bracing myself with my feet would I topple into the boat?” If so you are probably not flat. To make this most accurate you will need to be sure you are sitting perpendicular to the cockpit sole.
· Try holding the outhaul or cunningham so that the tail hangs from your hand. It will fall straight down and if the boat’s vertical lines, i.e., mast rudder, etc., aren’t parallel to it you aren’t flat.
· One trick that John Kolius taught me was that if you feel flat you’re not. You should feel like you’ve gone past flat. We’re all so use to being a bit heeled that it takes some time to adjust to the feeling of flat, and so if you feel good, you’re probably not far from your regular angle, and if you usually don’t sail the boat flat, keep pulling it over onto yourself until you feel that your past flat.
· One of the best ways to get the feeling of sailing the Laser flat is to practice with a friend. The person ahead or behind gets a better view of the true angle of the boat and can give timely feedback. The nice thing is that both sailors can give feedback to each other at the same time. The most effective feedback is to report when your friend has got it flat; don’t report the failures. We learn by repeating the feel of successes.
I’ve started to try to pull my Laser past horizontal when I’m hiking as a way to get myself more comfortable with the feeling of flat. As the boat comes over on top of me it feels hairy; as I ease it back to flat, it feels so good. In the last couple of years I’ve desensitized myself to a much greater degree to the on-the-edge feeling and I do a better job of holding the boat down.
One way to practice this on a warm day is to hike back right over the gunwale and into the water. Let your lifejacket float you on your back beside the boat. If you fight to get back in the boat, you will likely flip it on top of you. Instead begin to sheet in and let the pressure on the sail give you a force to pull against – essentially hike yourself back into the boat against the sail. This takes abdominal muscles (What on a Laser doesn’t?), but may help you feel more in control when you’re hiking the Laser flat.
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