Sailing with Less Hull in the Water

The hull shape of the Laser allows the skipper to tip it in ways that keep various quantities of hull surface touching the water; a nice way to reduce drag in light air. But you pay for this flexibility with the varying degrees of stability associated with the different hull positions.

When you’re learning to sail the Laser, all the flexibility you can get from pirouetting your hull up on the triangle of its bow or tipping it over onto the line of its gunwale, requires too high a price for most people to fully take advantage of. The increase in speed with the boat gliding through the water like one-half of a catamaran, heeled on its extreme side, or pushed through the water like a bicycle balanced on its front wheel, bow down and transom up, comes with the risk of a sudden flip over on top of you or a catapulting stumble over its own shoulder.

Getting wet isn’t particularly a deterrent for most Laser sailors – I’m one of the exceptions here, I sail because I like to be on top of the water not in it – so I’m assuming that you will practice the boat equivalent of yoga in due time, but when racing, flipping is slower than dragging a bit more hull around, so hardly the place to practice.

What’s a new sailor to do? Well, first of all be thankful; better to have a flexible boat and not use its full potential, than to wish you had it and have to settle for boring old stability. Just visualize your hull’s acrobatic capability as a reserve ability you will save for later and for now sail your Laser flat and comfortably until the day you wish you could keep up with the more experienced sailors in light air.

I can’t go much further without addressing the flat-is-fast issue. Flat is fast, except when there isn’t enough wind to move you along and then less drag is faster. You will end up allowing some of the precious little air there is to slip out of your sails, but the decrease in drag seems to pay off. As soon as you have enough pressure in your sails to keep you solidly moving you can afford to have the hull begin to return toward flat.

If you’re ready to up the risk reward ratio a bit (and better to do it here than to take the urge back into the stock market [4/09]) start out with modest adjustments. All the changes you will want in hull angle will be produced by you shifting your weight to tilt the hull, and the most fundamental shift is to sail with your weight forward in light air.

Sliding your butt so that you’re sitting up against the forward end of the cockpit lifts the transom (a large amount of hull surface) out of the water and buries the bow (less hull surface). It is difficult to tell how far to slide so grab a friend and take turns sailing behind and beside each other and give feedback about how much of the hull is lifted clear when you’re sitting at different points. Seeing the difference when your friend shifts her weight forward will help make it clear how important it is to remember to slide forward, and hopefully help remind you to crowd forward after each tack.

At the beginning you can be pleased if you are getting a good portion of the aft part of the hull out of the water, but as you feel more comfortable, try leaning out over the forward deck, and resting your forward hand on the deck to shift even more weight forward. You have to have a foot on the cockpit floor, but that means you can slide pretty far forward; the length of your tiller extension is often the limiting factor.

As the boat balances more and more on the narrow bow, it will be more vulnerable to tipping over, so be wary. You can sail with your weight far forward going upwind and down, but you will probably be able to balance the boat most precariously off the wind.

And downwind you also want to get the largest area of your sail the farthest above the water and into the stronger breeze, so that adds another angle to the hull, rolled on to its leeward side so the boom sticks up. Now this means the boat is floating significantly on one side of the flat surface of its bow. In light air, the parade of Lasers sailing for the leeward mark is often punctuated by dramatic roles and splashing skippers. I’ve noticed that the percentage of younger sailors taking a swim is higher than the more cautious older guys. But, if you watch closely, it is often the boat that is up on its tip-toes and vulnerable to waves and puffs that is making its way through the fleet most successfully.

Upwind the angles are all a little less dramatic, but in light air the effects are often good. Start off just trying to get the transom and some of the windward side out of the water. Working to achieve too radical of an angle will change the angle of attack of your sails and the results are iffy. Just be sure that you get right up next to the dagger board after each tack. If you watch other sailors you will see many of them tack, clean up the lines in the cockpit, settle into the new tack and then slide forward. Learn to complete your tack as you slide forward.

Off the wind, when there is enough wind to plane or surf, hull drag is less of an issue. Now you want to get the boat sitting flat on its transom section so that it has the most chance to plane.  But even here you don’t want to force the transom too deeply into the water and create drag as water leaves the stern full of eddies. Try to get your weight in a spot where the boat’s bow is a bit up, but there isn’t any dramatic stern wake. In moderate wind this may be halfway back.

As the wind really starts to blow, the concern off the wind needs to switch to not having the bow plowing through the water. The sails will try to force the bow down so you will need your weight all the way back where it stabilizes the boat and keeps the bow from diving into a wave. There are dramatic pictures of Lasers pitch-poling right over as the bow digs in and the rest of the boat keeps on coming.

One last hull-tilting configuration is worth mentioning, sailing with a windward heel in light air. This gets some of the hull out of the water and helps keep the large part of the sail a bit more up off the water where the wind may be stronger. Its biggest drawback may be that the weight of the boom wants to tack the main if the wind is too light, the very time the technique is most useful. You have to hold the boom or wait for a bit more breeze.

Shifting your Laser so that you have the least amount of hull area in the water is just one more way the Laser makes us all stay in better shape. It really helps over the course of a long race or a regatta if you can hold your body in a position that is a bit odd. The postures, stretching and flexibility that yoga encourages make it seem like yoga would be a good fit with sailing a Laser, just don’t go pulling something on land and miss a day on the water.