IS YOUR BOAT IN THE RIGHT GEAR?

Changing gears as the conditions change is about instinct and feel as much as it is about numbers. Alan Denham explains how to get the best from your boat

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Many of you, like me, probably started their sailing adventures in small dinghies. The purity of just you, the wind and some canvas. It's where we honed our skills of wind awareness and sail set. Finding the groove and powering along with just the force of nature, and, of course when we got it wrong, we were unceremoniously dumped into the water to perfect our capsize drill. Put simply, we learnt to sail through feel, touch, sight and sound. No engines and no electronic instruments to distract us.

Like many, I soon progressed onto bigger and more complicated vessels. Much more forgiving, but at the same time, much more complex to handle. To help us, we had an array of electronic instruments. You won't find many 30-footers today without wind direction, wind speed, depth, and boat speed.

In these early days of 'big boat' sailing, these instruments proved invaluable, but very quickly, we lost the 'seat of the pants' sailing. Instead of feeling the wind, we were guided by our electronic wind indicators and anemometer readouts.

As a sailing instructor, I see this more and more. Day Skipper and Yachtmaster candidates can park their boat in the tightest of marina berths, their navigation is impeccable, and their knowledge of the Colregs is top-notch, it's just that they can't actually sail very well.

Sure, they can read the instruments, but the actual feel of the boat, sea conditions and spatial awareness seems lost.

With such a reliance on their electronics, the natural skippering process seems lost.

So, how do we get our sailing mojo back?

LISTENING TO THE RUDDER