Sail to Win – serie

The modern racing yacht is awash with onboard instruments and electronics giving enormous amounts of data. But few people fully understand how to get the most out of all the information at their fingertips, let alone make it useful for the team to enable them to win races.But ace navigators, Mark Chisnell and Gilberto Pastorella, do – both have worked with professional sailing programmes all over the world – from America’s Cup to Maxi, ORC / IRC and one-design fleets.In Mastering Data to Win they take the reader through the process: from understanding the concepts, ensuring accuracy, using the data to win races and then post-race analysis to find performance gains.By mastering your instruments you can make the right calls every time and know for certain when to tack, which shift to look out for and how the tide can work with or against you. With colour diagrams and photographs throughout, this instructional guide turns information into excellence. Accessible to those new to racing, it also has a depth of information that will transform the performance of even professional sailors.

Olympic gold medallist and multiple world champion, Paul Goodison, explains why this book is important if you want to win races. He says: “To win sailboat races you need to sail the boat fast. This comes down to hours on the water training and tuning – there are few shortcuts to hours of practising on the water. To consistently win races you need to sail fast and smart – making the right decisions to sail the best course. If you are not the fastest boat, you are still able to win races and regattas by managing risk and sailing smart. This is where good tactics come in. But, unlike boatspeed, tactics may be learnt by thinking about each leg of the course and different situations from the comfort of your own home. Jon Emmett’s new book, Tactics Made Simple, is a great tool to help fast track this learning.” This book explains simply, through hundreds of diagrams, what tactics can be applied around the race track. Individual boats in each scenario are given names so that you can easily understand what they are doing. Individual chapters take you around the race course, from before you get on the water, through the pre-start, start, different legs and manoeuvres. Each section contains detailed advice for the beginner, intermediate and advanced sailor so you can just look at the level of tactics relevant to you. Ideal for dinghy sailors, there is also a wealth of advice that will benefit yachtsmen. This is a practical way to improve your racing results, whether starting out, moving up the club circuit or competing at national level and beyond. Originally published by Wiley Nautical as Be Your Own Tactics Coach.

Sir Ben Ainslie won his first two Olympic medals (silver, then gold) in the Laser Class. After winning the gold medal he wrote down the secrets that won him that medal in this book. This new edition is published to mark the 20th anniversary of that first of his four Olympic gold medals. It features a brand-new introduction by Ben reflecting on his victory 20 years ago.It is the only how-to book that the world’s most successful Olympic sailor has written and so, while he and the Laser class have moved on, this is the only place where you can gain access to Ben’s skills and thought process. It is an invaluable guide on how to perform at the top of the Laser class or, indeed, any single-handed sailing dinghy.From psychology, goal setting and getting the boat right to speed, fitness and training – this book illustrates how to win a championship. Brimming with photographs, it is a colourful, detailed account of how to dominate in your fleet.

This book will help you to succeed on the water whether your aim is Club, National, International (or even Olympic) level. With detailed analysis, challenging exercises and useful top tips throughout, everything is covered: from targets, goal setting and a winning mental attitude to boat handling, strategy and tactics (plus lots more). Handy diagrams on almost every page help to clarify complex concepts and scenarios, and brilliant action photographs bring the text to life. Each chapter is closed with not-to-be missed advice from Olympic medallists – making this a must-have book for all sailors who aspire to great success. This is a re-written and more focused version of the author’s popular title Be Your Own Sailing Coach, and its publication marks the re-launch of the iconic Sail to Win series, loved by sailors for over 30 years.

For most sailors, boat tuning may seem a mystery understood only by sailmakers and the like. In this book, sailor, chandler and championship winner, Ian Pinnell, unravels this daunting subject and will help improve your boatspeed as a result. Since most races are won or lost by a difference of less than 2% of racing time, you will soon be moving up the fleet. With hundreds of photos and diagrams to illustrate every point, the book clearly explains what each control does and how to set it up optimally for different conditions. Additional troubleshooting and skills sections take things even further, making this the bible of dinghy tuning.

The wind powers everything a sailor does and this book will help you to understand it. As a result you will be more prepared for your race, able to anticipate changes in the wind better and know what to do when they come. The first edition of this book was published in 1986, and it has been the go-to wind book for dinghy champions ever since. This new-look fourth edition is fully updated for modern forecasting and analyses a revised set of popular racing venues around the world: unveiling what to expect from the weather at over 25 regatta locations, it will get you ahead of the competition and powering up the leaderboard.

The Optimist is the most popular junior sailing class worldwide, with thousands of young people actively racing them and hundreds attending the major events in the class. It has been the nursery for most of the top racing sailors in the world including all the Team GBR gold medallists at the last 2 Olympics (Sir Ben Ainslie, Hannah Mills, Saskia Clark and Giles Scott) – the same will be true for most other countries. Optimist Racing is written for those sailors, parents and coaches who are looking for success in this competitive class. In it you will learn what it takes to win, including how to achieve blistering boatspeed through technique and tuning, perfect boat handling and tactics as well as covering the mental and physical requirements for success. There is also a section for parents and coaches describing how they can best support their young sailors. Originally written by Ben Ainslie’s Optimist coach, Phil Slater, this new edition has been completely updated by top international racing coach, Steve Irish, who can be found coaching Optimist and other sailors worldwide. This book is the up-to-date handbook for sailing an Optimist fast.

Gold medal winning coach, Jon Emmett works with sailors and coaches around the world and is frequently asked things like: ‘What is a good exercise to improve this?’ ‘Why do we do this exercise?’ ‘How do we make the exercise more / less difficult?’ This book is the answer to those frequently asked questions. It contains training exercises for each element of a sailing race. As well as describing and illustrating the exercise, it tells you what skills you are trying to improve, why and how to make the exercise harder or easier. The book will enable coaches to deliver better, more focussed, training sessions, but it will also help sailors who don’t have the benefit of a coach to practise and improve their sailing skills. The exercises are marked as to whether they are suitable for solo boats, groups of boats or those with a coach boat. As Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” Armed with this book, get out, do some training and improve your sailing skills!

Nick Craig’s ground-breaking Helming to Win was published 10 years ago to great reviews: “Many sailing books can be recycles of familiar themes and ideas. Not this one! This is a highly personal and radical, fresh view of the subject area.”In the following decade since it was published, Nick has won 10 World, 3 European and 20 National Championships! That’s winning more championships than most of us have attended over this period.As an amateur sailor, with a senior full-time job, Nick knows how to make the most of his time on the water. Every race is recorded in his notes, every race builds on his knowledge.This new edition of Helming to Win utilises what he has learnt from those 33 championship wins (and many other less successful events), with new learning, new anecdotes, new photos and additional captions on the photo sequences to ensure the key learnings are easy to take on.This updated breakthrough book will help you make the transition from weekend racer to national champion, just as Nick has done. Covering everything from where to look and getting ‘in the groove’ to mental approaches and championship sailing, you will be working your way up the leaderboard in no time. Packed full of intelligent insight, brilliant top tips and engaging photo sequences, if your goal is to win then this is the book for you!