The fun we had at this weekend’s South Points #5 high school regatta featured a few good examples of textbook rocking. I flagged the ones I saw, and probably missed others (sorry!).
It’s easy to see rocking – someone’s mast is moving back and forth. It’s harder to see illegal rocking, because usually everyone’s mast is moving to some degree for some reason, and picking out the bad guy is a little like a needle in a haystack.
Bad rocking is just plain slow, and obvious, and dumb, and if you get flagged you deserve it for trying to break a rule. “Good” rocking, a term I’ll quickly explain, is different. Yes, “rocking” is always illegal, but in practical terms there’s a skinny little place between rocking and the legal use of your body weight to help steer the boat. This place is known as “good downwind technique,” and is currently a nation ruled by Queen Anna Tunnicliffe. There’s a waiting period for citizenship of several years on the water in a dinghy, though this is sometimes waived for people with fantastic natural feel. People with this technique slide downwind in waves and chop like it’s a physical act of love with the racecourse, with the boat turning gently through three axes, and the sail(s) flowing in and out to match every degree of every smooth turn.
Here’s how I and other on-the-water judges identify what’s rocking, and what’s just fantastic sailing. First, there’s a mental checklist, and if you’d like to follow along at home it’s in RRS 42.2(b). First, is there “repeated rolling of the boat.” Strike one. Second, is it “induced by body movement”? Strike two. Third, is the action to “facilitate steering” or not? If no, that’s strike three and the yellow flag comes out. The first, rolling of the boat, is easy to see. When we see it, we immediately look at a sailor’s upper body. If it is moving in and out timed in a manner that it causes the rolling, that’s strike two. By this time, it’s easy to see if the body movement is synched with the boat turning. When the best sailors do it, it’s difficult to know the moment when the line is crossed from good technique to a rule violation, because it involves a judgment call on the severity of a roll, the depth of a turn, etc. Undoubtedly, different judges have different thresholds, and sailors at the highest level tend to build a level of understanding to know where the line is at any given regatta.
This weekend I flagged one sailor for exactly the reason above. I saw the mast moving, and zoomed a little closer to watch the body. I saw the torso rock out and pull the boat to weather a bit, with no associated turn. I saw it again, and I think even one more time before it was painfully obvious there was nothing else going on. It doesn’t make them an evil being, probably just a nervous sailor who was trying to get every last little bit out of the boat and went too far.
I flagged another upwind. Hey, heavy dinghy sailors, here’s a tip. Yes, it’s frustrating to watch the wind fade after you’ve been crushing out-of-shape lightweights all day in a breeze, but that is the classic setup for the “anxiety rock” and we know you’re going to do it. When you come out of the tack on starboard slow for the first time all day, sitting on your rail while the two little girls next to you are still hiking and faster, yes you’re pissed and have to DO SOMETHING, but the Texas Two-Step (left foot in to heel, right foot out to flatten) ain’t the answer.
The ISAF Rule 42 interpretations located here:
http://www.sailing.org/tools/documents/42interpretations2005-%5b515%5d.doc
are what judges use to learn how to call Rule 42 violations. There’s also a CD video we’re trained on and any sailor competing at high levels needs to watch it, too, so everyone, judges and sailors, are playing by the same rules – e-mail me and I’ll burn you a copy.
It’s easy to see rocking – someone’s mast is moving back and forth. It’s harder to see illegal rocking, because usually everyone’s mast is moving to some degree for some reason, and picking out the bad guy is a little like a needle in a haystack.
Bad rocking is just plain slow, and obvious, and dumb, and if you get flagged you deserve it for trying to break a rule. “Good” rocking, a term I’ll quickly explain, is different. Yes, “rocking” is always illegal, but in practical terms there’s a skinny little place between rocking and the legal use of your body weight to help steer the boat. This place is known as “good downwind technique,” and is currently a nation ruled by Queen Anna Tunnicliffe. There’s a waiting period for citizenship of several years on the water in a dinghy, though this is sometimes waived for people with fantastic natural feel. People with this technique slide downwind in waves and chop like it’s a physical act of love with the racecourse, with the boat turning gently through three axes, and the sail(s) flowing in and out to match every degree of every smooth turn.
Here’s how I and other on-the-water judges identify what’s rocking, and what’s just fantastic sailing. First, there’s a mental checklist, and if you’d like to follow along at home it’s in RRS 42.2(b). First, is there “repeated rolling of the boat.” Strike one. Second, is it “induced by body movement”? Strike two. Third, is the action to “facilitate steering” or not? If no, that’s strike three and the yellow flag comes out. The first, rolling of the boat, is easy to see. When we see it, we immediately look at a sailor’s upper body. If it is moving in and out timed in a manner that it causes the rolling, that’s strike two. By this time, it’s easy to see if the body movement is synched with the boat turning. When the best sailors do it, it’s difficult to know the moment when the line is crossed from good technique to a rule violation, because it involves a judgment call on the severity of a roll, the depth of a turn, etc. Undoubtedly, different judges have different thresholds, and sailors at the highest level tend to build a level of understanding to know where the line is at any given regatta.
This weekend I flagged one sailor for exactly the reason above. I saw the mast moving, and zoomed a little closer to watch the body. I saw the torso rock out and pull the boat to weather a bit, with no associated turn. I saw it again, and I think even one more time before it was painfully obvious there was nothing else going on. It doesn’t make them an evil being, probably just a nervous sailor who was trying to get every last little bit out of the boat and went too far.
I flagged another upwind. Hey, heavy dinghy sailors, here’s a tip. Yes, it’s frustrating to watch the wind fade after you’ve been crushing out-of-shape lightweights all day in a breeze, but that is the classic setup for the “anxiety rock” and we know you’re going to do it. When you come out of the tack on starboard slow for the first time all day, sitting on your rail while the two little girls next to you are still hiking and faster, yes you’re pissed and have to DO SOMETHING, but the Texas Two-Step (left foot in to heel, right foot out to flatten) ain’t the answer.
The ISAF Rule 42 interpretations located here:
http://www.sailing.org/tools/documents/42interpretations2005-%5b515%5d.doc
are what judges use to learn how to call Rule 42 violations. There’s also a CD video we’re trained on and any sailor competing at high levels needs to watch it, too, so everyone, judges and sailors, are playing by the same rules – e-mail me and I’ll burn you a copy.
Facebook friends, there are more photos of the weekend on my page -- come find me.
No comments:
Post a Comment