Second-Row Recovery
Buried in the second row, tack onto port early and duck the sterns into a clean lane — clean air beats the metres you lose ducking.
Sometimes the start goes wrong and you find yourself a length behind the front row, sitting in the dirty air pouring off their sails — that's the 'second row', and it only gets worse as the leaders pull away. The fix is to act fast: tack onto port, duck cleanly behind the sterns of the front-row boats, and sail out into open water where the air is undisturbed. You lose a couple of boatlengths ducking, but you gain clean air and the freedom to sail your own race. The longer you sit suffocating in the second row, the bigger and more permanent the gap to the leaders becomes.
Opens the animation on the boat-length grid — run it well, then brief it from the same picture. Free, no account needed.
What to call out
- Recognise the second row early — sails ahead blanketing your air — and act, because every second sitting there the gap grows.
- Tack to clear air even if you must duck sterns, because clean air is faster than the couple of metres you lose ducking.
- Cut your losses before the leaders separate, because once they stretch away the gap becomes permanent.
- Pick the lane that also heads to the favoured side, because a clean lane toward where you want to go fixes two problems at once.