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Sailect and Trimbook: Exercises by the coach Tanguy Leglatin

By Tanguy Leglatin, Coach of professional and non-professional skippers

 

Adrena navigation software are tactical decision-making and performance analysis tools. As a coach, I help skippers becoming more performant, improving their human competences as much as possible as well as using a platform (setting/maneuver/behavior).

Under pressure and in race conditions, the handling of the boat and the marks are different – sometimes in a positive way, but often in a negative way. This is why a tool like Adrena can help the crew by limiting these gaps… provided that it is well used. To do so, it is essential to work rigorously and thoroughly on the data before and after the navigations. 

 

Sailect Sailect tool

Thanks to this function, it is possible to visualize the sails usage chart. Easy to use, it is permanently checking and informing if the sails configuration matches the ongoing wind conditions. It also anticipates the best sails to use for the following tacks.

The Sailect function indicates the best configuration for the boat in real time provided that the skipper knows the boat very well, has tested it with several sails in various wind conditions and has recorded the corresponding data into Adrena.

 

Trimbook

This is the settings book of the boat. Based on the work that has been made, especially with the Sailect and Optima data, the navigator can create a complete book describing the best settings and configurations of the boat: sails, appendices, tensions… In association with the Sailect, it gives the possibility to optimize and visualize the adjustments of the boat.

It is essential to test several configurations and to write them down meticulously during the trainings.

 

Here are two exercises:

Exercise 1: The cross over

The exercise is simple. To cross over a sail, you have to be on the same tack and sail fuller from 10° to 10° by pointing well and by setting the sails in order to follow the pennons. Stay 8 minutes under each angle, and then change the sail when the angle is too low for the tested sail. Do it again with a new sail by starting with the highest angle.

What do we need to look at?

  • The speed percentage in order to know if the boat is fast or not
  • Use the Trimbook to note down 3 elements per sail :

 

  1.  The high angle
  2. The fast angle of the sail
  3. The low angle

 

Sailect

 

Sailect cannot be overlaied.

The fast angle is the one that indicates the core target of the sail. This is the line according to which the sail is defined as fast. It often corresponds to an angle of apparent wind which is why it is necessary to systematically note down in the Trimbook the average True Wind Angle (TWA), the average Apparent Wind Angle (AWA) and the average True Wind Speed (TWS).

 

Here is the corresponding annotation added in the Trimbook:

DATE_ best sail configuration and/or boat configuration

Average TWS _ 3-4 min _ average TWA _ average AWA

 

annotation

 

To do so, it is necessary to define the damping of data on 4 Minutes in the data display window. Thus, the average data are immediately read.

 

Damping

 

 Exercise 2: How to define a reefing?

This exercise is more subtle than the first one even if it is quite similar.

The goal is to navigate on the high angle of each sail then to reef down or to loosen on the same angle. Different marks indicate at which moment it is necessary to reef down. The crew has to check the following indicators:

  • The sail lifts (it generates a lot of trail)
  • The nosediving of the boat (on wind abeam) 

  • The moment generated by the mainsail
  • The pitch attitude is also a good indicator for the reefing

Noting down in the Trimbook the reefing line and drawing the Sailect is useful. The reefing often happens more quickly than we might think. Plus, it is not linear but rather sinusoidal.

 

Reefing

 

This type of curve is sometimes difficult to accept in terms of maneuver. However, the conception of Sailect is also based on boat usage and handling criteria.

It is interesting to note down in the Trimbook the maneuvers that need to be improved by using different pictograms. 

At this moment, we can start working on the maneuvers on-board in order to improve the use of the defined Sailect!

 

To sum up

It is essential to understand how the boat and the sails configurations work. Sailect have to be studied before navigating as they are based on precise data integrated in Adrena. Then, they can be used as a basis in the optimization of the navigation.

Thanks to the Trimbook, it is possible to keep a quick history of the choices that have been made in order to improve the sails configuration.