Expert tips: How to hold a lane upwind

Being able to sit in a ‘thin’ lane upwind and make gains on boats around you is a skill worth working on. TP52 helmsman and Olympic gold medalist Šime Fantela explains how to Andy Rice for Yachting World:

When you’re competing in a big fleet, it’s not the winning races that marks out the great from the good. It’s the ability to bounce back from bad positions and find a way through the fleet into the top 10. One of the key skills is the ability to survive in thin lanes when there are boats tight to windward and to leeward of you. It’s what all of us have to do out of a busy start line, but lane-holding is a great skill for further up the race track too when you’re trying to grind through the traffic.

We ask Olympic gold medalist helmsman Šime Fantela about how he and the rest of the crew in top TP52 teams like Bronenosec or Provezza work at surviving and thriving in thin lanes on perhaps the most demanding and closely contested keelboat racing circuit in the professional world, the 52 Super Series. Here are Šime’s best tips on how to go fast in a thin lane. – Full report