How to win offshore by sailing differently

by Stuart Greenfield, Yacht Racing Performance Coach
Offshore racing punishes crews who try to sail a stable inshore game in an unstable environment. That is the real difference. Offshore requires a big rethink on your helming and tactics if you are used to sailing inshore.

Inshore, you can often win by sailing cleanly to targets: target speed, target angle, target mode, target shift. Offshore, those numbers still matter, but the sea state, current structure and wave geometry distort everything.

The yacht is no longer moving through flat water under relatively stable aerodynamic load. It is pitching, heaving, yawing, accelerating and decelerating continuously, and the sails and appendages are being asked to work through those motion cycles rather than outside them.

Recent yacht-performance research is explicit on this point: upwind sail forces in waves are unsteady, with plunge and pitch changing the effective angle of attack; downwind in waves, surf-riding and wave-induced longitudinal forces materially affect speed, resistance, and control. – Full report