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Racing & Sailing>No
Excuses
Jonathan McKee and Libby Johnson McKee won the 1996 Tasar Worlds, sailed at the Gorge in Oregon, USA.
NO
EXCUSES. Bill
Symes’ interview with Jonathon McKee after the 1996 Tasar Worlds
“We thought through the
whole thing before the regatta even began and had a very clear idea how we
wanted to sail the regatta.”
It was an impressive
performance: six bullets in 13 races; throw-outs, an 8th and a 10th. The
McKees followed a careful game plan, capitalizing on good boat speed,
conservative starts, and an uncanny sense of direction in the oscillating
breeze to separate from the pack and stay with the leaders. They also wisely
managed to avoid the carnage resulting from nuclear conditions on days 1-3
(others were not so lucky, judging from the round the clock activity in
Zig’s on-site boatworks and hardware store!).
In the following interview, I
asked ]onathon to describe his approach to the regatta, and hopefully provide
some insight into what it takes to win the Tasar World Championships. Bill
Symes
How did you prepare for the
Worlds?
Our preparation began by making
sure our equipment was in reasonably good shape. About a year and a half ago
we could see the Worlds coming up and we had an old boat that had really a lot
of miles on it. It was a fine boat and plenty fast, but we just felt the
potential for something going wrong was probably pretty great. So that was why
we bought a new boat, to eliminate that as a variable, or at least minimize
it.
It was the same thing with the
sails; even though they were a little over a year old, we decided to buy new
sails before the Worlds to eliminate that variable. I wouldn't say that was
absolutely necessary or really made much difference, but we didn't want that
to be an issue. So our goal was to take away excuses, basically.
In other areas of preparation,
we tried to sail as much as we could, especially in the stronger winds, and
sail as much as we could in the Gorge to get used to those particular
conditions. We also did a little bit of physical training in the couple of
months leading up to the worlds, again trying to eliminate excuses.
What kind of physical training
did you do?
The best way to physically
train is to sail of course. Otherwise we just did a little work in the gym and
some aerobics stuff. Not a lot, but just enough to feel better about the
situation. A lot of it's just psychological; it's same with the sails: it's
not that you need to have new sails, but you don't want--if you're going
slow--to think that that might be a problem. It gets back to eliminating
excuses.
What was your crew weight?
We were about 305 lb.
Did you replace any other boat
parts besides the sails?
We replaced our shrouds, our
gudgeons, and the rudder head --all the things which we thought could
potentially be a breakdown issue. After coming in after every day, we'd
check everything we could think of that might be a problem. So at least if
there was something that looked like it was developing a problem, we would be
aware of it and fix it.
Did you catch anything that you
had to replace?
No. We were pretty lucky as the
week went along that we really didn't have any major problems. There was a lot
of mast breakage at the Worlds, which is kind of unfortunate, l think maybe
there was a round of masts that must have been bad metal. It didn't really
used to happen, that lower sections would break. But anyway, seeing that and
being aware of it, what we did was try to use a little bit less vang than we
otherwise would have, and I know less than a lot of people were using. I think
that takes a lot of the load off the spar. So our vang would max out at a
certain point and we just wouldn't pull it on past that, even though it might
have been faster. We didn't want to take the chance of breaking anything. We
were also careful never to over-rotate the mast, especially if both shrouds
were all the way back. That puts a lot of extra loading on the shrouds, as the
one shroud wraps around the mast and tensions it up even more.
How much shroud tension did you
use?
We went with what I would call
fairly hard shroud tension. With one shroud all the way back and the other all
the way forward, it was just a little bit slack. Normally when we were going
upwind in anything over about 13, we'd have them both back.
Anything else on preparation?
The other thing that we did was
that we thought very deliberately about the regatta and how we wanted to
approach it and what our strategy was in any given situation. We thought
through the whole thing before the regatta even began and had a very clear
idea how we wanted to sail the regatta, which is probably in my mind the
biggest single thing we did. What I came to was a realization that was
probably just a matching of my sailing style with the race. So I decided not
to start at the ends of the line, just to try to start in middle somewhere
where I could be reasonably sure that I would have a clear lane and where I
could have a vision of the course and would have the freedom to go either way.
What happens when you start at one of the ends is that generally you're locked
into going one way or the other. If you're sure that's the right way, that's
OK. But there's also a fair amount of risk associated with that. So our whole
goal was to try to just get to the first mark in reasonable shape, like in the
top 10.