We’re back with Part 2 of my conversation with Steve Hunt, whose first episode was one of our most downloaded ever—no surprise, given his clear, practical take on the art of racing. In this episode, we dig into the details: sail trim, heel angles, faster tacks, and sharper starts. It’s packed with insights from one of the best in the game. Don’t forget the special Bonus for Sailfaster listeners: Get 30% off Steve’s premium coaching content at stevehuntsailing.com using the code Sailfaster30.
[00:00:08] Hello, we're back with Part 2 of my conversation with Steve Hunt, whose first episode was one of our most downloaded ever. No surprise, I think, given his clear, practical take on the art of racing. In this episode, Part 2, we're going to dig into the details. Sail trim, heel angles, fast attack, sharper starts, so it's packed with insights from Steve, who is, as everybody knows, one of the best in the game. And don't forget the special bonus for Sailfaster listeners. You can get 30% off Steve's
[00:00:38] premium coaching content at stevehuntsailing.com. If you just insert the code SAILFASTER30, that's sailfaster30 at stevehuntsailing.com. Great, let's dive in.
[00:00:57] So Steve, you know, you're talking about the boat prep needs to be perfect. And that reminds me of another one of your videos, where you talked about getting sail trim right. And you talked about even an inch of backstay, even an inch in and out of main, can make a huge difference. To your relative performance against other boats. So that was a really interesting video.
[00:01:19] Yeah, it's mind boggling, actually, how one inch of a certain control can make such a big difference. And I think that's where the top sailors excel, is the on the fly racing, trimming and tuning. And especially when things change. I think a lot of sailors, especially with intermediate experience, can get things kind of right, a fair amount of the time or half the time.
[00:01:42] But I think a good way to think of it is, there is a perfect rig tune and sail trim for every condition, wind and sea state. And if things are constant, and you get it all right, you're fine. But let's say the wind increases two knots. Well, now there's a different sail shape for that 14 knots instead of 12 knots.
[00:02:04] And the top sailors are like chameleons with their boat set up. You know, you're we are presenting our boat to the wind and sea state. So they morph from that 12 knot setting to the 14 knot setting. And that might be just a little bit of backstay, which bends the mast tightens the forestay makes the main a little flatter and more open makes the jib flatter. And boom, the boat takes off.
[00:02:27] And the cool thing about sailing is, you don't really know what the perfect setting is. And in playing around a little bit till you find it is important, I think. And that example I gave in the video was, we're going upwind, we're pretty even and at Joel's blowing 18 knots. I put on one inch of backstay, immediately, the skipper said, Oh, that feels great.
[00:02:48] And then the boat that was to lure it of us, I could see under the boom, who had been there the whole time, just starts to fade back. And then I hear the boat above us fading back and boom, we just shoot out on the fleet tack and we're first at the top mark. And we would not have been had I not put on one inch of backstay. So I encourage sailors to really think hard about depth and twist of sails.
[00:03:10] And experiment around a little bit while you're racing and tuning to find those sweet spots. And you should have marks on your sheets and control lines. And if you find a great setting, look at it. Okay, main sheets at five, jib leads at four. And then the cool thing I just learned in the 52 again, back to the instruments.
[00:03:29] There's actually a happy button on the iPad that the navigator has where if everything's perfect, and you're flying, he can hit the in French, it's called it. It's good balance. And I don't speak French that well. But it's the French words for good balance. He's the most perfectly balanced. There's a button, you just press it. And then that night when you're looking at your data, you can go back to that moment during the race that you had good balance and see what all the settings were and repeat.
[00:03:58] Repeat them in the future. Wow. But of course, every day is different, right? So the next day, slightly different winds. Yeah, totally. I saw you were talking about, you know, going upwind, tuning against somebody, and then having a radio or somewhere communicate on jib cars, three, three holes back, and there's his four holes back, let's get it three. I thought that's really interesting advice. Totally. And you know, you should find a tuning partner. Ideally, they're fast. And when you go out to the race course in the morning to get tuned up for your race,
[00:04:28] you know, 45 minutes to an hour before the first start, it's great to have a radio with a channel determined with the other team, channel six or 11 or whatever. And you just say, hey, you know, we're three and three on the rig. Where are you guys? Oh, we're four and three. We're five and five. Okay. Our ram is neutral on the etchels. Okay, here we go. And you tune upwind.
[00:04:49] And let's say someone's faster. Well, the slower boat might think, okay, I'm going to change my rig to those settings and then try it. Say, okay, now we're going to change to four and three to match you. And then both people see whether that made a difference or not. And I think that's really important for learning and getting faster is to have a tuning partner. So Steve, one thing I want to ask you about, and it's sort of a personal question in some ways, is about boat heel. So it's not that personal, but it's about boat heel. I'm married. Yeah. No, no.
[00:05:22] Boat heel is a conversation that I've been having with different people in our fleet, which is the J-Winner fleet, people know. And there's quite a wide debate about it because the book will tell you, when I say the book, you know, the sort of the J-Boats guide and tuning guides and that sort of thing. You know, they're really clear about, you know, having 12 to sometimes up to 22 degrees of heel, depending on obviously wind conditions.
[00:05:49] Top boats in our fleet sail really flat. I mean, amazingly flat. Yeah. Boat speed is a tricky topic. There's so many variables. But I think if you wanted to narrow it down to one, heel angle is a great discussion point because it's a function of many different areas of sailing a boat fast. It's angle to wind. You know, if you head up, you flatten out. If you bear away, you heel over. And we're talking about going upwind here. Downwind, I think it's the opposite.
[00:06:16] And it's also a function of sail trim, depth and twist. It's a function of where everyone's body is in the boat, how hard they're hiking. And so every boat is designed to have an optimal heel angle. Dingies like to sail flat. Boats with keels like to heel over. And I think in doing so, you bring some riding moment from the keel into the game. If keel boats just had a centerboard, they would sail dead flat.
[00:06:43] But when you heel over, you get the keel involved in the hiking or the riding moment. So heel angle and focusing on heel angle is critical to going fast. A top sailor taught me this cool trick. In lighter winds, it's telltale sailing in a keel boat. You're just looking at the telltales and you're sailing to the telltales of the jib. And the crew is moving around to keep the heel correct. And in light air and a lot of keel boats, it's 8 to 12 degrees like you just said.
[00:07:13] And then when the breeze comes up and the crew is now hiking and you're becoming overpowered, you're starting to flatten your sails and twist your sails some. Now it's heel angle sailing. And the skipper can steer a bit to the heel angle. Whereas in the lighter winds, they have to stare at the telltales and keep the telltales perfect and the crew deals with the heel. Once everyone's hiking and you're overpowered, now the skipper gets involved in the heel as well. And as you mentioned, typically in almost any keel boat I've sailed,
[00:07:43] the fastest boats, the ones that win regattas and championships, typically sail a little flatter in breeze than the other boats. And they have less leeway because of it. It might mean they're hiking harder. It might mean they're driving more precise and higher to the wind. It might mean they have a little bit of a flatter, twistier setup. And in some boats, it's, you know, achieving that less heel than others is a challenge for sure sometimes.
[00:08:13] Like sometimes they'll say, oh, this guy over here is way flatter. So you just start easing your sails till your boat gets flatter, but now you slow down. So there's some magic involved in it as well. Just having everything perfect with rig tuned, sail trim, depth, hiking technique, everything. Don't tell me about the magic. That's the last thing I need. But I'm always looking for rules of thumb because I'm a fairly simple person. And I love that rule of thumb that you talked about in Light to Win,
[00:08:40] Sail to the Telltales, crew weight manages heel and heel of whatever needs to be indicated. For those who, as the pressure builds, then you're starting to manage the heel angle yourself as the driver. Love that. Right. Yeah, so you can say, hey guys, are we Telltale sailing or heel angle sailing? And it lets everyone know the deal. It lets the crew know in light air, it's all on them to keep the heel perfect. And then once they're fully hiking, it's more on the skipper.
[00:09:09] And that's a simple way to think of it, I think. Love it. The second thing I want to talk about is also a rule of thumb that you have for shifts. And I want to talk about puff response. Let me start that again. The second thing I want to talk about is about puff response upwind. And I noticed you talked about, you know, there's a simple rule of thumb for shifts. If the puff is headed at my bow, you know, it's coming straight at me, it's going to be a header. If it's coming over my windward shoulder, coming down to me, it's going to be a lift.
[00:09:39] And so if you stay on the same tack, what's your advice for how you respond to, say, a header actually coming at you? I don't want to tack right now. I know it's a header, but I want to stay on this side because, you know, we're sailing towards something.
[00:09:55] So what I've done is, as the boat heals more in that puff, I try and ride it up a little bit, sort of scalloping a bit, and then being ready to ease the main when you need to come down from that. But is that right? Or should I be easing the sails because when the puff hits your boat, your boat needs to speed up to get to that wind speed?
[00:10:24] And the only way you're going to accelerate the boat is by easing the sails. I mean, I know there's probably 100 variations in this, but just curious if we're talking about rules of thumb that I can write on a deck. Yeah. Typically, when a header puff hits you, it's as if you're now pinching because the wind angle just went boom in front of you. Yeah. So in an ideal world, you would trim the jib in. You would trim the sails in as the header hits.
[00:10:52] You would put the bow down and then ease them back out, especially in a small boat like an FJ where you can play the jib. On a bigger boat, that's probably hard to do. So typically, you're just assessing, let's say a puff and a header hits. If it's a small header and a nice puff, you might just go straight for a little bit because the heel didn't change because you got headed and you got a puff. So they wash each other out. If it's a very small header and a really big puff and the boat heels over, what you said is correct.
[00:11:20] You carve it up a little bit until you can twist the main and then come back down or add a little backstay, twist the main, come back down. Okay, good. If it's a massive header, really shifty venue, and you get a fat header where three feet of the jib bubble, your boat's actually going to flatten out. So as that's happening, Skipper just carves down to bring it back to keep the heel angle the same. So short version of those three scenarios is do the best you can to keep the heel the same.
[00:11:46] You're probably going to end up coming down because of the header to make the jib work, proper angle of attack again. And if you're super high level, you might trim that jib in as the header hits, bring the bow down, then ease it back out. Okay, good. I feel a little bit relieved about that. The other advice you had I hadn't thought about before was tacking as soon as the puff hits you.
[00:12:12] Say it's a header, puff hits you, you know you've got to go, say, you're on port, you know you've got to tack anyway at this point because you're getting too far over the right-hand side. And you were talking about, hey, if it's a 10 or 20-degree header, then you're going to do less of a turn here. You're going to do a faster turn because you go through fewer degrees to get back onto the opposite tack. I hadn't really thought about that. We went through it in the 52 this past weekend. Same thing.
[00:12:38] Let's say you're getting out to a side and you're kind of itching to go the other way because you want to sail in more wind and sail towards the mark. So you've gotten out to the right side. The other way is long, sailing towards the mark. So you see a puff coming at your bow. I will say to the skipper, when the jib bubbles, just tack. And I'll say to the team, all right, team, we're tacking when the jib bubbles, which is the header. And right as it happens, you just carve into one.
[00:13:03] And what a lot of people do, let's say it's a 10-degree header, you come down 10, and now you head back up and tack the other way. So you have, you know, let's say you tack through 90. You're tacking through 100 degrees of steering. If you just roll into it, my high school kids call it the unicorn tack. It's a tack you just come out flying, and it's because you do less steering. Jib bubbles, just roll into one. It's like the beginning of your tack. And you can flatten with a lot of power and speed onto the lift, and you're gone. So I highly recommend that move if you can pull it off.
[00:13:32] Yeah, I love that. I'm going to work on that. I don't think I'll be able to pull it off, but I'm going to work on it. And in five years... Oh, you can do it. It's easy. Just don't come out too deep because it's less steering. Yeah, actually, that's always my problem with tack. I always end up coming out too deep, which is something I need to improve this year. I tend to take a... I'll take a sight on the land, you know, because we're always sort of inshore racing. And I'll think, okay, that White House there, that's at about 80 degrees. That's where I'm going to come out. But I still find myself going a little bit low.
[00:14:02] Just curious if there's any drills or any advice you have on that. I think it's difficult to pick a spot on land. One thought is to look at other boats on the other tack. And then the basics of exit angles of tacks are in light air, you come out the deepest. You probably have sweet light air tacks. In medium air, you come out just a little bit less than the light air, like half as much. Let's say you come out eight degrees low in light air. In medium air, you come out four degrees low.
[00:14:28] And in big breeze, you come out pretty much at close haul until everyone's fully hiking. Then maybe you lean on at one degree. So it's linear. The lighter it is, the deeper you come out. The breezer it is, the thinner you come out. That's one thing that really helps, I think. So it's based on pressure. And then the other one is to, I think, feel the boat as you're coming out onto the new tack and feel the heel angle. I think get a visual of other people on the other board.
[00:14:54] Then for someone like you that picks an angle, a house or something, I would encourage you to feel the boat more. And as you're coming through head to wind and you're starting to lean on it, use the front of the jib as an indicator and the heel of the boat and how quickly it's healing as an indicator on your exit angle and what is the proper exit angle. In light air, it's okay to come out deep and really get that boat moving again and then carve it up.
[00:15:24] In medium air, if you come out that deep, you heal over too much. So feeling that boat healing over can let you know, oh, I'm already there. Let me stay here and stop the turn. And in breeze, if you come out deep, you just get knocked over. So feeling the heel, I think, is a huge tip. Guillaume was on the boat with me and he said to me, as soon as you feel the boat start to load up, that's when you should stop turning, basically, because you're now coming down quickly onto the new tack.
[00:15:51] And I started doing that and switched away from worrying about that White House on the shore. It seemed to work better. I agree. I think that's important. And another factor in that whole deal is jib trim. Some pro jib trimmers peg the jib in tight initially so the skipper can land the tack correctly at a full trim. And you can look at the front of the jib and the telltales and get a quick sense of the angle.
[00:16:20] And then they burp the jib out to your given angle, say it's eight degrees or four degrees below. And that's helpful. Whereas if that's the other variable in the equation is how is your jib trim? Like if you're coming out looking for the telltales to be streaming, but your jib's two feet east, you're going to have to come out real deep. But if you're just pegged consistently like that, it gives you a consistent variable and
[00:16:49] indicator to land. And exit angles out of tacks and jibes are a huge part of boat speed. And thinking about it, practicing them, using any indicator you can, power other boats is huge. It makes a massive difference in getting around the race course. Yeah, for me, that sort of loading up sort of took some of the guesswork out of it. But I'd love to have that situation where they do give you that indication by trimming
[00:17:17] the jib to where you need to be, just so you can see, okay, there it is. Then they ease it for the boat to get up to speed, presumably, and then back in again. Right. And if you want a high level tip, you know, if it's not in light air, J-105 is so heavy. In light air, you come out deep, takes a while to get going, head back up, trim back in. But in medium and heavy air, if you're a super, super good driver, you would start the turn slow, increase the rate of turn through the head to wind area.
[00:17:44] And if you're really good, you do a slight hesitation to where the jib is in line with the jib lead. And it allows the trimmers to peg it in with no load on it. And then they can give you that tight jib. And now you, when you come down and load it up, they can, you can now see front of jib bubble telltales and then they burp it to the correct angle. That's money where if you just slam it down to that low angle immediately, they can't get the jib in fast enough and it loads up before it's all the way in.
[00:18:14] So like a pro driver would, would aid their jib trimmer in pegging the jib in with a slight hesitation when it's in line with the jib lead. That's one to practice. We've got a clinic this weekend. And I might try and practice, uh, practice that, but, um, before this is published, I'm going to delete that last two minutes there and just keep it to myself. So no, I'm kidding.
[00:18:39] I feel I've been a little bit self-indulgent here by asking you things that, uh, that particularly concern me. Um, I love talking about sailboat racing. So Steve, when we talked as a bit of a setup conversation for this, uh, no one area where you have a lot of knowledge and enthusiasm for is sort of pre-start maneuvering and, uh, getting ready for the start. So I'd love to talk about your advice you give to racing sailors when it comes to, um, when it comes to starting.
[00:19:07] You know, I've thought a ton about starting, especially in high school, sailing, being a coach, it's 15 minute races. And typically if you win the start, you're probably going to get a top three in the race. So at the end of the day, it's all about being full speed, close hauled near the starting line and go. And there's many different ways to get there. And you can just shoot from the hip and be, you know, wild Bill Hickok and go random and you'll get some good starts, but it's all about starting percentage. If you have 10 starts, how many of them were great to good.
[00:19:37] And it's almost impossible to have 10 out of 10 every once in a while you might pull it, but I think it's good to look at it in that way because it is a bit random and chaotic. And you can't control the random reacher who just is OCS reaching across your ballot. Go like, you can't control that. So, but if you can get 80, 90% great starts or 70% great starts, you can typically win a regatta. So I think it's important to have processes and rules of thumb in place to help minimize
[00:20:05] the chaotic nature and the variables of a start such as, uh, and I teach this in the ultimate starting guide. You know, there's a three minute loop style of starting where you put your boat where you want to start at three minutes. Then you bear away, sail till two 15 ish. You jive with a gap behind you. So no one's right on your tail and you sail to where you're going to tack it around a minute. And that's going to put you back to where you were at three minutes. That's a style. Some people have a start starboard approach.
[00:20:33] Some people love the port approach and the three minute is a port approach. Some people keep it loose. So, so having a process that you repeat over and over again, I think it's helpful because you see the same scenarios. You start to kind of develop plays of, okay, when this happens, I do this versus the random style. And then some other rules of thumb. So that's a process. Let's say you do the three minute loop. Other rules of thumb are you would like to be tight on the boat in front of you when you're on port.
[00:21:03] So when they tack, you can leave out tight. You would not like someone to be tight on your tail. So when you jive from starboard to port, you try to jive in a place where there's a gap behind you. Yeah. Uh, when you're sailing on port, you'd like to be close to the boat ahead. So you can now tack underneath them. You always want an escape route. So when you're on port sailing in the pre-start, let's say two minutes left, you don't want someone right above you or right below you because they, they take away your tacking or jiving option.
[00:21:34] You would like to have free space on both sides. Uh, there are other rules of thumb for winning an end. Like if you want to win the pen, they say last one in wins the pen. The only other way is to set up on lay. So there's two ways to win the pen and you can base whether you do one of the other based on traffic. What do you mean by a last one in wins?
[00:21:58] So typically there's a bit of a standoff outside of the pen lay line where people are circling and waiting to trail in to win the pen. And last one in means you were the last boat on port. If it was a train, you're the caboose coming in on port. And then if you can get to pen lay line with no one there, when, when people tack, you tack underneath above pen lay line and now you win the pen. Yeah. Yeah. I'll say to my team, Hey, Hey team, I think whoever wins the pen is going to win this race. Let's try to win it if it's available.
[00:22:28] And, and so I'll scan how much traffic is that pen lay line and beyond out to the left of the playground as they call it. And if it looks like everyone's coming back pretty early, you can then go over there, trail in. And as long as they all sail past pen lay, you can now tack above pen lay and win the pen. But sometimes, especially, you know, every fleet, you know, your competitors, there's some people that will go down in flames fighting for the pen and, and they don't care.
[00:22:54] Everyone will, you know, they're, they're very aggressive and everyone's going to get a bad start if they're down there. And you think, well, I see them over there waiting to be the last one in. I'm not going to deal with it today. You know, they might have a good start and they might have a horrible start and take everyone around them down with them. They might get hung up on the anchor line of the pen boat or whatever. So the other way is you leave and sail towards the committee boat and then come back on pen lay line with really good timing.
[00:23:21] And that makes it hard for the people coming from, you know, on port late to figure out what to do, because if they tack underneath you, they can't lay the pen. And if your timing's right, there's not many good options for that person trailing in. So long story short, you can have rules of thumb and processes for starting based on where you want to start. And if you do that, you'll see similar scenarios and have a higher percentage of starting well.
[00:23:48] And then lastly, it still boils down to time and distance, which is a huge part of starting. You know, putting your boat at a certain place at a certain time is challenging and difficult. It's even hard by yourself. So you have all this stuff going on and then it's accelerating and trimming in and being at the right place at the right time. Those two things, I think, help a ton in starting. And the last bit I would say would be another way to think of it is I have a process and I
[00:24:15] have tools in my toolbox for starting well and managing my space, my east to west, if you will. And I have double tacks. I have half tacks. I have tack and defend on people behind me to make them tack. Then I have tack away. You know, you have like certain plays that you know, and you and your crew have talked about that you use to manage your space. And ideally, if you do that well, and there's no threats coming, you then it's all on you to
[00:24:43] trim in and accelerate and start going at the right time, given your distance and the bias of the line to have a good start. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm going to share a conversation I had with Steph Robill, actually. I said to her that there's so much complexity. I need to look around more and really understand what's going on, who's doing what, wherever he is, because I feel like it tunnel vision. And she was really interesting about why would you do that? If you're coming on important, nail that tack. Time and distance the line. That's all you need to worry about.
[00:25:09] Let somebody else be calling what everybody else is doing and just focus on that. And I found it incredibly liberating. Just get that tack right. That's your job as the driver. That's all you're going to do. Don't worry about everything else. Just get that tack right. I love that loop because we do that loop. And for me, as a less experienced driver, it really helps me get in my mind where I need to be, where that final tack is. You start to understand the angles. You start to understand how much grift there is in any current, that sort of thing. That's immensely helpful for me.
[00:25:39] So when you then are approaching the start line, and then of course, it's chaos. Of course, it's very different. It's not like you planned it. It just gives, it just takes away some of the mystery of what that situation day is like. So I love that idea. 100%. And they call it doing your due diligence, right? Great starters aren't great because they're just natural at it. It's because they do exactly what you just said. They do practice starts. And you'll learn a ton. Oh, it's really hard to get to the line today. Oh, it's really easy to get to the line today. You know, there's all sorts of things you learn.
[00:26:09] There are few sporting arenas more complicated than a star or mark rounding or sailboat race, just because of all the changing variable dynamics, human, environmental weather and that sort of thing. Yeah. And it's also, as we talked about, there's so many factors in the balance of the boat, whether it's the wind, the heel, the current, the weight and all that sort of thing. So I know you place great story in translating complexity like that into simplicity. How do you do that?
[00:26:39] I think that's the way my brain works. You mentioned your brain works that way as well. And in trying to teach the high school team how to win sailboat races and thinking deeply on what I'm actually doing when I'm sailing well throughout my life, I've come up with a few simple rules. So the short version of tactics is you want to start in the front row of the race with speed, sail in more wind and sail towards the mark. If you do that, you will always do well. Right?
[00:27:07] So that's always in the forefront of my mind is looking around for more wind. You know, it's typically darker texture on the water. Where's the wind? Where's the wind? Top sailors. I sail with Bill Hardesty. We won a few worlds together. He's always saying, team, where's the wind? And where's the, so you stand up, you get up high, you wear polarized sunglasses. You look for the wind. So your game plan is put the boat in the wind because wind makes sailboats move. Then once you get in it, you sail towards the mark.
[00:27:35] And that's the short version of sailing well. And if you do that, you will never do poorly. There are more nuances and complexities, but the next level of tactics would be to categorize the day to allow you to, to think on what should I focus on to guide your focus. So if it's a shifty day, it's exactly what we just said. Sail in more wind, sail towards the mark.
[00:28:00] If it's a ocean breeze day venue where there's not that many shifts, the wind looks pretty similar everywhere. It could be a somewhere to sail to day. If you sail in Annapolis, you know, because of current or geography, those are two reasons you might want to sail somewhere. Like you mentioned earlier, you get the header, but you want to keep going because it's a somewhere to sail to day. You then identify that.
[00:28:27] Okay, team, I think we want to go left because there's land over there and less current. So that guides your focus for the day. Okay, I'm going to start in the front row and I'm going to sail to the left side of the course because of land and less current. And, and that's as simple as it really is. And then the challenge becomes executing that. So I think the main, my, the way my brain works is keep it simple, characterize the day, figure out the style of sailing. That's going to help me do well today.
[00:28:55] And then really focus on the execution part. And a cool tip. I've actually never given this tip before that I've found through sailing with Bill Hardesty and the Etchels, the Etchels, you can change everything. There's a thousand things you can change with the rig and the ram and the side shrouds and spreaders and forestry length and tension and traveler and so many things. We had a pretty simple rig tune schematic when I raced with Bill.
[00:29:23] And the reason was he wanted to be able to look up wind before each start and find more wind, do a couple of practice starts, like you just said, and figure out the bias and the timing of the three minute loop, and then execute those basic fundamentals starting well near the favorite end with speed, putting ourselves in more wind sailing towards the mark. And if you have a super complicated rig schematic and your head's in the boat all the way up to the five minute gun, you miss those opportunities.
[00:29:52] So I joined an Etchels team and I took the place of a tactician who's a mad scientist and incredibly great at boat speed. And he changes everything all the time and he's really good at it. And they're very fast. And the owner asked me to do that. And I found in doing so, I lost what we just talked about. And I wasn't as good tactically because I was so busy heading the boat. And then the Australians came to Corpus Christi and won the world championship.
[00:30:20] Going away, we bought their boat. Fortunately, we were able to buy their boat. We said, hey, that's a sweet boat. Can we get it? They sold it to us. They gave us the rig tune. It was exactly like Bill Hardesty's. Super simple. And I thought, ah, okay, there's something to this. There's something to getting the fundamentals just nailed. And that's what I preach for the high school team. And that's why I try to keep things simple. Another one is if you're a crew, like if you're a new crew, what are your jobs?
[00:30:49] It's weight placement and jib trim. If you're an FJ or 420 crew. If you're on a keel boat, it's whatever job you have and your weight placement. Like those two things. They matter 80%, right? And then once you get those down, maybe you can get into the 20% of other details like communication and subtleties of bang trim and various things. But I think keeping it simple is important for myself and when you're communicating with high school kids on how to win regattas. So it's interesting you talked about weight placement as being part of the role.
[00:31:19] So you've got the role if you're a jib trimmer or you're a pit, et cetera. But the second part of your role, just being aware of weight placement as your job. That's really interesting. A hundred percent. And it goes back to the one key item we talked about with speed is heel angle, which is massively important. So again, back to the telltale sailing, if it's light air and you're, let's say you're the sixth person on a J105 and your only job is to squirrel the kite down on the douse, right?
[00:31:47] In telltale sailing, you got to be in the right place to keep the heel angle at the skippers and main trimmer's preferred target, 12 degrees. But once you're fully hiking, it's just hiking as hard as you can. And that's huge. And then you squirrel the kite like the best of them. When you pull the kite down, you pack it and you get back up faster than the other squirrels. And if you're the jib trimmer, it's weight placement and jib trim or whatever your job may be. Fantastic.
[00:32:15] I must say to blow my own trumpet, which I don't very often do, I'm a really good squirreller. I don't know why. But I can get that fucking kite down in seconds. With the best of them. Yeah, exactly. Steve, this has been a brilliant time with you. I've really enjoyed it. I knew it was going to be good, but God, I've learned so much. I'd have to go back to listen through this again a few times and take some notes. Some great insights.
[00:32:43] And again, the way that you explain things is really clear. Rules of thumb, that sort of thing. So I love it. And I want to hear more of it. So thank you so much for taking the time with us today on Sail Faster. We're privileged to have you and hope to see you on the water, on the shore at some point. And I'd love to hear more. Yeah, same here, Pete. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be on your podcast. I can't wait to see it. Thank you so much. Thank you.