TACKING – THE SEQUEL

Having given you time to practice, Harty concludes his tacking series by critiquing various tacking options, including the carve tack, as well as offering solutions to common slip-ups.

- Peter Hart

Now where were we before we were so rudely interrupted? Part one of this journey was published the very day we entered our homely prisons. It wasn’t planned, but tacking turned out to be the perfect lockdown topic. With a board on the sand/lawn/veggie patch and just a puff of wind, you can realistically drill the sequence, and in a way that’s elusive and even delusional with the speedy carving moves.

The underlying message of the first instalment was ‘just get on with it will you …!’ or words to that effect. To hesitate is to plop. If you’re entering the tack still unsure where, when, how and in which order you move feet and rig, you will inevitably pause and pay the penalty. Getting the method wired on dry land frees up your mind and allows you to perform instinctively, skilfully and, most importantly, more quickly.

From the contents of my electronic mailbag, it seems that many took up the dry land practice challenge and were delighted at how gracefully they flowed from one side to the other … in the garden. And then, as lockdown eased and you took this skill to the water, you were happy to notice improvement – but also miffed at how former malpractices still infected your game.

In this concluding episode I will address those woes. Others have been confused by the variety of tacking advice out there. “….you said to do ‘x’ … but I’ve been told to do ‘y.’ So tackling the ‘more than one way to cook a goose’ issue is where we shall start.

Beware of templates