Editor’s note: This is the second installment of “Coop’s Prout Sailing essay,” part 1of which you’ll find at windcheckmagazine.com/article/coop-on-mindset-in-sailboat-racing-part-one/. “These are two parts of the same idea,” explains Coach Coop, who emails this wisdom to The Prout School Sailing Team before the start of each season. “It’s the same philosophy of sailing and by extension, at least in my view, life.”
© Rick Bannerot, Ontheflyphoto.net
The very first thing you need to settle on in your mind is the outcome you want for any particular event. It is not realistic for your subconscious brain to accept the idea of conscious verbalizing (‘I’m going to win’) without knowing the work has been done (see below). So, you need to analyze what you want to get out of the event.
We often see people polishing the bottom of their boat in advance of heading out to the course. This does, relative to all the other preparation required, almost nothing to the performance of the boat. If the bottom’s not suitable to race the week before the event, polishing it the morning of the race is only giving you something to make you feel better. Whatever’s not been done by the time the boat gets to the rigging area has no chance of impacting the day’s result. Sails, rigging, strings, bottom, foils, all need to be in race mode a week before the event. Minimum.
Likewise, the crew. Maximum fitness, strength, flexibility, and endurance. Being able to out-hike the competition in breeze is one of the most demoralizing things other sailors can see. In singlehanded sailing, this encompasses a longish list of issues. My own opinion is that the most important aspect of winning, after the boat is in the best condition you and your budget can make it, is:
MENTAL APPROACH
We all hear of people pumping themselves up before some event. ‘Yeah, going to win this thing!’ and phrases in a similar vein. Unless all the front-end work: Sailing practice, studying the Rules, physical training, etc. has been done before you get to the venue, such mutterings do not really do much. Unless you’ve done the work, this last-minute pumping up has no substantive experience to fall on in your mind.
One of my many stories pertaining to this idea: Bear with me, you may have heard it at Prout. In January 1976, I was sailing in the Australian Championship for the Finn Class. This was also the Olympic Selection trials for the ‘76 Games in Canada. I had been sailing Finns for three months. Finns are ridiculously demanding to sail, let alone win in. One of the other competitors was a guy named John Bertrand, who finished fourth in Finns at the ‘72 Olympics. He was a successful sailor in other areas and classes. He went on to be the Australian Olympic representative in 1976, winning bronze. In 1983, he was the helmsman of the 12 Metre Australia 2 as they won the America’s Cup, the first challenger to do so in 150 years.
In one race at the Olympic trials, I was leading through four of the six legs. Bertrand had a shocker of a start and was deep, maybe 7th to 10th. It was light air and shifty, mentally draining. This was the first time I’d been in this winning position in a Finn. It was stressful. I was spending a lot of time wondering how to keep that lead. It felt unnatural. Going down the second to last leg, a square run, Bertrand had ground his way back to second, a few hundred yards behind me. I was 21, the youngest guy in the regatta. Bertrand was about 33 and vastly more experienced in anything, let alone a Finn. I was worried about my speed versus his. My head was spinning, looking back and forth between John and forward for wind. Sure enough, John caught me, passed me and won the race. Another guy got into second and I was third. My best finish for the regatta.
In the boat park after the race, after he’d packed up, John came over and congratulated me on having a good race. Curiously, he did not introduce himself. I knew who he was though I’d never met him, and there was no reason he should know me other than a name on the entry list.
THIS IS THE LESSON: PAY ATTENTION TO THESE NEXT SENTENCES.
Then he said something I remember 45 years later. “You knew I was going to pass you and win.” Not waiting for me to respond, he continued, “You were sailing a good race, but you are not used to being in front.”
“Not used to being in front.” Bertrand had been in front, and won, more Finn races than I’d ever sailed in a Finn. He was supremely used to being in front. Not being in front was the uncomfortable place. I know this because I was in the same position that following November. After that regatta, I upgraded to a new Finn that was easier to sail (not important in this essay). All of 1976 I sailed my new Finn. I sailed the daylights out of it, and also did the following:
I went to the gym relentlessly, focusing on exercises that would help sailing a Finn. I rode my bicycle something like 25-30 miles per day, to and from work. Finns are very quad heavy and so is cycling. I sailed as often as I could, five days a week likely. But I did not just go out and sail around having fun, though it was fun.
I wrote down all the things that needed to happen in the boat. The usual: Tacking. Gybing. Holding the boat in position. I chose a mark and worked on keeping the bow of the boat as close as possible to the mark. But not just gybing and tacking. Thinking about things like where I placed my hands and feet in each maneuver. I even went so far as to change all the rigging around when I found I could be better (at tacking, gybing, going around top and bottom marks, with a different setup.
Sailing in bad weather. Gybing a Finn is hard at the best of times and heart wrenching in 25-30 knots. I forced myself to go out when it was blowing like stink and taught myself (no on-the-water coaches then) to gybe in those conditions. You may have heard me say to the Prout team in general, you cannot learn to sail in a condition if you do not practice in it.
My Goal
Tony James, from whom I’d bought my second Finn, went to the Olympics in 1972. He told me, often, it was the greatest experience he’d ever had, and he maintains that view today, 53 years on. He got me fired up on two things: that representing Australia in the Olympics was one of the greatest things I could do, and that doing it in a Finn would be the best way. I slowly took this idea on. I then had a Goal and I had a Passion. With those two mindsets, I was off to the races.
The point being, I had a conscious goal and because of the work I put in, it became embedded in my brain. The work I did every day built on top of that dream. In the State Championships regatta I sailed in November of 1976, roughly a year after I started sailing Finns, I won the regatta winning every race. I won regardless of where I started, in light air or heavy, or where I was at the first, second or any mark. I had trained my brain to know that me being in first was normal, the thing to be expected. Anything else was not normal.
Now, the foregoing is a very broad view of the mindset of high-level sailing, and perhaps over the top for a high school regatta. But you gotta start somewhere. This mindset works for anything you do on life. On the other hand, I hope it is something for you to think about when not sailing, which is about 22 hours of your day. We cannot practice sailing at the local Y, the pool, gym or backyard, so we need to develop other mechanism to work on our successes.
Please read this, several times. Think about what you want to get out of sailing in the Orange Bowl. Be realistic, but not bashful. The questions I think of are: How do you want to place? How long and in what direction do you want to take your Laser sailing (in particular)? Lasers (ILCAs) are the Olympic singlehanders and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Two or three quads is eight or twelve years. So, in eight years you’ll be what, 23? In twelve years, 27? Close to ideal Olympian Sailing age.
Or do you simply want to go to a biggish Laser regatta with your contemporaries and see how it all goes? But it’s important now to consider what you want to get out of this regatta. Call or email me with any thoughts comments on this issue. ■
Bon Courage,
Coop
Australian born, Joe ‘Coop’ Cooper stayed in the U.S. after the 1980 America’s Cup where he was the boat captain and sailed as Grinder/Sewer-man on Australia. His whole career has focused on sailing, especially the short-handed aspects of it. He lives in Middletown, RI where he coaches, consults and writes on his blog, joecoopersailing.com, when not paying attention to his wife, dog and several, mainly small, boats.
