With the trend on the international racing scene for shorter races in Formula Windsurfing (FW), it is now more important than ever to get the best start possible. There are a few startline basics tutorials out there that I have seen, including one from Kevin Pritchard (now offline, but a version with just the text is in that link) and from the LBWS site, however none of them go into detail and as a result, there’s still a lot of people who waste great racing potential by not getting off the line in clean air. So let’s learn how to do it right.To get started, a few important points must be noted about starts. In a fleet of 100 boats, roughly 8-10 sailors will get a great start, another 20 will get an OK start and the rest of the fleet gets punished. That being said, unless you sail on startlines with 3-4 boat lengths per boards in the fleet, there’s usually not enough “clean air” for everyone to get a great start. Knowing the theory of how good starts are set up is important, so to first analyse this lets look at all the possible places to start on a startline. Continue reading →