Triangle, Triangle, Sausage
The fine art of reaching...if you know, you know.
Arguably the most impressive piece of sailing I have ever lain witness to was in Athens at the Olympic Games in 2004. In fact it was so good, it was mesmerising to watch, eclipsing anything that I had ever seen before. Rounding a leeward mark (I forget which race), Ben Ainslie was a good quarter of a leg ahead and as he headed upwind it honestly looked like something was seriously wrong with his Finn. He was kicking something one moment, reaching forward the next, sitting out, sitting in, it was as though he had ants in his wetsuit and his boat was the enemy. But it was all kinetics, genius, disguise and brilliance on display with determined menace writ large across his face. By stark contrast the others came round the mark merely adopting the distinctive classic Finn hiking curl and looked for windshifts, barely ooching.