Their jib is sheeted tight along the foot, with the top inside tell-tale permanently vertical. The main is flat and twisted, with the top batten pointing toward the leeward quarter . I look smugly at our set up: windward jib tell-tales lifting simultaneously as I luff slightly, mainsail top batten in line with the boom, with the top leech tell-tale flicking forwards around 20 percent of the time: textbook for today’s max power conditions. A subtle line up before the start reinforces our smugness: though they are slightly faster through the water, this is more than compensated by our consistently higher pointing performance.
As usual at MSC we are beating against the tide, with shallower water toward the shore on the left-hand side. We opt to start mid-line above the bulge, avoiding
