By Jahn Tihansky You can get downhill faster by consulting your boat's polar diagram and developing an instinctive feel for your boat's performance.
All sailors can benefit from improving their ability to sail the boat downwind.
On a daysail it can mean making it back home before the wind quits. There's also a great deal of satisfaction in sailing efficiently-even when the winds are light. The basic strategy to sailing downwind is quite similar to sailing upwind. It's a game of boat speed versus wind angle. Others prefer to heat it up by jibing along a zigzag course, sailing faster to compensate for the fact that they have to cover more overall distance.