Dear Readers,

on Sunday are Six monster trimarans launched for the Arkea Ultim Challenge single-handed non-stop circumnavigation (z to live tracker ). Started? Started would probably be a better term. The first boat crossed the line ten seconds after the start signal, the last two took 48 seconds. With six boats and an eternally long line! Weak, in my opinion.

And it's not an isolated case. Even at other, high-calibre regattas such as the Route du Rhum or the Transat Jacques Vabre, the Mini-Transat and even at The Ocean Race or the Vendée Globe, most starts are disasters in my view, showing more of the picture described above than what I imagine a regatta start to be like: Ideally, all boats are on the line at the starting gun. Have the ocean professionals never learnt how to start properly?

I still remember very clearly the often boring training sessions in my youth in the OK dinghy or the Finn dinghy. That was when it came to start training. According to the motto that a good start makes up 50 per cent of the race, we practised accordingly often.

These are the main factors that characterise a good start: starting on the advantageous side of the line, cutting the line at full speed exactly at the start signal and, if possible, having freedom of choice, i.e. not being forced by competitors to make unnecessary turns or other manoeuvres.

The most difficult factor for me to master was always being on the line at zero. If you start at the start boat (right) or the start line buoy (left), it was still relatively easy because the start line runs between the two. So if you start close to the start boat or the buoy, you are automatically close to the line.

But what if, for whatever reason, you want to start in the centre of the line? Then you have to take a bearing on where the line might be. As this bearing is usually imprecise, this results in a so-called sag. Boats in the centre almost never start exactly on the line, but two to three boat lengths behind it.

To train the feeling for the distance to the line, it was an exercise to sail towards the centre of a laid line with wind from starboard and a high downwind course. The moment you thought the bow was cutting the line, you raised a hand, tacked and sailed back to the start boat on which the coach was sitting. The coach then shouted out how many metres were still missing or whether you were already over the line.

A popular winter alternative to this exercise was to walk through the forest, find two trees that were far apart and stick a stick in the centre of their imaginary connecting line. You could then walk around one of the trees and take a bearing over the stick to the other tree and see how far the stick was from the bearing.

Such exercises didn't mean that I was the best starter, after all, others were training in the same way. But when I look at the starts of many of the ocean-going sailors, I wonder whether they have ever heard of such training methods. Some of them obviously have, if their sailing CV shows that they grew up in dinghy classes. Anyone who doesn't start well in the standardised classes will never find themselves high up on a results list.

But even these candidates often start extremely cautiously. Of course, on a regatta that is thousands of nautical miles long, nobody wants to break something right at the start. Or risk a false start, because the manoeuvres required to return to the pre-start side can cost a lot of time in single-handed mode. Or there is a time penalty in the overall classification if the early start is not corrected.

Crossing the line a few seconds after the start is certainly forgivable, and perhaps even a start outside of the crowd, even if you then no longer start the race on the favoured side of the line as far as possible.

But to really lag behind the competition, to start several boat lengths behind your rivals, and then not even in the open wind, but directly into their downwinds, why you do that is beyond me. Why give away hundreds of metres right at the start, regardless of whether there are thousands ahead? You drag those metres along as a handicap, and who knows how close it will be at the finish? It looks to me as if these starters don't even have the will to win the race.

It really annoys me that many an ocean start degenerates into a squadron trip and often the most exciting question is how long it will take for the last participant to disappear behind the horizon. Too bad about the time.

Lars Bolle,

Editor-in-chief watersports digital

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