High Performance Sailing

Based on 25 years of research and Olympic coaching, High Performance Sailing reinvents the strategies of sailboat racing. It presents revolutionary explanations of wind prediction and boat design, a fundamental rethinking of how to sail a boat fast--literally faster than the wind. Bethwaite's theories boosted the average speed of the highest-performance sailboats from two-thirds the windspeed to windspeed or faster. Bethwaite is Australia's most successful Olympic coach, and his family includes three Olympic sailing champions and three world champions. This book will have a revolutionary impact on racing sailboats and the way they are sailed.

"Essential for any serious racing sailor."--Gary Jobson

"It represents a breakthrough in the way that it relates the theoretical aspects of wind, seastate and rig shape to the way a crew would sail and handle a boat during a race. It has the potential to be a standard reference work on the subject and will not quickly date. It is a book that my Olympic squad will benefit from."--Rod Carr, British Olympic Sailing Team Manager

"Frank's book is a treasure chest, full of brilliant insights into the ways of air and water as they flow around our sailing boats. Best of all, he tells us what to do when we go sailing."--Alan Payne, Designer of America's Cup challengers Gretal I and II

"Allowed only one 'if only' in yacht racing . . . it would have been to have read Frank Bethwaite's High Performance Sailing years ago and to have it available for constant reference. Taking all the advice which he offers from his wide experience would have made championship winning a great deal easier."--Bob Fisher, Journalist, broadcaster and winner of many national and international sailing championships

"The most significant scientific thinking about sailboat racing to come along in three decades. A brilliant and important book for serious racing sailors."--Ed Adams, US Sailing Team Coach; national, North American, and world champion sailor

"Bethwaite's grasp of the entire spectrum of sailing speed is unique and formidable."--Gerry Hoyt, Yacht designer, sailing speed innovator

Frank Bethwaite has been at the leading edge of national and world class sailing for over fifty years. Apart from his own outstanding racing successes, he has coached every level of would-be champion from basic to Olympic standards. Within his own family, three are Olympic champions and three are world champions in four classes.

From a background which included aeronautical engineering and meteorology, Frank spent thirty years in military and civil aviation and finally in scientific flying. His leisure pursuits, other than sailing, have been model gliders (twice open world endurance record holder) and also flying high performance gliders, which he used to explore the detail of some of the atmosphere's movements.

When he retired from flying he decided to find out how sailboats worked, so that he could try to make them sail faster. The experimental years followed, in which a combination of controlled experiments and fleet evaluation released a surge of creativity and the average speed of small sailboats increased from about one third the windspeed to about one half. This work then blended into a period when Frank and his family became involved with very high performance boats, partly the eighteen foot skiffs of Sydney and partly a series of twenty much smaller and progressively faster experimental craft. That the average "round the buoys race" speed of two thirds the wind speed has now increased to windspeed or faster, is in no small way due to Frank's theoretical and experimental input.