Changing Combinations - The Passback
The challenge lies in the potential for teams to quickly convert a losing combination to a winning one by a simple Passback, slowing an opponent so that a teammate moves ahead. Slowing techniques may be accomplished by luffing or Ragging on an opponent or Pinning her beyond the layline and forcing her to sail a longer distance, helping a team mate to move ahead. Simply described, a passback is a technique used by a competitor to cause an opponent to lose one or more positions and effectively bring a teammate ahead one or more positions.
An upwind passback or is performed by a competitor to weather of an opponent luffing her jib on the leeward opponent so that they both slow down. Meanwhile, a teammate to leeward of both boats goes fast and moves ahead of the opponent to weather. The passback becomes more challenging when the opponent in the middle effectively luffs and slows the third boat to leeward. With all this luffing going on, two team mates are going slowly while only one of the other team is going slowly. This means that the two other opponents may be going fast elsewhere on the race course. Obviously, a passback quickly accomplished is desirable for the team dedicating two boats. This is demonstrated in Figure 1.
At times, with the three boat set up described above, it is more advantageous to execute a Speed Passback . This would be the case when the opponent in the middle has a poor position on your teammate to leeward. With a speed passback, just the bad air from the weather teammate would be enough to slow the opponent in the middle, pass her back, and bring the leeward teammate ahead. A speed passback does not require luffing and would be best utilized when speed is vital and the weather teammate does not want to lose her position in the race by luffing and slowing.
Another form of passback is accomplished when a teammate forces an opponent beyond a layline, making both of them travel a further distance while a teammate who was behind goes the shorter distance and passes a mark ahead of both. A mark passing passback is demonstrated in Figure 11 and Figure 14.