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Jan Gougeon is one of the winningest DN racers in the
world. Runner Tracks had a conversation with him to find out some of his tuning
secrets and keys to his success.
Jan remembers a lot of good times in the early days. The class was
"young and full of enthusiastic sailors." He remembers using home
built gear while others had the luxury of Sarns runners and hardware. It
wasn’t until he got a job with Rick Carpenter that he was able to
afford a set of Sarns runners and a new Boston
sail from Howard, Skip’s dad.
JG: When I got my first new set of Sarn’s hard runners, it was
like I had just won the lottery. I could sail all weekend long and never have
to sharpen those runners!
RT: What was the most memorable regatta for you?
JG: Kleine Wittensee - 1982 World Championships was probably, of all
the regattas I’ve been to, the neatest. We had a good time and the
event was full of excitement and drama. You never knew what was going to
happen until it was over. I remember building a wood mast. We tried it out
once here and it worked pretty good, but we never had a clue as to it’s
true potential.
RT: That was one of four World Cup and seven North American Champion
titles. What was the key to your success...what is your secret?
JG: In the early years, there were a lot of technical things.
Luckily for me, I think I was more of a technical person than a good sailor.
In the early years, the technical innovations were moving along and at the
same time the sailing skills were kind of coming along. But my technical
innovations were kind of saving me because there weren’t many boats in Bay
City for me to race. I wasn’t as good of a
tactical sailor as I was a good technician. But then, of course, as the
competition became more intense, and everyone else had fast boats, you had to
be better at sailing. By that time, I had sailed long enough and hard enough
to improve my sailing skills.
I guess it comes down to knowing the sport. You finally get to the point
where you know what runners to put on and where to put the mast. You get to
the point where you know what effect you want and you change the boat to get
that effect.
RT: Can you talk a little bit about tuning? I know that is something
DN Sailors would like to hear about. It is really a "feel" type of
thing, but what are some of the big areas you look at in tuning, or what do
you try to achieve?
JG: For instance, the 1994 North American’s I won and you were
there. We both did basically the same stuff. The day before the regatta, on
the glass ice, I had the mast stepped almost all the way back, the plank was
back and the boat was set up for going really fast. The mast was relatively
stiff and I had to really get up to "warp" speed before the mast
would bend. Then we got the deep, soft snow and it was so slow. I
couldn’t even get up to speed enough to get everything to bend. I
immediately stopped the boat, moved the plank all the way forward, moved the
mast step all the way forward, put the short runners on and did just
everything to get the boat to move through that "crud." The mast
was just bendy enough. If I would have rigged the boat that way on the glass
ice, it would have been a "turkey." But in that condition, that was
what it needed to go.
I remember when we came back together again, I looked at you and your boat
was the same way. We had both done the same thing. We went out and lined up
on the starting line...and that was a war!
The thing is, I won four races, but no one can appreciate how close it was.
No one realized that in all of the races, no one ever led all three laps.
Positions were changing constantly.
I think that the first time that you ever win a major regatta like the North
American’s is probably the time you remember the best. You say Holy
Mackerel, I can’t believe that this is actually happening.
RT: Let’s get back to tuning...you always seem to carry your
mast raked further forward than just about everyone. Do you have any theories
on that?
JG: Is it that obvious? Basically everything that I do with the mast
is just to effect bending. But it depends on the mast. I think last year I
carried it further forward because the tip was a little bit too bendy, so I
lowered the sail and pulled the back rake out. Then the lower part of the
mast was too stiff, so I moved the base forward a little and put some side
rake in it to get the bottom portion of the mast to bend. Basically, if the
mast is strong enough, you should be able to move everything around enough to
get most of it to bend. I leave the mast stepped forward and just let it
bend.
RT: What are some of the big innovations that stand out in your
mind?
JG: I think the big things that happened were in two areas. One was
the insert runner... we were direly in need of something like that because
the other runners were just a little bit too short for the heavy guys. All of
the sudden, with the insert runner, more people were able to sail.
RT: Aside from the insert runner, the other big innovation had to be
the bendy masts.
JG: Right. I remember in Hamilton, I put the aluminum mast on and
won the Nationals. With the first aluminum mast, I didn’t have a
clue... I just threw the thing up there and I won! I don’t know why,
but I won. As a matter of fact, it was blowing kind of hard and I never had
done well in heavy air. It was blowing hard enough that they asked me if I
thought we should race. I said, "well, it’s blowing pretty
hard." They said, "Gougeon, you just don’t want to go because
it is heavy air. I said, "let’s put the boats on the line and
we’ll go." I won every race with an aluminum mast! That was the
first time a boat with an aluminum mast ever won anything. So everyone ran
out and bought one.
Then you got the Norton Wing Mast and discovered ("stumbled on")
what was making them go fast. I sailed your boat and said, "Ah
Hah!" Then I went back and started sailing with one. We figured out that
the way to make them go really fast was to bend them. I remember the first
time when we started messing with the Norton Wings. They would bend way out
there and we would go into warp and that was that. You knew if you got them
to bend just right... you were kicking butt! I mean, you just knew when you
got into that groove, you had serious speed. I went through three of them in
one winter, and that was when I built the wood mast. I went back and said,
what I really want is a wood mast that is like a Norton Wing Mast, but made
with fiberglass so it will bend a lot without breaking. So I built a wood
mast and laid a 1/4" thick, uni-directional schedule of fiberglass in
each sidewall. That mast went a long time.
RT: Was that the mast you sailed in Germany in 1982?
JG: Yeah. It was really bendy and I didn’t have an adjustable
mast step. The mast was all the way back and I still didn’t know
everything about it. By the time I got to the Europeans, I had changed the
set-up. I had the blocks in the wrong place... and it just wasn’t very
fast. If I had just left it alone, it would have been great!
That was when we started experimenting. We tried raising the hounds and blew
up piles of them. Next we tried a softer tip but soon went back to a more
normal tip. My last couple of masts have been Maple Veneer with some carbon
inside. They’ve made it through a season now without breaking, so I
think they’ll be pretty good.
RT: What changes would be good to help the class in the future?
JG: If you want the class’ mast problem to get solved, there
are a couple of things that we could do. One is to just eliminate rules
regarding how the mast has to be built. Keep the dimension and weight
limitations the same and then say you can build it however you want. You
don’t have to specify that the wood has to go the the edge or anything
like that. For example, you could take a piece of wood and put carbon on it
until it bent properly and then glue Styrofoam on it to get it out to
2". Or you could take a 1.5" aluminum mast, put carbon on it and a
little bit of Microlight, or something on the outside, to get it out to
2". There are many solutions, if you could just eliminate the wood
specifications.
I guess, some day, I would like to see some standardization of the runner
specifications. So T-runners and insert runners would have to be the same
thickness. With T-runners, the only advantage is that they can be 1/32"
thicker or thinner than the inserts. We could eliminate the need to carry so
many runners which would make traveling to race much easier. You don’t
want to limit it so that it would hurt the big guy or the little guy, and it
wouldn’t take you 20 years to accumulate enough runners to be
competitive in all conditions.
RT: Leon Le Beau told me a story about how you used to drive to
regattas and actually sleep in your cockpit with just a blanket over you.
JG: Yeah. We used to leave after work on Friday night and drive down
to Stu Sills. I remember driving to the ice at 2:00 in the morning. We drove
down to the park and parked in the lot or on the ice. I unloaded the boat
because I was kind of excited to have a boat ready. I really wanted to go
sailing, but I knew I had to wait a little while. So I just put my sleeping
bag in the cockpit and I laid down to go to sleep. I didn’t really need
to go to sleep, but I did, and when I woke up, there were people all around
and I was covered with snow. As I was trying to figure out how to get out of
my sleeping bag, I scared poor, unsuspecting Stan Woodruff, who was setting
up his boat right next to mine.
RT: That was classic... one of many great stories in the life and times
of Jan Gougeon.
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