“It’s not how far you fall, it’s how high you bounce that counts.” Good life advice by American motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, and particularly apt for those of us who find ourselves struggling off the start line. Where you start is not the sole determinant of where you finish.

The start is often such a critical part of the race, it’s easy to believe that if you’ve blown the start, you’ve blown the whole thing. But it’s just not true, there’s always a way back and it’s that never-say-die attitude that really marks out the champions. Double Olympic Champion Iain Percy doesn’t sugar-coat the difficulty of getting back to front. “If you get a bad start, your opportunities to do well in a race certainly diminish,” says the America’s Cup skipper. “But the key thing in most cases is to tack on to port as quickly as possible and punch your way through some gaps in the fleet, most of which will still be on starboard tack. The number of times I’ve seen someone get a bad start, be spat out to the right-hand side and then come in leading at the windward mark - that’s why shouldn’t ever give up after a bad start.”

Percy says you might be surprised at just how easy you find it to wiggle way your way through the fleet on the opposite tack. “The starboard boats tend to be a bit slow because everyone’s pinching to try and maintain their lane, and you get good a lift from the wind off the back of their sails so you’re going relatively high and fast compared with a lot of boats around you. And it’s not in their interests to make you tack because you could end up lee-bowing them, so you’ll find that if you ask to get across the bow of someone on a marginal cross, they’ll often wave you past.”

This is all well and good if both sides of the course are favoured, or even if it’s a right-hand favoured beat. But what about if you absolutely definitely want to get left, maybe because of current or some permanent wind bend? Percy offers this insight: “If we want the left then we have probably aimed to start somewhere near the pin end of the start line and sometimes you can ease the sails a bit, put the bow down and foot hard into the left-hand corner. That’s only if there’s really only one way to go up the beat. Otherwise you’re better off tacking your way through the fleet and out into clear further towards the middle of the course.”

Andy Rice is a successful sailor who started his career in journalism in 1992. He writes write regular columns for Seahorse, ShowBoats International, Yachts & Yachting and Boat International.