Kicker angle

Originally posted by Wiclif I wonder if the answer is for your spreaders to be angled forward, perhaps up to 50mm ahead of the stays in a neutral position, with a tight forestay in the medium conditions. And letting it off as the wind comes up? I think an adjustable forestay is one of your controls? Only answer is to try it and see, and report back!

I would find it very hard to design a modern style gust responsive rig with no gooseneck level control. I think for a boat with such restrictions I'd have to be thinking about a very expensive custom mast which was heavily beefed up at least to the spreaders in order that there wasn't mast bend where its not wanted. As I understand things as soon as you start using the spreaders to push the mid mast back then the gust response goes to hell, and the boat gets a lot less pleasant to sail. With my IC I found that if I put the spreaders forward to add power, the resulting handling characteristics deteriorated to such an extent that it was faster to put the spreaders back and accept the reduced power.

Originally posted by JimC I would find it very hard to design a modern style gust responsive rig with no gooseneck level control. I think for a boat with such restrictions I'd have to be thinking about a very expensive custom mast which was heavily beefed up at least to the spreaders in order that there wasn't mast bend where its not wanted. As I understand things as soon as you start using the spreaders to push the mid mast back then the gust response goes to hell, and the boat gets a lot less pleasant to sail. With my IC I found that if I put the spreaders forward to add power, the resulting handling characteristics deteriorated to such an extent that it was faster to put the spreaders back and accept the reduced power.

I haven't yet sailed this boat, but I'd be very wary of boatpark advice like that.

Is it not, what do you call it 'hog stepped', as stupid a term as ever there were, the mast on the deck and the kicker appears to be lead lower anyway. The Boom isn't exactly half way up the mast either, so I can't see any liklihood of massive distortion of the lower half of the sail.

Plus, again, I don't know any of this, but it's been built recently so I'd imagine the luff curve of the sail is matched to perform with a bent mast and very often that mast bend assists in gust response if any of the lessons we've learned in windsurfing have jumped the gap which they must have by now.

So until you hear from some of those connected with it's design and production I'd hesitate in a) criticism and b) adding on crap that isn't needed like lowers, they get in the bloody way of everything.

Edited by iGRF - 28 Nov 17 at 4:11pm

It all depends on what you've learnt sail controls to do. In all the boats I've sailed the kicker has been used to depower the sail and the main sheet has been used to hold leech tension. I a couple of classes you've got a traveller to hold the same leech tension off centre too.  Up wind if the boom is off the centre line I really want the sail depowered, so I'm very rarely looking for a tighter leech in a situation where I can't achieve it with more main. 

Edited by mozzy - 28 Nov 17 at 2:57pm