cruiser racing - advice wanted

Been using the YBW forums so far but whilst there is a group of racers on there, their voices are lots in the hordes of cruisers. So I thought I would try here instead.

Bit of background first. I've been sailing on and off for 50 years ( yes I'm an old phrrt!) but only on big boats for the last 20 and all but the last 4 years just cruising. So I'm a born again winter racer with all the keenness that comes to the newly arrived. Problem is 20 years of bad habits, pulling the sails in until they look OK and then just pottering along. I need to re-learn how to sail.

The boat is a Starlight 35 fin keel, masthead rig and a cruiser racer rather than a racer cruiser if you see what I mean. Similar performance to a Sigma 33 with a slightly higher rating on IRC. The racing we do is very mixed with a fleet of 15 to 20 boats and everything from sports boats and J109s to a few 26 ft bilge keelers racing every Sunday under PY.

Anyway to start. How do I best trim the sails for windward work with ( say) 20 kn over the deck and how would this change for much lighter winds? I'm asking here not about the reefs I need ( first mainsail reef with 20kn over the deck) but issues like max rudder angle, shape of sails, when to tack in a windshift etc. Racecraf I suppose you would call it.

Over to you.

Thanks blue boy. Yes I have one or two books including a large tome by Bethwaite but somehow it's much more interesting to chat to others about what they do than to sit down and read text books. I had enough of that at university.

When you say flattener are you meaning the small reef at the bottom of the main? I had one on a Hunter where the main had a crescent shaped panel in the foot to give the sail shape and then a reef immediately above it to allow the sail to be flattened.

Mine is a masthead rig and the main is loose footed so the backstay does less for sail shape, and flattening the foot comes from the outhaul.

Since we race with a cruising laminate genoa in a roller furler, it seems best to reef the main first and leave the genny full which is what we did last weekend, but it would be interesting to know if anyone else on the board races their cruiser and if so what they do.

Originally posted by blueboy Reefing a furling genoa is hopeless for performance. Race boats that use furlers tend to carry multiple genoas e.g. full light #3, flat heavy #3 and load into into the furler before the race begins.

Quite understand that but for a whole set of practical reasons, that isnt on for us. So we reef the main first. By the time we get to where the second reef is needed, the lightweight racy boats start to struggle  with the waves and we bash on.