Upwind Windward heel does it work

Originally posted by Medway Maniac

Originally posted by Medway Maniac

The first instance I ever recall seeing about windward heel being beneficial was by David Thomas sailing the Unit in the Olympic singlehander trials way back when.  He felt he went quicker on Unit with windward heel, dug around for an explanation and came up with a graph showing the effect of dihedral on aircraft wings. 

Basically the graph showed that lift decreased with dihedral, as you'd expect, but also that at 0 dihedral angle the curve had slope, implying that if you extrapolated it for negative dihedral, lift would increase for the first few degrees at least. I think I've found the graph in question, and am inclined to think he's putting too much faith in the experimental data, or that there were special circumstances, such as the presence of a fuselage. Nonetheless, there might be a slight benefit - which thought gives me a morale boost when I'm heeling to windward, at least!

He always taught me that it was just in a very small wind range that it paid.  I guess part of it could be due to less wetted surface area but what he has always told me is that it was to make sure the boat is powered up 100% of the time.  The boat naturally wanting to bear away slightly just keeps you on full power all the time.

Obviously when the wind is so light that the boom falls into the middle of the boat then this is not fast but we are only talking very slight angles of heel.  This is a very different thing to kiting the boat over to windward on a run, that is to put the rig over the centreboard and realign the CLR and CLD. 

The important thing to remember about the whole windward heel thing is that it is only for a very small wind range, sort of 6-8 knots, perhaps 9 knots at a push in an underpowered boat.  

Also, in all my years of laser sailing at a pretty high level I never once saw anyone sailing upwind heeled to windward.  I am slightly suspicious that it is just a made up talking point for the DVD. The only time I have ever done it myself was back in my oppy days, it was occasionally fast, i think, but there are too many variables to really know.  I could never get it to feel right in the laser and nobody else was doing it that I could tell!?