The RS100 Owners Thread

James,

Already got it planned out mate.

Dinghy sailing on the high tide in the morning. Off to Exmouth with the
wave kit in the afternoon - lifes a beach !

Simon - have a good one. Hope its not too cold ! I will catch up with you
boys later in the year.

Forgot to mention my final de-power - get the Vortex out !!

Well we have four days of racing to look forward to over the long
weekend - and the forecast is looking pretty damn breezy !

Going to be using my 10.2 (because I havn't got the smaller rig !) but
looking to de-power the rig as much as possible and following all of the
great advice above going to approach this as follows:

1) Rig with a bit of pre-bend by dropping a couple of holes and winding
on the mast gate ram. Maybe go for a bit of backwards rake.

2) Hike as hard as I can !

3) Pull on the kicker to max until the blocks bottom out.

4) Pull on cunningham until that to bottoms out.

5) Pull on a bit more outhaul - but don't over do it so keep some low
down drive.

6) Maybe lift the board a smidge if I am still struggling.

Any further advice very much appreciated !

Originally posted by Steve411 What's the difference then (if there is one) between a tug on the tiller due to the centre of effort being behind the centre of lateral resistance (centreboard pivot point?) and that caused by, say, the rudder blade not being fully down (which I presume is not 'proper' weather helm at all)?

Well, if the rudder blade isn't fully down then the force required to counteract sideload is naturally greater because of leverage... That's why Lasers feel quite heavy - they have a raked back rudder blade which was conventional at the time. But also a raked back tiller has an increased self centering effect which makes steering feel heavier...

Weather helm is, I think, a distinct phenomenum. That's where the boat wants to steer round a corner and you have pull the rudder to windward to hold it straight. Surely that has to be slow in all circumstances, but in dinghies, in my experience since I've started thinking about this sort of thing, its almost entirely heel related.
This (and it could be *****) is why I don't think weather helm is a big issue on dinghies... AIUI, and simplistically, to get weather helm the centre of effort of the sails has to be aft of the centre of lateral resistance of the foils. But the centre of lateral resistance is somewhere between rudder and centreboard. So in this pic green is a fairly normal mast position, and the side load is probably 3/4 cb, 1/4 rudder. In the red position you have lee helm, because even with 100% load on board and nothing on the rudder the sail centre is still in front of the foil. By contrast as the rig rakes back there's more and more load on the rudder and less and less on the cb, but you won't get weather helm until the rig is raked right back to the blue position so the centre of effort is aft of the rudder (or if the side load on the rudder gets so great the blade just stalls out).



In the days of yachts with no separate rudder then the centre of lateral resistance was effectively fixed, and so weather or lee helm was much more likely, and I suspect even with modern yachts the rudders are so small in proportion that the clr doesn't move very far...

But this is lunchbreak theorising - certainly very over simplistic and possibly even nonsense!

Originally posted by Jamesd this is why we train with the rudder up an inch as it forces you to sail upright and enables you to get the 'feel' of upright. I remember at first we always wanted to sit in as it felt like the boat is falling on top of us

Now I like that idea! We always try to sail with what feels
like 5 degrees of windward heel which invariably is flat,
but then your mind drifts and your heeling again. At least
the pull on the rudder would wake me up again!

this is why we train with the rudder up an inch as it forces you to sail upright
and enables you to get the 'feel' of upright. I remember at first we always
wanted to sit in as it felt like the boat is falling on top of us