Small Lake, Fast Boat

Originally posted by BBSCFaithfull The jib setting is fine, its just we were going quite wide angles to keep the telltales flying.

If you are not pointing well then the jib setting is probably wrong.

Actually I don't know what you sail but I'm guessing 49er or I14. If the jib is self-tacking you could limit it's travel on the track more to close the slot. Then work the sheet tension so that you have a tight leach but not so tight that it chokes the jib.

Trial and error. Unfortunately beating is slower than a close reach so the laws of physics are against you.

Edited by English Dave

if it was in the 49er then you probably had to much bend in the mast and not enough vang. More bend makes it nice and easy to sail, but you will not be able to point as high. The idea is that you use the least amount of bend you can the whole time, but if you use to little bend then you will be to overpowered the whole time and the boat will just trip up so you have to find the middle bit. Also in the 49er it may not feel like you are pointing that high but you get a lot of lift of the foils so you are actually climbing to windward off the foils more than you think.

Are you sure thats your boat number David? I'm sure I put a different
number in the capping....

Originally posted by redback You should see the kicker go slack when you squeeze the boat up in the lulls.  .

Interesting, i am always told that the mainsheet shouldn't pull the boom down and if the kicker is going slack then the strops are too short.

What does everybody else think?

Yes I'm convinced.  The boom can come in almost to the centre line in the lulls and that bit of extra leech tension brings the fully battened leech up so that the battens are parallel to the centre line.  However this is a high pointing, high heeling force mode (which is OK as the boat loses speed), but if the wind never rises again the boat has little drive and you have to ease to maintain the flow and open the leech.  In the following gust you have to ease even more to get into an open leeched, acceleration and low heeling force mode, and then as the gust dies you are going back to the tight leech mode again.

The kicker is set so that the leech never opens too much but that last heave on the mainsheet does take the load off the kicker.

This is all about sailing in conditions where you are not overpowered all the time.  Once the wind rises to the over powered condition then the kicker takes all the load and the boom goes further out.  The kicker of course is then pushing the mast forward and flatening the sail - quite the opposite of what you want when under powered.