'Weight on the Wire'

Yep, or more in some cases

But... but... but... whether the force is applied to the board or the skeg or somewhere in between isn't affected by where you put your feet (assuming you can hold yourself still and not get swung around), it's purely down to where the centre of effort (fore & aft) of the sail is. Everything must balance out (ask Newton!).

Thinking about it, this is true. But the way that your body transmits the forces to the board is significantly
affected by where you put your feet. It's not about what forces the board ends up with (which physics dictates
to be a constant for a given rig position) so much as the distribution of forces through your body, the rig and
the board itself.

I *think* that the fact that the bulk of the sideways force was going straight into the c/b basically removed
this from the whole 'balancing, steering, not falling off' equation and allowed the sailor to deal more directly
with the rest of the forces.

I don't think it was all that much to do with keeping the weight out of the ends as there were no waves to speak
of, although it did perhaps help to keep the nose down and improve the w/l length - we are talking displacement
sailing here. And a feet-together position gives you maximum height, which can't hurt in terms of leverage
either.

Whatever, it was fun at the time

Originally posted by Noah Considered opinion recommends 400lb on the jib luff for a Fireball that'll take it...

I stand corrected.
The rigs are set up quite differently though. I've
sailed both classes and the Fireball rig is bendier than
the 470 rig. The 470s have 60 - 70mm of static prebend
and much longer spreaders. This makes the rig quite
solid. The Fireballs have 25-30mm prebend and the
spreaders are quite short and high up the mast which
makes the whole thing quite flexy.

Prebend is determined by the sailmakers, so we have to hope that they know what they're doing there.

Longer spreaders don't appear to work so well in the Furball, although I have no idea why not. In theory I would have
thought that whatever works for the 470 rig would be largely good on the 'ball. Anyone got any ideas why this appears
not to be the case ?

The Fireball and 470 rigs are different in detail, the Fireball rig is quite low aspect ratio with a long boom.

Then the Fireball is narrower. As well as righting moment that affects relative rig tension, effective spreader length, all sorts of things. I don't think I'm smart enough to work out a way you could take a set of 470 settings and spars and translate them to a Fireball with all the different variables... Two inches of spredaer offset must have quite different effects on each boat...

Originally posted by Granite The 470 only allows deck level control of the mast whereas the ball allows struts this would let you move the spreaders up.

I guess so. Merlins take it to another level though. The
spreaders are much higher than even half height between
gooseneck and hounds. I've never had this explained to
me properly.