Crazy Ideas!

Oh, and sorry to butt in with something seriously random  but why do loads of sailing books tell you how to gybe downwind - they start off on a run and go onto a broad reach or something like that! If I was doing a triangular course or trapezoidal (ooh get me, long word! ) course, why would I need to gybe when running before the wind??! And if I don't, then when would I need to?!

All sounds rather peculiar to me....

Ellie, as for gybing downwind, you would only need to do that in a topper if it was really blowing the dogs off chains. It's a kind of survival thing. Cos when you fly straight downwind using a rig with no shrouds it's quite easy to death-roll, and easy to accidently gybe. So if you come off the wind and gybe halfway down it's a little bit safer. In a Topper, the straight downwind route would probably be faster, but preyy hairy. If you wanna be REALLY fast downwind then surf down the waves., if you have any at chew. (This is pretty much guess work. But it was how things worked in the Laser)

In a boat with an assymetric spinaker you get better boat speed on a broad reach than dead downwind. Therefore, it's actually faster to go in a quick zig-zag downwind, than a slow straight line. The increased speed more than makes up for the longer distance sailed.

Does that answer your question?

Ok cheers, yeah i have no intention of winning nationals yet!!!!

Finally spoken to man in Bude and he is sending me pics and then once i've seen them (and you) we can finally say if we should get it or not, BUT HE CANT DELIVER IT .