Byte CII and weather helm

I have a friend with an Ovi Byte. The board it very very tight because of the hairy gasket they put round the top and bottom of the case. After judicious use of a stanley knife to shave it down a bit the boat is now sailable!

The board is very tight in the white formula Bytes, not sure about the Ovi or Nautivala ones.  But there is no slop in my board so I've never really thought about it I just try to sail flat.  I've tried to achieve the windward heel techniques (as suggested by Mr. Rooster) when looking for height but not sure I've ever made it work!  Jon?

ps.  just got round to getting the latest Y&Y...nice rug!!

Jim is right re: the sideforce keeping the dagger in position in the laser. It usually comes up when going in for a tack, or going in to adjust something, usually when slamming on a wave. Keep on buying those crappy pieces of rubber for a fiver.

Const leeward heel is important because it means that the rudder and dagger loading is (more) constant. Less experienced sailors will often, through lack of steering / sheeting / kinetics have their boats cyclicly heeling hard, then on top of them. This feeling of the boat "staggering around" upwind means that there is alternatively big weather and lee helm, both of which are slow, to reactively correct the situation. A really quick sailor will be using his/her weight and steering fairly aggresively upwind in breeze to keep the constant heel

The laser likes about 5 deg leeward heel upwind. This is beacuse it is a shallow and flat bottomed boat, limited in righting moment, so the small heel angle significantly shifts the centre of bouyancy to leeward, and thus increases the righting arm. This gain is enough to mitigate some of the negative effects of too much heel, such as weather helm. To a point...

Most sailors think they're flat when they're at 5 or 10 deg though.

with your halyard you dont pull it hard up against the top of the mast, it slipping down 2mm because of the cleat wont slow you down, with the rudder though you pull it down so it is resting tight against whatever is stopping it going down further...to keep it close you need to be able to pull the rope that 2mm further using the stretch so that when it cleats and falls back that 2mm it is held by the unstretched rope in the same place.  To make up for this with your halyard you should just pull it up slightly higher to allow for the slippage in the cleat.