Favourite Photos

Training from Lymington before Kiel week 2007

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Edited by RyanV49er

The 49er only lets you adjust the caps (which control topmast side bend) when fully depowered and standing still.  Basically, you can't alter them whilst sailing.  Therefore, the usual setup for upwind boatspeed means that you get a lot of bend downwind.  There's no way round it unfortunately.

If you set up for a straighter mast for downwind sailing, you would have zero gust response for upwind legs, and would have no pace what-so-ever.

I assume Cherubs can adjust topmast bend on the fly?

i suppose it depends on the course length.  If you have a huge course then spending the time setting the mast up is pretty useful.  Smaller courses would give you less time.  We probably have 2 seconds to get the controls set up before we're thinking about whose trying to roll us, or when we can gybe.
Any idea how much difference that little bit of topmast bend makes?

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Originally posted by timnoyce Do you always run with that amount of top mast inversion?!

Is it actually inverted? Difficult to tell from that angle. It looks as if they are pretty shy, so it could well just be side bend.

And aren't they sailing the boat gloriously flat. Lesson for everyone there (except 12footer sailors, who march to a different drummer)