Projection 762 Help please?

a good way of saving a bit of coin for the social at burnham week.... http://burnhamweek.org.uk/news.php?story=14

Doug, we're also learning and I haven't yet helmed whilst racing so treat this response with a little scepticism!  When I'm down at our boat I'll measure the rake; I may have the figures but it may be easier this way.

We have raced against a Beneteau 25 once in about 15Knots and we were slightly faster upwind. However, unlike you we haven't yet resorted to a smaller headsail, so maybe this could be the issue? I keep being told 'sail to the lulls' and although we are sometimes overpowered with a number 1, mostly we sail at full speed at 15knots of wind, which if you believe the speedo is about 7knots. We don't seem to lose height when heeling. At 20knots plus (I wasn't the helm) we were thinking about trying the number 3 because the rudder sometimes stalls in the gusts, but I haven't been disappointed by the boat's performance upwind, only my own!

Various people have already noted that there's a lot of hull in the water when the winds are light - our experienced mentor had us sailing her upwind like a dinghy in near drifting conditions heeling the boat to leeward which was very helpful.

Glad to see we get similar speeds upwind when it's breezy! Yes, our main is barely doing any work either but it doesn't seem to affect either speed or pointing. 

Nigel I believe pointed out that unless the boat is on the plane it's virtually impossible to sail to its handicap. It's not slow in light winds, but the longer boats are quicker. we just have to pray to the wind god...

The problem is that boats like the sb3, 1720 and b25 all plane alot earlier and faster than the projection. So as you reach planing conditions these boats start gaining on handicap before you. It is therefore decided by the class of boats which you are racing against whether you want to plane early or not, i.e. If you are in a non-planing fleet of old IOR boats then you want to get into planing conditions earlier by being light and having a larger spinnaker. If on the other hand if you are racing against 1720s, sb3s and the alike you dont want planing conditions. In this case you want the boat fast upwind to gain most on handicap; probabably achieved by having those extra bodies (force 2-4). The problem with sailing and making pressumptions like this about a yacht's optimum weight is that other factors come into play such as sea states, consistency of wind and wind strength, length of beats/runs, number of tight reaches in the course where the kite could be held, and even down to number of crew required to be efficient