Weight equalisation

The position of the hook/trapeze wire makes no difference to righting moment, but it makes all the difference in the world to the loads on the gear, the ability of the sailor to move in tune with the boat and the effect on the mast bend. So the intuition that its crucial is correct, but the reasoning as to why is wrong.

This is all rather allied to the lee bow effect discussion, where what IGrf called a lee bow effect was generally a real thing, but it was most definitely not the fallacious lee bow effect that used to be touted in some books.

Its an internet lesson really, before two people are to have any chance of agreeing on an answer they both need to have exactly the same understanding of the question. Something that has been proved in the last year or so by the US physics professor who made a complete fool of himself by claiming the "Downwind faster than the true wind" phenomenon cannot work.

Originally posted by Rupert GRF, bung a spring balance in the trapeze system, go sailing, take photos and prove everyone wrong. Simple.

Not sure that would prove anything other than the loads passing through the wire.

I already know, that one minute you can be standing on the gunwhale leaning back even and the boat just trucks along fast displacement, but if you can just by virtue of a big enough power increase to counter your weight, get right out, the weight comes off your feet is pretty much all transferred through the rig and the boat quite literally leaps forward (I'm talking little Farr 3.7 which I always found a tad underpowered) I'm now beginning to wonder here wether it was my harness hook in the wrong position and wether had I positioned it higher I could achieve that breakout point earlier. You even lengthen the trap lines to drop lower to increase that angle, the flatter you are the more unweighted the boat becomes and the faster you go, is all I know. At that point it's just like a windsurfer raceboard, but what I don't know 100% is why and I want to, those Contenders are heavy ass MFs.

Edited by iGRF - 04 Jan 22 at 10:07am

How was your back? You must have good core strength.

Originally posted by iGRF I already know, that one minute you can be standing on the gunwhale leaning back even and the boat just trucks along fast displacement, but if you can just by virtue of a big enough power increase to counter your weight, get right out, the weight comes off your feet is pretty much all transferred through the rig and the boat quite literally leaps forward (I'm talking little Farr 3.7 which I always found a tad underpowered)

Love the discussion and Happy New Year to all.
Nice picture GRF and glad to see you've been out over Christmas/New Year.
Here's a suggestion on your original question (from another engineer ) if you have a spare moment in a coffee break.
Make up a model but make it with one mast and a trapeze (with weight etc) EACH side so it is exactly balanced.
Then without changing the position of the weights change the attachment point on one of them and see if the thing unbalances.