What gives a boat 'height'?
Printed From: Yachts and Yachting Online
Category: General
Forum Name: Beginner questions
Forum Discription: Advice for those who are new to sailing
URL: http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5594
Printed Date: 25 Jun 25 at 9:32am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.665y - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: What gives a boat 'height'?
Posted By: ellistine
Subject: What gives a boat 'height'?
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 11:20am
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We seem to be struggling for height when sailing upwind in
our Vago. I appreciate that a Vago isn't going to be setting the world a light in it's upwind abilities but I'm sure we used to be able to go higher than we are at the moment. I'm steering to the telltales yet the burgee doesn't seem to point as far forward as it used to. What are the key attributes of a boat that allows it to sail higher into the wind? |
Replies:
Posted By: Jack Sparrow
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 11:35am
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Sounds to me like you have been sailing in conditions with a bit of wind shear. And you need to sail with a little more twist. Let the kicker off and the top have of the sail won't stall so much. Is the main top leach tell tail streaming?
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Posted By: Guest
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 11:48am
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The angle of the burgee when sailing upwind will vary depending on how windy it is ... the more wind there is the more it will run down the centreline. I would never look at a burgee upwind unless I am bobbing around on a gravel pit in no wind trying to work out what is going on ... ------------- |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 12:03pm
I'm pretty sure they we're streaming. I've been controlling the leach tension with main rather than kicker when the boom's been on the center line. Perhaps I've been cranking it in too tight? ------------- |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 12:04pm
We sailed last night without the burgee for the first time. It's like a little friend was missing  ------------- |
Posted By: Jack Sparrow
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 12:09pm
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Easing off the sheet tension a little sounds a reasonable idea then, I take it it wasn't blowing hard when you weren't pointing?
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Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 12:32pm
It was enough for the crew to be out on the wire but with the boom still in on the center line. The wind was dropping throughout the race. The reach to the race course was a right blast! ------------- |
Posted By: hollandsd
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 12:58pm
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oversheeting the jib can cause the boat not to point, you need to have a decent slot shape between the main and jib.
------------- Laser 184084 Tasar 3501 RS600 698 RS600 782 |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 1:08pm
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I've always been a bit unsure about jib sheet tension. I
remember we did a Vago training weekend with Mark Askwith and he has us sheeting the jib in tighter than we ever had before. The bottom of the jib goes completely flat. If we let the jib sheet out an inch and steer to the telltales we go a lot faster (sometimes to the point where the hull starts to hum) but also a lot lower. Perhaps I should be looking at the slot shape. There is a leach tensioner on the back of the jib but we've never touched it. ------------- |
Posted By: Isis
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 1:56pm
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The leach line you refer to on the jib should be as loose as possible while preventing leach flutter. On a well made new sail you shouldnt need to touch it. A lack of height could be any number of things and its impossible to give a decent answer without seeing the boat on the water. That not being possible here the next best option is to try and get some sail trim shots for us (Camera on the centreline looking up at the sails) You said you are down on height but you havent said anything about speed.. are there any other vagos to compare against? I dissagree with Mr Sparrow about the twist. A lack of height is usualy a sign of too much twist. The upper telltail on the main leach should be streaming about 70-80% of the time depending on the boat and conditions. Trimming for max speed does not give you your best VMG upwind. If the crew is on the wire then I assume you are fairly powered up - were you dumping power at all? (easing the sheet) |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 2:09pm
Just the occasional release in some of the gusts to keep the boat flat. Unfortunately no other Vagos to play with but the Laser 2000's were long gone. We we're even struggling to stay ahead of a single handed 2k. In light airs we're not too bad at all. I might see if I can borrow a waterproof camera and mount it on the thwart. ------------- |
Posted By: Jack Sparrow
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 3:33pm
Yes but I was making a big guess on limited info. And just suggesting a little more twist, still keeping a little hook so you can point. It sounded like the top was over hooking and stalling from the original post. But if the wind strength is dropping you have the impression that the crew should be on the wire from earlier sailing out, so it's possible that you are thinking, keep the main pinned in to keep the crew on the wire and stalling everything and ending up dropping off to leeward. Ease the sheet slightly, go a bit faster, get flow on the foils and then squeeze back up a bit. But like you said without see things it's a difficult call. ------------- http://www.uk3-7class.org/index.html" rel="nofollow - Farr 3.7 Class Website https://www.facebook.com/groups/1092602470772759/" rel="nofollow - Farr 3.7 Building - Facebook Group |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 4:01pm
You could be onto something here. In my head our advantage over the L2K's is the trapeze. Perhaps in that particular breeze we should have been hiking it with the 2000s. Chances are I was, as you say, over cranking the main in an effort to keep her out on the wire. That might explain why we're not too bad in the light stuff compared to the 2000s. Perhaps I need to alter my mindset so that we're hiking until the boom is some way off the center line and then get her out on the wire. She'll enjoy that 
P.S. Odd how the Google Chrome browser keeps the line length short  ------------- |
Posted By: winging it
Date Posted: 09 Jun 09 at 7:42pm
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The trapeze is the advantage - but in marginal stuff your crew must trapeze very high so that they can move in and out according to the puffs and so that you don't have to struggle to keep them right out there. They should also look at trapezing off the centreboard case occasionally, so they can stay on the wire and still move in and out easily. I agree with Jack Sparrow - sometimes having everything in too tight has a nasty stalling effect. I'm hoping to be at Castle cove this weekend for the contender open - maybe I'll see you on the water! ------------- the same, but different... |
Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 8:33am
Ahh! Me too. I had been wondering why my line lengths were short but hadn't put 2 and 2 together and associated it with the browser. |
Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 8:42am
Eek! I wouldn't have thought so! If the boom goes off the centreline, you're dumping power. Why dump power unless your crew is fully trapezing? A good technique upwind in marginal trapezing stuff in all but the most shifty conditions is this: Pull the main into the centreline, cleat it and throw the sheet into the bottom of the boat. Sit on your spare hand so you can't do anything naughty with it such as letting the main out when you're less than fully hiked and trapezing. A benefit of this is that it gives your crew more confidence to go out on the wire in a gust, knowing that it's all her job to keep the boat flat and you're not about to ease the main as well. Try it sometime between races. |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 9:07am
It's our first 'duty' that weekend. I think I'm helping on the rescue boat so don't go doing anything daft ------------- |
Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 9:11am
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw1I2Z3-yeE
This is a good training vid for what I mean. Especially from 6.23 onwards. The crew is marginal wiring, and the boom never moves from the centreline. This is how it should be. As a gust arrives, the crew goes out on the wire with confidence and the boom stays put. 6.23 - 6.44 shows a gust arriving and the crew dealing with it. Note also the tiller extension being held down on the deck in the frying pan grip. This can help with smoother steering. I think that in a lot of cases, as long as the rig is set up properly, pointing is largely a function of technique. It's fairly common to sail a new class for a year, struggle to point at first, and then find it becomes easy to achieve as your technique improves, even though you're not particularly doing anything different with the rig. *Google Chrome isn't letting me use the link function. Sorry, you'll have to copy / paste.* May consider binning Chrome! |
Posted By: Jack Sparrow
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 9:40am
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Great bit of video... all I'd add is the 470 has the kicker set to control sail shape. Which is quite different to how ellistine was sailing.
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Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 9:49am
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=J5E8jvPWR0s&feature=channel_page Here's how not to do it. Watch from 8.09 to 8.29. The helm is: 1) Letting the main out in gusts, when it isn't required. - I'd advise him to get the main in the centre, and leave it in the cleat. 2) Holding the extension in an awkward dagger grip, resulting in too little control over the tiller and steering an erratic course. - I'd say sit on the side, hold it by your side and steer in a straight line! 3) Moving around in the boat, making the crew's job harder. - Sit on the side and sit still! The helm should trust his crew to keep the boat flat, instead of trying to do all the jobs himself. These guys could improve their performance easily with a couple of hours' coaching on simply improving their straight line sailing technique. The thing is, a lot of people will sail like this and then come into the bar afterwards and complain that they aren't pointing and start trying to make improvements to the rig, when it's not the source of the problem. A small tweak in sailing style can make a lot of difference. |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 9:54am
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Thanks Roy. I'll have a look at lunchtime. ------------- |
Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 9:55am
Fair enough. I've never sailed a Vago, but a lot of the principles will apply, whether you achieve leech tension with the kicker or the mainsheet. The principles are: Helm to sit still. Stop adjusting the mainsheet when it's not necessary. Steer in a straight line! Division of labour: Make it the crew's job to keep the boat flat through gust/lull cycles. After all, they have a trapeze and you don't. That's what it's there for! Trust them to do this job and make it easier for them by steering straight, not adjusting the main and sitting still. |
Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 10:00am
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Topic: What gives a boat ’height’?
Answer: 1. Sound sailing technique 2. The rig / foils / other stuff |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 10:06am
This is also an area of slight concern. The Vago normally has a horse/strop with it's height set to be block to block. Even though I could adjust the height before launching, it never seemed to be in the right place. The kicker would obviously move the height of the blocks and switching between the XD sail and the standard main would also mean a re-adjustment. I've recently ditched this in favor of a split tail main sheet so it's always centered without going block to block and I can also then control leach tension with the main sheet (all very "Higher and Faster"!). Previously I had been using the GNAV for leach tension but something Grumpf said about his ASBO and the fact that the GNAV bent the mast more than it pushed down the boom (which it also does on the Vago) lead me down the main sheet tension road. Am I right in my thinking or am I causing myself more problems? P.S. I do tend to over analyse things! ------------- |
Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 10:46am
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You might be over-analysing, I don't know! Certainly,
the rig is a factor and a gnav, conventional kicker and using mainsheet tension will have different effects on mast bend. You need to be able to get the boom into the centreline or very close to it and still have control over the leech tension somehow. However you achieve this is up to you. I think the main point is that once you've got a decent, workable set-up, not to spend too much time worrying about it and first concentrate on good, sound sailing technique. You need look no further than that 470 clip as an example of how to sail a single trapeze boat upwind in marginal conditions and aspire to that. If you can get that basic technique even half right, you'll already be blowing 90% of the rest of the Vago fleet out of the water and you also then have solid foundations on which to go forward and start worrying about other stuff, like which way to go! |
Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 10:51am
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Oh, and the 470 uses a centre strop mainsheet system,
with leech tension adjusted with the mainsheet. The kicker is usually adjusted so as to be "snug" and stop the boom rising too much. Inland or in gusty conditions, the kicker will have to be used more, as there's more mainsheet movement, but on the sea in sub full-power conditions, the main is set up solely with the strop / sheet arrangement, the boom centrelined, cleated and left alone. |
Posted By: Jack Sparrow
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 2:03pm
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Not in the clip you linked too. You can see the helm easing the main sheet and the boom end not rising. So kicker is controlling leech tension in the video. Sounds like I'm being pedantic, which I suppose I am, even though I agree with what you are saying.
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Posted By: Roy Race
Date Posted: 10 Jun 09 at 3:08pm
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You're right. Especially in the beginning of the video,
when there's more wind. You would have no option other than to have the kicker controlling leech tension when the sheet needs to be eased regularly. The 470 has a set-up where the floating block can be over-centralised by shortening the windward strop. You can see the helm doing this shortly after the tack at 0.55. It's quite fiddly though. On a sea course, where you can get settled into a tack for a decent amount of time, they do slacken off the kicker and have the mainsheet / strop arrangement taking most of the leech load upwind in light airs. It just seems to be faster. Don't know why. On a lake, the reality is that there's less time to settle and the kicker will be used more. Even so, I'd say there's a substantial amount of downward pull in the mainsheet in the latter part of the vid, when the wind is lighter, so the leech load is shared by mainsheet and vang. Of course, upon easing the sheet (which we don't get to see in the lighter wind), the boom would only have to rise by a centimetre to transfer all the load back onto the vang. |
Posted By: redback
Date Posted: 24 Jun 09 at 5:43pm
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I used to sail and train in Lasers. Now there's not
going to be much difference between Lasers if properly setup and yet some people just outpointed everybody else. This got me thinking and I wonder if you are suffering from the same problem. If there were no wind at all but you still had a little way on, what would be the best angle to point? Well the answer is straight at the mark and yet I see novices all the time let the boat bear away as the gust eases. Its natural as the boat heels to leeward it rounds up and when the wind eases the boat bears away. That is not the fastest way up a beat and when you look at the boats around you they all seem to work their way up to windward and so you think your boat doesn't point. So here's how to do it. Get the boat setup as advised above and then steer it. Gain speed in the gusts by driving the boat a bit - which may mean easing the main, but don't let the boat heel. When you have speed, head up enough to maintain speed and this will most often mean trimming the sails in a bit. In the lulls head up a bit more and trim the sails really flat and narrow. As the boat looses speed you'll have to gradually bear off a bit and ease the sails to get back to the optimum settings for maintaining speed. Its a bit like having a 3 speed gear box. 1st gear is for acceleration and its open leached, 2nd gear is for maintaining cruising speed, tighter leached but the sails should not be too flat and 3rd gear is "point at all costs". You don't use 1st gear very much unless there's a hell of a chop and not much wind. 2nd gear is the one you'd use in a steady wind - its the optimum for windward work. And 3rd gear is like a very high gear - hopeless for dealing with gusts but it'll give you a little drive whilst you point up. Naturally these gears are slightly different in the way they are implemented according to average wind speed. And just as a rider the gears are different according to the type of boat, for instance a Laser 4000 is very different from a Laser. It sounds complicated doesn't it, but then sailing a boat to windward is difficult and that's the challenge. |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 24 Jun 09 at 6:14pm
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I forgot about this post. Here's an update; This sunday our club organised and Asymmetric training
I found it extremely useful to the point that on
Leach tension. What I thought was tight was still
Aim to sail with 5 degrees of windward heel (which in
Pay more attention to the windward telltale and less
I also moved the shrouds up two holes and bought some
Anyway, I'm hoping we're not becoming pure lightwind
------------- |
Posted By: redback
Date Posted: 25 Jun 09 at 1:46pm
| I swear by those gloves and can't understand why anybody would ever buy those leather ones. |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 25 Jun 09 at 1:59pm
I switched to a narrower main sheet (6mm) and was really struggling to grip it properly. Now with these gloves I can hold the main, even just around two fingers, without any problem at all! For 3 quid I can afford to get through 10 pairs before they cost anymore than my Gill Mitts which have just about had it now. The narrower main sheet is great too by the way. Runs so much more freely. ------------- |
Posted By: ellistine
Date Posted: 25 Jun 09 at 2:09pm
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Just found them for £1.19 per pair at Screwfix! ------------- |