Tales from aFarr

 As for the race North Easterlies are by far the worse wind directions we get at Hythe really gusty and lots of holes so I was constantly fearful of falling in backwards and tended to wire off the inner carbon things that are in the wrong place.

After a hesitant start (I thought I might have been over) I settled down to battle with my chum in his Phantom, one good laser sailor got away the rest I managed to keep behind me, the fact I got round without stacking it seemed to surprise our resident high wind Contender sailor who'd spent the race far ahead and lapped us on the final sausage. It was 1hr and about 15 minutes of gusts, lulls and an amazing long leg down the 2nd reach far out to sea in lovely surfing waves sailing into the sun, a more pleasant experience you rarely come across and the boat performs great in them even with a sail full of gust and the back of a wave ahead, too deep to think about wiring the only disconcerting thing was the long wiggle stick thing digging in the waves occasionally.

 So I managed a 6th which is good for me in strong winds in any boat and I now know it can only get better with practise. I could only straight leg wire on the odd occasion whilst everyone else (that were on wires) seemed to be comfortable out on the side, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong yet, could be sailing too high, someone else suggested more kicker but I had what I thought was a lot on. I had also wanged on a load of downhaul to twist the top of the sail off which it does now I've fitted a thinner top batten than the chunky thing supplied with the sails, what is it with dinghy sailmakers and their crap batten material these days?

I've developed a technique to sort of reduce the going into irons thing, I had the plate angle back a bit and made sure I dived as far forward as I could once rounding the back and other than at the very end trying to cross the line into a head tide I completed all tacks without issue, in fact I'm actually feeling quite pleased with myself and eager to have another go, we have wind forecast again on sunday, maybe I'll see if cutting her a little looser might enable wiring off the actual gunwhales..

Hi Graham

Sorry but why are you pulling downhaul (Cunningham)on if your underpowered?

Gordon

 

Hi Grf

If you leave the downhaul alone until your over powered. In general its one of my last depowering tools I use once rake and kicker have run out.

Note Cunningham is the correct term on any boat for the rope which goes up through a point above the tack and can be adjusted.

Not some sex fantasy of a windsurfer 

downhaul is becoming more prevalent - and it does what it says...

If you have a stretchy halyard, then once the sail is up, haul on the cunningham (lots); let it off again then retension the halyard. This will take out most of the stretch. Pulling on cunno with a stretchy halyard is a fruitless exercise.