- Tuning the rig is important.
Lowers must be even so that the mast is straight going upwind and not
sagging in the middle under load. We spent a lot of time tuning before the
race.
- Rig must rock forward to make
sure we get as much projection forward with the spinnaker.The tuning
guides say that there should be 18” of mast tip travel fore and aft.
However, there should be no inversion of the mast in the puffs. We
adjusted the backstay a lot to accommodate that forward movement. Downwind
backstay should be all the way to the bridle block.
- Upwind we should have a snug
boom vang. Often our vang is not even on upwind. Wrong. The tuning guides
also talk of using the vang in bigger breeze to control shape rather than
the mainsheet. Since we didn’t see big air on Thursday, we didn’t have the
opportunity to test out that approach.
- Kerry re-rounted the sheet
leads to get us even more inboard. He thought the shape of our jib was too
flat in the lower third and needed the inboard and lower attachment to
give it a bit more fullness. I’ll take a look at alternate rigging
solutions. If we use his approach, we may end up going to a single sheet
lead block.
- Mainsail foot shelf in that
breeze (8-ish kts.) was about half max. Tuning guides talk about 1-2 inch
travel between max and min on outhaul. I think we should mark the boom and
keep some records.
- On gybes he throws off the
twings first (both sides) and throws the boom over first. Then he moves
the pole. He throws the twings off to get the spinnaker out in front of
the boat. He thinks it’s faster than our method. I tend to agree. We
should practice and see.
- On the downwind, he tended to
stay up on the deck rather than get back in the cockpit. It helped him
look for breeze and tactical position. Also, on the set, he reached down
from the mast and undid the jib halyard and pulled on the fraculator while
staying on the deck by the mast. This leads me to believe that we should
re-route the fraculator so that it is next to the jib halyard so that John
can stay on the port side deck and just reach down after the hoist and
pull the jib down. His approach was only a bit faster than the way we do
it, but it kept him on the deck so that we could gybe at any moment when
we got a lane. I know that sometimes we want to gybe quickly, but we’re
still bringing the jib down from in the cockpit. Again, we should do some
experimenting here. A couple of boat lengths can pay big dividends here.
Oh, and I happened to be in Water Avenue Coffee on Friday where Matt
(Coho) works and mentioned the gybing to him. He said that on the Merit
that he races on they throw the boom over first also. Just one more data
point.
- He was not afraid to gybe. I
think we had 5 gybes downwind. He didn’t want to stay close to anyone and
kept looking more for breeze and lanes than making the inside so important
to protect. I was fascinated by the willingness to both tack and gybe to
take advantage of the breeze rather than tactically play with other folks.
At one point, we were on a port-starboard with Rander and instead of
waiting to lee-bow him, Kerry just said tack and stay in clear air.
- Our start was our problem
Thursday. We had good boat speed and tactical position otherwise. The Fred
approach of tacking away as soon as possible if we are in the second row
is exactly what Kerry called. From this point forward, I will never again
suggest sitting behind folks even for a bit. Lesson learned. Cullison has
done well taking over early if they are late to the start. Oh, and BTW, I
have a new piece of software I want to show you guys. I tracked that race
and the software shows wind shadow. It is a big deal more than I ever
thought. Again, lesson learned.
- On the douse (windward side),
Kerry didn’t care that the chute was all the way in boat. It was more
important to him to get the jib sheeted in and be ready for the tack to
the finish. As a sidebar, he also wasn’t crazy excited about getting the
twing hardened up right away after a gybe. Sure it needed to be put on,
but trimming the chute and keeping it full was more important to
him.
- I had my weight on the cabin
top upwind and Kerry went back and forth between me and Fred. We might try
it with John. Having my extra 60 lbs or so forward like that may help speed.
Plus, it was easier for Kerry to go back and forth and help Fred with the
main.
- On the finish leg, Kerry kept
urging Fred to scallop up to both make the mark and to give bad air to Don
Hamann. That’s not new, but he was willing to tack early on what seemed to
be before the starboard tack layline to gain position. As it turned out,
we had to shoot the line to finish, but we did push Don to tack away and
we gained a position because Don had been ahead of us at the mark
rounding. Had we waited to tack, we wouldn’t have gotten Don. In other
words, he was willing to take the risk of not making the finish line
leeward mark (which would have required a tack at the end) just so that we
could get position on Don. It’s an interesting tactical choice.
- Also BTW, my tracking
software showed that upwind we were inside the starboard tack layline the
whole way up until the last tack, where we overstood the mark. If memory
serves me, we had to go a little farther than we wanted because there were
starboard tack boats coming down on us and we had to overstand because it
was the only safe position to be in. My software also shows that we are
generally pretty good on our tacks. We keep our speed up and don’t
over-rotate. They take between 8 and 10 seconds to complete. Our gybes
were also generally pretty good and we didn’t lose much speed. As I
recall, they take about 20 seconds on average to complete.
One other item to add to your summary is that while sheeting
the jib we should try to keep the batten parallel. This will keep it
powered up but not to tight to back wind the main and not to loose and
lose some of our point. It gives us a real starting point when trying to
figure out proper trim. As you said Kerry spent some time working on the height
of the fairlead and how far out on the car to achieve power in the jib.
