Hi all,

I would be interested in how you depower your cat in heavy gusts.

Say we have the following situation: You are sailing in wind stronger than the design wind, i.e. you already have used some of the possibilities to depower (cunningham, maybe main traveler a little out, maybe you have opened the slot by letting the jib car a little bit out) and you are double trap. For the mean conditions you are now sailing comfortably. Now the wind is quite gusty (at least one gust a minute) and with quite strong gusts (i.e. you can not hold down the boat only by luffing)

In order to avoid the boat coming up too much and thus loosing speed, in a gust you usually have to

* tighten cunningham or
* loose main sheet/jib sheet or
* open main traveler

or even a combination of these. I would be interested in how this is done in the different classes. What I have heard, the fast Hobie 16 teams open the traveler in gusts leaving the sheet tight, this is done by the crew. How do you handle it? (for racing)