Light wind sailing ?

That is always a difficult one as there is only so much you can do with trim. Mostly the gains are made by good tactics and spotting where the wind is.

My own mast and sail combo like alot of downhaul and a slack mainsheet in light to very light conditions. And I found that we as a crew sit on either side of the boat on the mainbeam or in front of it and we don't switch places during a tack or gybe. We just stay where we are and keep the boat really calm. This way it seems to track really well and keeps the speed up during manouvres. This point is very important because of the fact the crew weight is so large a component of the whole. There is not alot of momentum to keep going if the crew moves about the boat.

My own boat likes alot of twist in these conditions and even though at first you don't know it is accellerates to higher and higher speed for quite a time. People won't believe me but I actually overtake F18's and I-20's in the light stiff this way. My combined crewweight is 145 kg to 150 kg so we are not the lightest F16 crew. For some reason my Taipan F16 has a very good light wind performance. And over the years, due to landyachting, I think I had gotten very handy at coaching a rig to speed in marginal conditions. On a landyacht you have to get out when you stop and push the cart. You very quickly learn to keep the cart moving all the time even if it is only with 10 inches a second. With landyachts the trick is to get some speed and then have the apparent wind building and use that to get more speed. I think the F16's are comparable to that. But it is probably true that all cats have this. However I've only gotten good at it with my F16 and never with my other boats so maybe it partly the result of the boat design as well.

Quite often I found that it can be faster to sail downwind without a spinnaker then with if the conditions are really light. But I think this too applies to most modern cats anyway.

But to me light wind sailing is still an art form of the senses and feeling. I can do it but I can't really explain how I do it. So I fear that everybody just has to find this one out for themselfs.

Sorry,

Wouter