With a gust the apparant wind veers aft. For that reason you can wind up. However you have to wait for the boat to accelerate. The apparant may turn back and luffing is useless. In heavy wind it may be a bit different as the boat do not accelerate as much as in medium wind.
Hi Leo,
that's true, however it is less pronounced as on monohulls. Most beach cats have a very flat up wind vmg curve. That means it doen't matter if you go 50deg or 60deg to the true wind direction, the vmg will be pretty much the same. Also due to the high speed of a cat, the changes in apparent wind direction are smaller. Loosing speed due to excessive tiller action is far more worse.
I try to do steering as a fine adjustment of heeling angle and waves and do the big stuff with the sheet.
Keep the speed up, more speed is more lift from the foils. With speed you can point higher, with speed you can manouvre more quickly and with speed the boat behaves better in waves. Go first for speed than for hight.
Cheers,
Klaus
