As expressed earlier the wednesday was not much of day with regard to sailing. Although I must confess that I spend the best part of the day chasing down a replacement ratchet block and some other stuff. I was mostly by myself that day so I don't know if the others went out or not or did some tuning.
Talking about tuning. Daniel van Kerckhof and Annalies Byrne treated us to a tuning and sailing clinic on the thursday. I think it is impossible to overstate how thankful we all are for that gem. Daniel and Annaliese are regarded as a very fast crew; and they showed that during the tour stages. Daniel himself together with Greg Goodall finished 6th at the F18 worlds. There is defiantely a future for him in sailing and he is champion material in the Taipan 4.9 class in Australia.
I was very tired that day and had trouble concentrating but even I picked up so many pointers and more importantly, so many key pointers that that clinic alone and the 15 minutes Daniel spend on my boat just took me through months of trying to figure it out myself. If not complete seasons of it.
I would really like to write it all up for everybody and get everybody to speed up enormously; however I'm no Daniel and I'm finding that it will take time that I don;t really have. Although, initiatives like Johns and Erics to produce a promo video will lighten the promotion load on me and probably free up some time. Lets just say that it is on my to do list for some future time.
Still, I will try to give you the summary of it and I will mix in some comments of Greg Goodall himself. At the Westland I had the opportunity to pick his brain two evenings in a row for several hours. I have to tell it in my own words so please forgive me my possible mistakes.
We started in the morning with Daniel going over the boats and discussing the systems we had on the boats.
He started making the point that he really believes that boat fittings should be as simple as possible. Have what you need and actually use but make it as simple as possible without really degrading its use or effectiveness. An example of this is the single line spi halyard system. Currently it fashionable to have the two line setup on the F18's but Daniel very expressive that he views that as overly complex without any real advantage to justify that. He used a single line halyard retrieval system with a spinlock cleat. The retrieval line went through a eye in the trampoline in the front halve of the tramp and than back to a ring on a bungee taking out the slack. Then back forward to a small block on the trampoline and then to the rear of the spinlock cleat. Than to a double block (needed to get the double action) back to a block on the main beam and up in the mast. He adviced having a eyestrap riveted to the spreaderarm and near the hound to guide the spi halyard up the mast and prevent it from hanging up there and reduce wear. He ties of his tack halyard line to the snuffer ring saving on money spend on line and cutting down on weight and excess line that can hook on things.
I must say his system looked clean, simple and effective. Daniel expressed in addition to that that he really beleived that this system (also used on the Capricorn) didn't slow them down during hoists or drops and therefor was the equal of the more complex systems. I must personally say that the AHPC snuffer ring works well and may well allow this simplification.
One other factor he underlined strongly is the superiority of the cascaded downhaul system. His words were "If you have the standard system in your mast; then I would seriously suggest that you consider opening up the mast and replace the standard system with the cascaded system. The cascaded system is so much more to be prefered that it is well worth the effort". To this I would like to add that one boat in our group had this cascaded internal downhaul system and that several sailors using the standard system commented on how well it worked. One of the important points is that the mainsail springs back to its untentioned length after the downhaul is uncleated. There is so little friction in the cascaded system. It was also found that the pull on this system was reduced. I know one guy here had a cascaded system installed and Greg Goodall mentioned it to me that he would use it in the new boats. For people interesting in this
system contact me personally by e-mail and I will send you an explanation and drawings of it. I've installed this system myself in my own mast and can tell you exactly what you need to do. I do request however that you detailed explanations you are willing to phone me. That saves time and prevents my RSI syndrome from reappearing from excessive typing.
Daniel also said :
-1- He sets he mast spanner arm so that it points somewhere between the mainbeam and the forward edge of the daggerboard wells. This is really a small amound of rotation. When overpowered reduce the rotation a little in small steps while also adjusting the other control simultaniously. It looks funny at first but I can tell from personal experience that it works
-2- outhaul sets the draft in the bottom 1/3 of the sail and no higher than that. Often the outhaul is relatively tight.
-3- Downhaul should be used in combination with the mainsheet tensions. I have personally found that one needs to adjust these two simultaniously almost all the time. That is also what Greg hinted at ; he said. That it is very important to sail with the right amount of twist in the leech of the mainsail as a tight leech in the top will great excessive aerodynamic drag. What you tend to do is use the outhaul to flatten of the lower 1/3 of the sail and then use the mainsheet AND downhaul to flatten of the rest of the sail. You HAVE to balance the amount of mainsheet and downhaul to eachother to get the right amount of twist again. By the way, the right amount of twist is somewhat dependent on the conditions. Look it like this The mainsheet tension flattens the mailsail and stands up the leech while the downhaul also flattens the mainsail and twists off the leech. So it is logical to first set the proper outhaul and then add mainsheet tension and downhaul in such a ratio that you get the right draft over the full sail while keeping the desired twist. Greg said to me that a tight leech on the bottom part of the main determines pointing while a little loose leech on top increases speed and has little effect on pointing ability. Greg gave as explanation that a hooking upper leech (standing up) creates a tip vortex that is rather large and induces a large drag factor to the boat. A drag that slows the boat down significantly. Opening up the leech up top increases speed, sometimes even drastically and often helps pointing as well. The latter I experience just today just like the day Daniel dropped on my boat did all that described above and made my boat at least twice as fast. That was exciting stuff.
-4- Under spinnaker, Daniel said, don't be afraid to use the main traveller often. Keep the mainsheet cleated and work the traveller in the gusts. I tried and it really did work very well. The mainsail acts as a trimtab on the boat and during a gust I found that baring off with the rudders while also allowing the traveller to run out a bit made the boat bear of more easily and keep it flat at the same time. On my boat the effect was really significant.
-5- Jib slot to the mainsail is very important. When ever using the selftacker don't fool yourself in "set and forget". trimming the jib slot is very important and only 1/4 inch (6 mm) of sheet can have large effects on the position of the leech and either choke the main off of power it up fully. Learn to look at the leech of the jib to trim the size of the jib slot.
-6- We all found that using 4 autoratchets on the spi sheet (2 on either side in series) worked really well. The holding of the spi was reduced to a force that you can work up with just to fingers. Now during the easing out of the spi your muscles can rest and charge themselfs up for the next pull. This is alot less tiring. A good trick really worth the extra expense.
-7- Another good trick is to pull the retrieval line tight before uncleating the spinnaker halyard clear. Then with a few medium sized and fast pull the spi will go into the snuffer more easily. Hang ups are then largely a thing of the past.
I'm going to bed now more later. Than we discuss the sessions on the water ! It put shame to several of us;
Wouter
