Hi all,

have been flat out with sailing and working away alot. Interesting to catch up with the posts. So many things to comment on.

Firstly Altered picture, I was sheeted hard at the time, basicaly as much as I can pull on with 6 to 1 from trapeze. Twist is all from downhaul or cunningham, Glenn advised me I was not using enough, so I upped to 12 to 1 and can now give it heaps. Basicaly I sheet in hard then adjust downhaul so that I am pointing at the hieght I want and travelling at the speed I want. The twist in this photo gives better VMG than when I was sailing with less twist causing me to point higher. When I got this sail I underestimated how much and how early I needed to start downhauling. I am now back to being happy with my upwind speed in stronger breezes, although I do still need to check it against some faster cats.

I am not sure about this idea that Fat head sails are easier to sail with in strong winds. I have heard this ever since I started sailing cats but from my experiences on large Multis and Altered, Fatheads give you a higher centre of effort making them power up earlier, but not easier to sail. You have to be more careful with leech tension off the wind as the head will drive the bows under if oversheeted, also overpowering earlier just makes it harder work. From my experience there is nothing easier to handle than a standard Mossie sail in high winds, it twists and depowers readily and it's low centre of effort takes more wind to over power.
Don't get me wrong I love my big fat head (easy boys) I wouldn't consider sailing with anything else, as it gives me speed in 5-10 kts. that is not possible with a pinhead. But it and others I have used are harder to handle when it is windy.

As for speed of respective cats, I now recite to myself as I get chased by those Mossies, IT'S EASY TO SAIL A FAST BOAT SLOW. From what I have seen around regattas the faster it is, the easier to sail slow as evidenced by Tornado's being beaten by Mossies. I used to think that Taipans especialy cat rigged where not much faster than Mossies having beaten fleets of up to 13 to windward marks many times on my Mossie. But recently I have come up against the Aust cat rig Taipan champs on Altered and I can tell you in 20 kts. they are very fast beating most of the A class fleet. Sounds familiar doesn't it.

Now for Mossie cat rig versus sloop rig. Being one of those guy's that delight in cross referencing useless info. I looked at times from recent Mossie titles at Loch Sport comparing front of cat rig fleet with sloop rig times, as expected the cat rigs where faster in the light winds but to my surprise they where also faster in the strongest winds gusting 25kts., in fact there was only one race at the Nats that sloops beat cats. In one race in about 15 kts. the first 5 cats beat the first sloop. Before anybody goes making to big an assumption, I think it should be said that the flat water and gusty winds helped the cats here as it was hardly the conditions to get a sloop in the groove upwind something I know they like to do from experience.

Regards Gary.