My mainsail has very little twist in it comapred to say the Landenberger sails, can anyone comment on the why's and hows of sail twist, in particular how do you work out what sail twist is needed and how do you induce more mainsail twist uisng out haul downhaul main sheet etc.

My personal opinion is that with the F16's sailing more and more on apparant wind then we should need less twist than say a laser dinghy which moves relatively slowly compared to the wind speed. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

How much twist to use is a big topic of discussion...my general advice is if your boat feels "bound-up" (wanting to be pushed sideways rather than accelerate), induce some more twist. It's not really a science, it's more what feels right.

As far as doing that, the general consensus for cats is to crank on more downhaul on the main and lower your sheeting angle on the jib...that's all.

When you say lower your sheeting angle- do you mean more pull on the clew back or down? I am thinking that the more you pull the jib clew back you will allow it to twist off more at the top. just checking

When lowering sheeting angle, the jib sheet becomes closer to horizontal, pulling more force on the foot of the sail than at higher jib sheeting angles.

There are a number of ways to lower the sheeting angle.

1. Move your jib sheet fairleads aft (most common method and easy to do if you have movable fairleads).

2. Lower the jib on the forestay.
- Ease the upper luff tensioner (could be the halyard line) in the order of a few centimetres or so and take-up the lower luff tension control. (It depends on your setup though. Just make sure when using this technique you don't ease the rig tension accidentally. You only want to lower the jib on the forestay, not reduce the rig tension.)