Hi all,

the leach of my main opens up, if I apply a reasonable up wind sheet tension. That's nice in stronger winds, but I want to reduce this twist for 2-up and light wind sailing.
I played around with mast rotation and downhaul, but I never got a fully closed leach. Is it worth to play with the tension of the diamond wires?
I have a CFRP mast with a Petrucci main on my Javelin 16.

Thanks,

Klaus

I am convinced pre-bend will influence twist. Another major adjustment is mast rotation.

First thing to do is not touch the downhaul, the more downhaul, the easier the leach will open.

More pre-bend will flatten the sail and affects the first 2/3rds of the sail, I'm not sure if it will affect the upper part....

Maybe you could try and use a stiffer upper batten?

Gill

Is a fully closed leach fast?

Well, if I will have a closed leach, I can tell you. At the moment I think that it could be fast in light winds.


Good point, forgot this parameter.

Thanks a lot and cheers,

Klaus

Pre-bend will flatten the sail, but will also increase twist. Just pick a quiet day, sheet in the main and begin adjusting the pre-bend. Take out pre-bend and the leech will stand up, increase pre-bend and the leech will open so you need more mainsheet to control it. Putting the boat on its side and playing around with pre-bend, mast rotation, downhaul and sheet can be really useful. Lots of stuff to learn from that.

A stiffer batten will probably flatten the top, which is not what you want in light winds? Getting the mast and sail tuned right is a major performance issue <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I think a closed leech can be fast in certain conditions.

Maximum outhaul with a lot of mainsheet tension might be worth a try as well,
did that a few times on the FX1 and it seemed to work OK (nothing spectacular though).