Hi Lockenfisch,
I have a Javelin 16 too. The old one with the vertical (not inverted) stem. I still have the original Bimare (Petrucci?) sail. I have fiberfoam battens, but don't ask me about the gauge.
In the begining I had some problems with going upwind too. But now I can sail higher than nearly everything in our bay.
The mast should have a top sealing with a small plastic tube where the rope goes through. The mast is open at the lower end and at the upper diamond wire attachements. However if you flip the mast will (well, should) not submerge to the diamonds. I never turteled. Check the sealing some birds liked to eat mine
So how do I go upwind? (single handed)
As there is no jib you can have the shroud and forstays tension low, it will have no influence. I have the tension quite low, as you will find on many a-cats.
I set the mast rake to keep the weather helm small upwind, but I thought I wasn't slower with more rake.
By the way I exchanged the the top single forstay (it was originally 2.5mm) with a double dynema line and the shrouds with -I think- 4mm (or 3mm) wire and the forestays with 3mm wire. Trap lines are dynema. If you sail regular double handed with spi downwind, both hiking, you need stronger shrouds. And the 2.5mm upper forstay is a joke in my eyes. Maybe it works in Italy, but not in northern Europe. I use a special Wichard HT steel shackle for the stay to mast attchement. My shroud wires are slightly shorter and are connected with some very short dynema lines to the shackle. I try to make a picture next time. The idea is that only dynema goes to the shackle. (I dont want to have wire and line going to the shackel, either line or wire). I replace the dynema stay stuff every year and the shackles if there is wear or bending.
Apart from that the mast is rock solid. Same for the hulls. Boat flipped over once on land in a storm and hit my steel box. I had a dent in the box and nothing on the boat. But avoid seting the boat on a hard surface or pebbles, the sandwich core is soft.
Back to trimming:
Be sure do have enough tension on the diamonds (I have 27 on the Loos gauge). The spreader rake is fix on my boat and is 78mm.
In light and medium winds, I tension the top battens high to have enough camber. The sail stalls then from the middle and lower part.
I need quite a lot of sheet and downhaul tension and the mast rotation should point at the end of the rear beam. I think my key finding was to rotate the mast in enough and to have the top battens tensioned enough. I guess the sail is a bit to full. Well, at least I would like to have a flatter sail, but I sail a lot single handed. For me it was really helpful to read a-cat trimming guides and not F16/F18 guides.
You have to trim the bows down. I stay at the front beam in lighter winds. People looking from the beach told me that my boat rocks less in waves than the Tornado of my friend. If you trim too much aft the boat starts rocking and slows down a lot.
The boards create a lot of lift, so maybe drop the traveller a bit, if you want to go a bit faster. But again this could be a single hander effect.
Be sure that the gennaker halyard is not too tight, so that the mast is hold by the forestay and not the halyard (important for mast bending).
What else?
You need to work the sheet a lot.
Try to sail without gennaker to see the pure upwind performance. (it is still a rocket downwind if doing the wild think but much more scary)
I found that you should not have more than 140kg crew weight to avoid pitch poling in strong winds. It is a fantastic single hander and still fine if you don't overload. It is perfect for me and my wife or me alone. It is actually the best cat I have sailed so far. But it took me one year to get an idea how to trim and run the boat. So keep on trying. Once you managed it will reward you a lot.
Only drawback is that it is very difficult to launch through surf and flat water with on-shore winds (with the the stock ruder system).
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Klaus
