On my Tiger I have one set of telltales about 16" back from the mast and in the third panel with the H . I also have about 4 leach telltales from the top panel to the fourth panel down from the top.

In light air my leach telltales are not flying. The leach are constantly bending around to leeward but the leeward side of the telltales in the middle are doing fine.

In heavy air my leech telltales flow like crazy. I can't even sheet and downhaul enough to make them stop. But while the leech are flowing like crazy my leeward telltale on my main in the H panel doesn't fly.

What am I doing wrong?

I know I'm not that far off the pace but something isn't making sense to me. It would seem to me that these telltales should break about the same time in general but they don't. The way I would think it should work would be that as I sheet tighter and the second from the top leech teltale starts to break the one in the middle of the sail should start to break about then.

Keep One Hull Flying,
Mike Hill

Could your leech be hooking to windward? I have to keep an eye on my sheet tension in light air to keep the top from hooking to windward. It may be due to my top batten being a little too stiff for the light air..

In the heavy air, it may be too much rotator causing the front telltales to break? You said you maxed out the downhaul and it still broke early, so I am suspecting that there may be too much luff curve ahead of the telltale and that leads me to think the rotator is not right for the conditions. Either that or your footing too hard...

I have seen this topic a few times on this forum recently. Also, the Hobie Cat website has a FAQ about tell tails that will go into more detail.

I'll take a stab at the problems you are describing. If I'm wrong I know someone will correct me.



I think you need to sheet out some more. It sounds like you are pinching. On the larger mono's I sail that don't have tell tails we sheet out until the sail luffs then sheet it in just past the point where it stops. You want a fat sail in light air with a high angle of attack.



I can't quite picture what you are saying but I think you may have the jib sheeted in too much and are choking the mainsail. That's my best guess

I'm not positive where all the tell tails are placed on a Tiger. Someone with more Tiger experience will coorect me if I'm wrong.

In light air, as in heavy air, you want twist in your sails - both main and jib. If your leach telltails aren't flowing most of the time, you need to introduce some twist, either by slacking the sheet or putting in more outhaul (on my 6.0 with no boom it's slacking the sheet or adjusting the clew car forward). It's possible to have the lee side tails flowing but not the leach, it shouldn't take much adjustment to get both sets going (just a little more twist).

In heavy air, as Nick says, it's possible that the jib is shutting the slot down and fouling the backside of the main. I don't know how high up the H is, but it may be around the head of the jib. Make sure your jib is tacked a low as possible on the headstay, and that in heavy air you take care to open the slot - make sure you have some twist as the top of the jib is a prime spot for closing the slot. Move your jib cars out and back a bit to invoke the twist.

In my mono days I was worried about luffing. In my multi days I worry far less about luffing telltales and I worry obsessively about losing flow on the lee side of the main and jib. I'll live with windward telltales not flowing %100, but I'll do anything to avoid that on the lee and leach telltales. That having been said, it's possible that there is just some funky flow off the top of the jib that causes the lee tales to flow funny in a blow. If the other things mentioned don't help, check out the other Tigers to see if they have similar telltale action.

My opinion anyways...

Leech tails in the upper third help avoid hooking the leech to weather from over sheeting. You want the upper leech tails to tuck / fly / tuck etc. alternating.

If they are tucking to the lee side all the time, the leech is hooked to weather, sheet out. If they are flying all the time, you are under sheeted, sheet in.

Light air... sheet out a bit to open the leech. Travel more to center and sheet out a little.

Downhaul causes the leech to open, so downhauling less and sheeting harder should get the leech tighter and make the tails tuck / fly / tuck more.

It is mostly a balance of sheet, traveler and downhaul... but mast bend and rotation some too.

Good topic Mike! Leech tales are still a bit undiscovered to me too. It just doesn't feel right when I finally get them flicking in the light stuff. Thanks for the insight Matt.

Mike:

Do you have the newer STX sail? I have a bit more adjusting to do on this sail than the older sail. I had to finally take the matter to the beach. It seemed impossible to get everything just right while I was sailing. The older style seemed to be okay just to go out and tweek on the water. On the beach, Eileen and I made sure that we had a little wind in the sail for the experiment. Then we both stood behind the sail with our respective lines. She happens to have the downhaul and the traveller. I with the mainsheet. We started by making the kind of adjustments we were making the day before. We saw immediately that was all wrong. We agreed on a coordinated effort making minor adjustments. We were able to go out that day and get a 1,2,3. That was a whole lot better than the day before where we barely broke into the top five.

I have three telltales on the sail. I think that there is one in the second from the top about 30% back from the luff. There are two in the fourth panel. The first one is 30% back from the luff and the other is about 12 inches from the leech. I also have leech tales but I use these way more. The downhaul will really twist off the top of the sail. I found out that with the fathead I had to downhaul more than before in the lightest winds. I never put downhaul in light wind conditions on the older sail. The back telltale (fourth panel) will tell you if you are stalling. Use the downhaul in combination with easing of the mainsheet to try to get those the fly nicely then try to get the front ones to fly nicely. If you cannot get both (front and back) to fly the same pay more attention to the back ones. I think that you will find the top ones (second panel) will be right. I feel it is better to ease a bit and foot some than to point and stall. I am talking about 1 to 2 degrees not like a Hobie 16 type of footing (10 degrees).

Coordination with the front of the boat is essential with these sails.

Also rotation:
Light wind point the back of the mask (rotator bar) at the daggerboards.
Medium wind between daggers and rear Xbar.
Nuking wind go back forward.

See you at Carlyle. Thank you for taking on that task! Hope you can have fun doing it. I had a blast doing the Alter Cup Championships this year. If you have any questions call me.

Later,
Dan

Mike

How much wind are we talking about here, in mph, I take it in medium winds everything is flowing fine?

Also what downhaul are you currently using?

In really light air, it's amazing how much downhaul we apply to go fast. Perhaps you need a flatter sail and more twist in light air (downhaul)..

Mike, are you switching off between the two sets of battens from light to heavy air? If your top two are too hard in light air the leech tends to stay more open.

Answering Questions here.

When I say light I mean under 10mph. When I say heavy I mean max downhaul and double trap 15mph and up.

I usually don't use much downhaul in light air. It just doesn't feel fast to me. I simply get the wrinkles out of the top 2/3 of the main with the downhaul.

I have been switching battens in light and heavy air. The day I was having problems in the heavy air I had the stiff battens in.

I thought the person who mentioned that the mast might be too rotated might have been right. I usually point the mast at the shrouds and don't mess with it. I think I need to try to point it back more in the heavier air. However I don't think this is the only issue at work here.

Mike Hill
www.stlouiscats.com

Mike

In the light air it would appear that the flow is breaking away from the sail somewhere between the middle tell tails and the leach, this is not a major problem since the drive comes from the front 1/3 of the sail, but there would be less drag if you could get them flowing, (flowing for 75% of the time would be a good result,50% perfectly acceptable)

The reason for the loss of flow may be that the draft on the sail is along way back, or it could simply be too full.

Either way more downhaul will pull the draft forwards and flatten the sail.

In very light winds pull on a lot of downhaul, in fact the same amount as for 20mph +, (in less than 5 mph most sails are too full and the air will just not stick around the big curve the sail is asking it to and also there is much more wind shear so the top of the sail has the apparant wind from a free-er direction),this will help the leach ribons flow in these conditions and is faster but in 5 - 10 mph you should be using no downhaul really, but maybe it's an old sail that has gone very full, Try more downhaul, (you will get the ribons to flow)but you may find that the loss in drag doesn't make up for the loss in power.

In the stronger winds there is no reason why the top leeward telltail shouldn't flow, It's well above the jib isn't it so jib sheeting can't effect it, derotating the mast will de-power the rig, and you should go faster in the higher winds, but it shouldnt affect flow.

Is there anything on the mast that may interupt the flow (it might be that the spinnaker halyard is blowing around just in front of this telltail.

It's a newer sail, about 1 year old Hobie Tiger ST. The top telltale is well above the jib and above anything that could be effecting it. Definitely not the halyard or anything else effecting it.

Thanks for the reply. I hope to get it out in some heavy air again to test some.

John, while your attention is here..

What is your rationale for not leading mast-rotation out to the hull on the F-16 Stealth? I had the impression that having it at the hull was more or less mandatory to be "competitive" today.
I see this as a small advantage on the beat to A mark, and on the jib-reach from A to B, but no big deal.

Mike, I have personally experienced how important it is to flatten your mainsail when the wind is weak. As John say, you get a bit less power (or perhaps not, if the flow over your sail separates to early), but the decrease in drag more than justifies it.
We was passed by another boat in weak winds once, but after hauling on some more downhaul we was able to catch up and finish well ahead. The difference in speed between just straightening out the wrinkles and taking the downhaul to the no.5 setting was very large (relatively speaking).