Jake, coming off of the wire and moving inboard is best to prevent pitch pole? Aren't you taking the cantilever action of your weight off the hull, and loosing the counter balance effect by doing this? Please explain the principle.
Thanks
Forrest
I-20
Yes exactly. You are losing some counter balance and in order to keep the boat upright, you will be sailing a deeper and less powerful angle. Your speed will drop because the power (and resulting leverage on the bows) will reduce.
I learned a bit about this by sailing the A-cat. The use of the wild thing on a-cats is a little counter-intuitive. There's more to consider with it than just reducing wetted surface area - it's also a method to reduce power and sail deeper. Born out of surviving heavy air (which is quite a learning curve on the a-cat) I learned that keeping the boat flat and sitting on the corner of the boat was not an effective method of safely or conservatively sailing the boat downwind. It's quite the opposite and is pitch pole prone that way. Flying a hull in that position at a normal "skimming the water" attitude was worse now that all of that pressure was reduced to one hull. However, flying a hull high in that same setting finds the boat settling down and becoming a whole new animal. However, it takes a bit of commitment to get it to that point. The additional heeling serves to depower the boat and to make sure it keeps heeling, we scoot more inboard than usual. This also helps to relieve some of the power in the sail and reduce the pressure on the bow. The groove gets pretty narrow but you can manage the heel with the mainsheet and your sailing angle to keep the boat depowered. It's counter intuitive but with more wind pressure, you want to sheet in to heel more and steer deeper. This results in less pressure on the bow while still maintaining a good amount of speed and a great angle. That said, curved boards have kinda changed this game by allowing the leeward hull/bow to resist more power and we're seeing trapezing downwind.
The same, although not nearly as dramatic, is true of sailing a spinnaker boat. You can depower by heeling the boat more and flying higher or sail a little lower with less righting leverage. The trick is to find the best combination of leverage, hull height, and angle. I was getting beat downwind at Tradewinds (18knots) by teams that were keeping their weight just a little more inboard. The skipper was scooting into the hiking strap and the crew, although still trapezed, was more upright. They were sailing about the same speed but a little lower than I. It took me a few races to figure it out and make similar adjustments. Less is sometimes more.