Downwind Angles

Well I've completed my first regatta in a mosquito and I have heaps of questions.

The major question is what sort of angles should I be sailing downwind for best VMG?

I14's and MG14's were killing me in all light and heavy downwind conditions. Should this be expected? We dominated them upwind as expected.

Nick.
PS. Just had to refresh the window that said I had read only permission.

G'day Nick,

I'll kick off the replies with a series of questions that will assist those more knowledgable than myself to answer your questions for you.
Are you sailing with a spinnaker?
Are you sailing Mk1 or Mk2?
What course are you sailing? (Triangle,Windward/Return,etc)
I assume the 14's and MG's are sailing with spinnaker?
Is it only the downwind leg or is it the reaches too?
Sorry for all the questions but knowing the answers will make it easier to answer your queries.

No spinnaker
Sloop
Triangle, sausage, triangle (finishing at bottom mark)
I14, sharpie and MG's had spinnakers
I was being killed on the downwinds but less so on the reaches, it depended on the angle to the wing mark and the breeze. It was generally the tighter the reach, the better we went compared to the monos.

I'm really interested to know in what conditions I should sail high for speed or low for depth, and whether or not MG14s, sharpies or I14s should be beating a mosquito downwind in most conditions.

regards,
Nick.
PS. results can be found at LCSC Easter Regatta Results

Congrad's on how well you did in your first regatta 9/27 is great first result in a new class. I've only had my mozzie for about a year and have sailed in about 5 regattas and I don't sail club racing. I am probably not the best person to advise you on what is the best down wind angles, however I do know that one of the reason people are fitting spinnakers is to improve the downwind performance of the mozzie. I sailed at Lake Boga (near Swan Hill, Vic) where we had 12 mozzies racing and had a ball with good winds 3 days out of 4. Vic Mozzie Web site has a run down. From your results it appeared you were the only cat racing in a mixed fleet. Hope some of the guru's read your posting and can help you with your enquires.

I was also playing with mast rotation and couldn't convince myself of the best settings. The taipans suggest rotating until the leeward luff telltales stream but I couldn't seem to get them to not stream no matter what I did.

Any clues here?

Nick.

Surprised at the lack of replies on this topic as the subject often comes up post race.

Ok, I`ll give my opinion, not about your performance relative to the mono`s since i don`t know them, but on downwind angles etc.
Nick, It`s difficult to know what you`re doing relative to another Mozzie since you were the only one there. Have sailed H16, Mozzie, Dart18 and others - Dart18 is critical at which point in windstrength you swop from low`n-slow to high and fast, H16 a little less critical. Mozzie likes to reach fairly deep, the gain in speed going high is sometimes not worth the extra distance covered, mainly in light wind (less than 10knots). The tricky part is knowing(feeling) at which point it works for you to heat it up and building apparent wind. For me it is over 10-12knots, depends on crew weight, sail cut, boat weight etc. Obvious tricks are ease downhaul & outhaul to suit conditions. In some triangle-sausage-triangle races, we have actually sailed 3 triangles, gybing around B-mark on the sausage, as it gave the best VMG downwind.(mainly in strong wind).
In one race I was blanketed by about 6 boats going into B-mark, they all sailed over me and gybed at the mark, the next leg to C was very deep, so I sailed 200m or so past B-mark and then gybed, gaining back my six places at C-mark !
Best rule-of-thumb is to have streamers on your bridle wires, and try to keep them streaming at 90deg to the boat.
Forgive me if you know all this already, but there might be something useful.

Steve

Keeping the sidestay tell-tale at 90 degrees seems to be the rule. I've also heard some fast sloop sailors say the traveller does not go out past the inside of the hull. It is also important to have the windward hull out (which is bad news for the crew because it means they get to spend a lot of time on the leeward hull - with a snorkel).
From my brief experience of sloop sailing I found I had to work very hard to keep the speed on and the apparent working.

Of course in less than 8 knots you can't get the apparent working so it's going to be slow.
I think an I14 with it's huge spinnaker could do better than a Mozzie without one downwind. They are rated 86.5 compared to the Mosquito's 84 so that's not much slower overall.
It looks like the MG is on 106 so you should be nearly lapping them in a 4-5 lap race!

I haven't sailed MK2, I've noticed they can point a bit lower then me downwind and still keep their speed, a function of the jib I am told, makes sense too.
Darryn

Nick,

Please excuse my question below but I just had to ask ; Are you using a barber hauler system on the jib for the reaches ? I used to run mine off the chainplates to get the jib slot as large as possible for downwind reaching.

Regards,

Peter Foulsum

I'm not running a barber hauler because I haven't figured out a system I like yet. Any suggestions or sketches would be greatly appreciated.

Nick.

Nick,

It's been a few seasons since I sailed sloop rigged but I still recall that it was simply a 3 or 5mm rope run through the sidestay shackle and attached to a pulley which was then fed through the jib sheet before it got to the trampoline or deck pulley. The rope was then run across the trampoline and an additional small cleat set up on the trampoline track (inboard side of each hull). Naturally this was done on both sides and the rope set up as a loop to avoid loose ends. If you run a 2:1 jib sheet then you need a double pulley.

I also recall having to set the barber hauler to maximum outboard setting then letting it off and sheeting the jib in the to get to the right setting. Setting the jib sheet first then trying to adjust the barber hauler was always much harder because of the force required against a jib sheet tension.

The trick was always to remember to let the tension off when approaching the bottom mark for the upwind legs.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Peter Foulsum

I might set it up tonight. I was trying to run it off the front beam (like the taipans???) but found it was way too far forward.

Nick.

With the barber hauler, make sure you don't have it on too tight. One of the tricks to sailing downwind fast is letting the jib breath at the top. That means a little bit of twist, lay off etc..
As far as an angle goes keeping the apparent wind at 90 degrees is a good start.
I have sailed all sorts of cats and have just bought a cat rigged mossie. I have found that some of the guys sail dead down wind. This is a boring slow way to sail in most cases and I wish that they would ban it as it does nothing for promoting mosquitos as a fast 16ft boat. Much better for other boats to see spray coming off the bows of a mossie as opposed to the skipper just sitting there.

Regards
Chris Dean

Hi Chris

I'm afraid it's a sad fact that, cat-rigged, the Mosquito just doesn't have enough sail-power to get the apparent working on downwind legs. We have tried and it may just be a possibility on flat water with more than 15 knots of breeze, but that combination almost never happens so we'll probably never find out. The fastest way to the bottom mark is to just keep the sail as far out as it will go and square to the wind. Slow and tedious but that doesn't mean there's nothing to do because there's plenty of ground to make up by gybing with the wind-shifts (and finding the wind-lines).

Enter the spinnaker - that's the whole reason I put a spinnaker on. I was always happy with the upwind performance of the cat-rigged Mozzie. Add the spinnaker and downwind legs are even better!