Downwind angles

I sailed a Taipan at the Elwood schools regatta (our first "real" race)this weekend, and found, among other things, that neither I nor my skipper had a clue as to what the best angles to sail downwind in a taipan are. racing against Victorian state team hobie sailors we were beating them by miles to the top mark, but then getting smashed on the way down to the finish line...
can anyone elaborate on this?

Sailing with or without a kite?

Following is without the kite as you will get heaps of long notes about kite sailing.

Jib is the key. Barber the jib sheet so that 4 to 6 inches is showing out of the beam. Crew should be pulling on the jib on so that it isn't too tight. This should then set your angle to steer to. As the wind comes forward the jib can be pulled on tighter, reverse when lighter. So not a set and forget job. The other key part is that the crew should be monitoring the bows. If they start to go under, an ease of 4 to 6 inches should take the pressure off, and then sheet back in.

For main. Rotation and downhaul off. Can ease the outhaul a bit too. If you are going flat, then traveller down so just inside the hull. If wild, then at the hiking strap. Also should be working the main in the pressure. As I mention quite a bit here, never cleat the main, need to react to gusts and that extra time to try and uncleat can be slow. Also watch your main trim. Gotta keep the leech fairly tight. Leech telltales help for trim.

Crew should be sitting to leeward. Forward when light, and moving back as it gets windier.

Skipper should be on the tramp on windward side. I say tramp as the boat pitchpoles slightly less as your weight is dispersed along a soft tramp rather than a hard and direct hull (the engineers here will prob cut this to bits, but 5 yrs of going wild on a Taipan, this was faster and caused less pitchpoling - verification was amount of crew complaints).

That should get you started and help to beat the hobies.

Not sure why it would pitchpole less but it should be faster to the bottom mark. Because your weight is inboard a bit the righting moment is less. This leads to earlier wildthing at a lower angle which should mean better VMG.

Maybe the reduced pitchpoling can be attributed to this lower angle; gusts hit less frequently and with less force the lower and faster you are going...

I haven't raced a Taipen, but typically the goal is to keep the apparent wind just forward of 90 degrees. Put some wind indicators (casette tape, CDs don't work) on the side stays and keep them pointing sideways or slightly aft. Crew should be playing the jib watching the jib's lower wind indicators. You should have a knee tucked under the hiking strap (gives you a more attached to the boat feel when driving hard).

Try to wild thing whenever you can downwind. The Taipan sloop has a good size jib, so it should be as fast as the Hobie 20s downwind. You should be done with your lunch when the Hobie 16s finish.

What do you do different when sailing with a spi?

Depends on the boat and desirable trim, but honestly not much. I didn't seem to watch the wind indicators as much with the kite and honestly couldn't tell you where we carried the apparent wind on the Tiger. The extra power gives you more "feel".

Thanks Scarecrow.
I would add that we initially heat it up until we have the wind app at 45deg to the bow, then we sheet out the kite a bit and go deeper until we feel like we need to rebuild our speed. Same thing without the kite. Funny how things are so different and yet so similar, hence my question.

Crew in trapez instead of leeward hull?

Cheers,

Klaus

true given sufficiant wind.

I sailed my Taipan quite a bit with and w/o the spinnaker. The principles are the same but trim and angles end up different: either way you want the apparent wind approx. 90 degrees (I used old computer data tape--a little wider than cassette tape) and try to fly a hull (wild thing) when possible. In other words, try to keep things "heated up" unless the wind is less than about 6-7 knots.

Whether with or without spin, be aggressive at getting the windward hull out--light air you'll be getting crew weight forward and lee; as the wind picks up, weight must be moved back and windward, as said in an earlier post.

The trim on how you accomplish the above differs whether or not you have jib alone or jib and spin. The Taipan is a bit more prone to nose divining without the spinnaker, so you're crew has to be ready to ease the jib. Also, the barberhaulers are essential to getting good jib shape and a decent slot sailing downwind. On the other hand, with the spin, the jib is just set sort of loose and all attention is on the spin. The main and traveller will be in more with the spin compared to jib alone, but the tell tales will be flowing the same way.

With spinnaker I always try to sail a hull out of the water unless the wind is below 6 knots as Eric says.
You will pick up speed and start to head deeper nautomatically.
-> steer careful when going deeper, otherwise you loose speed + the wind angle changes to fast -> no good flow in the sails.
If possible, even try not to steer and ease the spinnaker and main a little.

Finally play around with your weight.
Crew to leeward and when the wind picks up reposition towards windward and eventually trapping.
Once the crew is on the windward hull, I as skipper sit in the middle of the tramp.
Also weight to front-back is important. As long as we don't pitchpole we move forward. And during the leg we move all the time. Less speed no hull out -> forward, if the hulls comes out -> backward. That's why the crew starts to trap quite fast -> movability.

I've been sailing the Blade now for 2 years and 2 things caused me to evolve the most:

- getting used to the speed downwind -> so you don't overreact with steering
- crew on the wire makes the boat lots and lots more stable -> we haven't pitchpoled eversince!