Wisdom On The Wind

Hey All,

I've taken some advice from Wouter and have begun journaling my regatta races as a means to speed improvement.One glaring consistency, is my inability to sail the boat to it's rating to mark #1 in moderate wind and above.I think my starts are O.K.,my tacks are atleast as good as yours, but I rarely round mark #1 within reasonable proximity of Doc Poulsen though our rigs are set identically (prebend .loo's tension etc.).I weigh a little less than 65kgs. (146lbs.) and thought i'd start sailing with a whole lot more downhall and a lot less rotation.Then I noticed in the attached pic. of the " F16 wins High Sierra" post of Doc (85kg.?), that his rotator arm is pointing at his rudder ( can't imagine any more rotation than this is practical!), additionally , it appears that he's centered his traveller car ( hey ,isn't that a no-no in Taipans?), also, how can he sail higher than me with all that luff curve ?

So, between you and I, (Doc needn't be a part of this...): How would you proceed ? What am I missing ? What would you do to get youself rounding at the top of the fleet ?

Best To You,

Paul

Paul,

Is there any way to get some pics of the 2 boats that you can tell the angle of attack of your hulls.

The most common problem I witness with people who complain that they can not go to weather, especially as the wind picks up is that they are pinching. With a little more wind you may feel powered up, but if you are not driving off using your leverage and generating that extra power and hence lift you may be loosing a lot of gound.

Just an observation worth looking at.

Matt

My experience is that you'll need to drive off the boat and go for speed rather then pointing. I know because I seem to make this very same mistake time and time again myself.

Wouter

Paul

The first thing to remember is that you are 20kgs lighter than Doc, so in trapezing conditions and above you are probably going to be slower than him upwind, however you should be much quicker downwind and in 'up to trapezing conditions.

That said you should also be able to set your rig to minimise this.

My first thoughts are that you are probably not pulling hard enough on your mainsheet. It is a problem encountered by most sailors, particularly those who come from dinghies to cats, remember you have no vang on these boats so the leach tension comes from the mainsheet.

Maximum mainsheet tension will be in marginal trapezing conditions when you have little downhaul on, you should be pulling the rope at least as hard as you phisically can with one arm and probably using two for the last bit.

The rig is then set to allow you to do this without pinching or being blown over.

You need to have the maximum power you can hold the boat down with without it being 'twitchy', by twitchy I mean that it sails smoothly without having to move more than a foot of rope in the gusts.

Depending on the wind strength you will start off fully powered up and go through the following sequence to depower untill the boat settles down, all through the depowering sequence the mainsheet tension should remain the same.

Initial setting for marginal trapezing.

No downhaul
Rotator pointing at shroud
Traveller in tight or maybe down 1-2 inches
Mainsheet very, very tight

first pull the downhaul on
when you run out of adustment on this (two hands as hard as you can pull is the end), move to the next adjutment which is

gradually pull the rotator in untill it is pointing at the leeward end of the rear beam, then move to the next adjustment which is

gradually let out the traveller, there is no limit to how far you let this go

remember you must keep the mainsheet tension on althogh in very windy conditions this will be slightly less as the downhal has already bent the mast for you.

In lighter winds the mainsheet tension is reduced to allow the leeeward top telltail to flow.

hope this helps

Paul,
Are you using a cat rig or sloop rig mainsail.
I agree with the above posts.
In addition to this I have done some two boat testing with sloop cut mainsails sailing in cat rigged config on my Taipan and the following is what I have found. I don't know if it applies to your situation but it may give you some things to try.
If your using a sloop rigged sail then I would look at 4 things. Downhaul, rotation ,outhaul and last where you stand when trapezing.
I have a tell tail one or two inches behind the mast half way up. I pull my rotation in far enough to get the tell tails on both sides streaming. Pull the downhaul down enough to make the middle tell tail on the leach stream in light air and enough to make the boat drive and not lift when the breese increases. (In general if you flatten your mainsail out too much you won't point.)
If this is all right have a look at your outhaul. I'd ease it 1 inch first up and see how you go. I have found that if you ease the traveller to make the boat drive rather than lift and don't ease the foot of the sail you lose your ability to point. It works great when you get the two just right. If you ease the foot too much you start to feel weather helm and go slow. The last thing to consider is where you are standing when trapping.
If you trap behind the centrecase the bows lift too much and the boat will run off too much. If you trap too far forward the boat will point but if you are so far forward that you feel weather helm you are too far forward and VMG will be slow.
These are just things to try. When you find the answer please fill us in.

I hope this helps.
Regards,
Phill

John gives good advice but in the way of mast rotation the superwing masts behave differently.

As you know.

Don't point the rotator arm at the shrouds on a Taipan that is far to much rotation. Also on the superwing rig , as you know, decreasing mast rotation is a good way to depower the rig. At least I think so. I can often trade-in some downhaul for some rotation and I feel that helps me point higher again. But like I said I suffer from being a pincher myself.

I also reduce the rotation quickly with increasing winds and when singlehanding I often have it pointing at the rearbeam or rudders as soon as I'm getting overpowered.

I'm doing avarage now while singlehanding by placing midfleet in this setup. Considering the amount of work you do on a 1-up F16 and the fact that I far more often race doublehanded, I'd say that those are good results for me. Not to mention I that I race 1-up of a 6 % faster handicap. But I'm very much still working out the optimal trim myself. My comments should be regarded accordingly.

Wouter

Hi all,

great info in these posts.

Paul, interestingly your weight difference is similar to the difference to the guys I raced in Mossies one up. I would consider it a large difference certainly enough to be looking to a less powerful rig than a sailor 20kg heavier. I was the heavier sailor and always ran more rotation, less downhaul and traveller centred, than Tim and Neil.

Early on I was always faster the stronger the wind blew, but before I stopped sailing Mossies they where much closer and sometimes passed me upwind in strong winds, until it became extremely windy.

How did they improve performance? Probably best to ask them. But I think it came mostly from raking the mast back and learning the feel of driving to windward one up. Lower with speed not high and staggering. Which one up boat likes to do.

See thread on front page when I made this post, called Solo Sailing F16 etc. You should note Eric's reply

Regards Gary.

Gentlemen,

Thank you for taking time to respond - excellent information!
Now, off to practice !

Paul

Hey Paul, We need to hire John P, Gary, Phill, Wout et al to come coach us!!!

Paul,

I would agree with all that was been said above, but also add, you might also need to move a little more aft to get things to balance, and when it gets wild you may also gain by lifting the Dagger boards a little as this will also stabalise things and also redice the pitching of the boat.

Paul,

One thing I forgot to metion, but assumed you looked at by your original post. Weight placement is critical also. The Taipan really slows down if you do not keep the transoms clear. In certain conditions you may have to almost exagerate your position on the boat to keep them from sinking. If you hear or see water gurgling up in back you are to far aft. This will be different position for you relative to someone weighing more.

Just something else to note.

Matt