You can see how the sail kinda folds up in the light stuff. Makes a brutal hook in the leech. Gotta make the top two battens full.
Also, if the hanger lines were moved aft several feet they would take more of the boom weight.
Not sure whether you’re looking for feedback or just making a comment, Ron.
Light air’s hard, especially if there’s enough water motion to bounce the air out of the sails. Where I sail, it’s never really flat – there’s rarely less than a 2 ft. swell. It tends to make 4 kts of wind pretty heartbreaking. Ironically, my friend’s N36 feels like it does better in 4 kts of wind than my N26 because it’s less sensitive to the ocean motion.
I don’t know what your conditions are like where you are, and I can’t tell from the picture what direction you had the wind coming from.
It looks like your topping lift could be eased a bit because the aftmost lazy jack line seems to be catching the foot of the sail. The lines radiating out from the clew make me think the choker was tight, although the folds paralleling the leach near the vertical center of the sail make me think the sail was not aligned with what little wind there must have been.
From what I can make out in the picture, it looks like a nice, well-kept sail.
– Bob
Not sure why the first picture was stylized.
Yes, definitely looking for tips. The topping lift was just slack with the idea of taking some weight of the boom. Choker was also very slack. Mainsheet was in the 1-1 mode.
Winds yesterday were extremely light, even for around here. I don’t think we saw more than 3 or 4 knots and most of the time it was more like 1 gusting to 2.
That said, we were 3rd over the finish line out of 9 boats and it was a lovely way to spend 3 hours!
I got nothin’ to offer on that front. There’s only so much you can do to fill a sail in the absence of air. Wiser minds may have more to offer.
Boat looks great, scenery looks great, people look happy.
– Bob
Ron, sounds like you did pretty well. Going up wind in 1-2 knots, I suggest you harden the choker until you have decent sail shape. It will be very flat. Try just enough topping lift to try to give a bit of curve to the leech. If you have too much fullness in really light air the wind flow will break away from the sail. Downwind you can use a bit more fullness. Again use the topping lift to take the weight of the boom but not so much that the sail starts to fold. When the apparent wind reaches 4 knots you can try for more fullness. Two full length top battens in those conditions will help. Also remember that every sail is cut differently and all of our boats are loaded differently so the above will give you a starting trim to then modify until you find what works best for you.
Cool, thanks for the tips. I’ll try a flatter sail next race and see. After that our sailing club lite up our boats for a parade on the 20th and most tend to leave the boat decorated until new years. I’ll take the opportunity to get the batten modification done.