I wasn't looking to get caught up in yet another fight about sailing theory. I really appreciate everyone's involvement, though and if you all are willing to indulge me, I'll happily try to clarify what I was talking about. Really, I don't think we are in disagreement about anything regarding theory. Mostly, I was talking pointing angle in apparent wind verses true wind. My thoughts had nothing to do with optimising speed.
The OP was asking about his ability to point into the wind verses his opponents. He was in a race but his question was about angle not speed, as he asked it
my H26 was not able to point as well as other boats.
Someone else suggested that a fouled bottom would slow him down and that would make it more difficult to point higher. I don't happen to believe that is true. Of course it would slow the boat down, but it wouldn't make it harder to point higher. In fact, a boat's speed thru the water, air really, is going to have a vector effect on the angles of true versus apparent wind. If true wind, for example, were directly on the beam (90 deg to heading) and the boat moved forward, as one would while sailing, then there appears a second vector component to the wind angle across the deck (apparent wind). This second component is solely speed reliant and becomes an additive vector of head wind to the true wind such that the apparent wind moves forward of the beam. To anyone standing on deck, in the wind, they would feel the wind starting to come from the forward quarter, no longer directly on the beam (true wind is still 90 deg from heading) . The faster the boat goes, the more forward the apparent wind becomes. If, for example, the true wind was twenty knots on the beam and the boat was making 15 knots on her heading of 90 deg to the true wind, that equals 25 knots apparent wind coming from about 30 deg angle forward of true wind. This example is just a 3-4-5 right triangle of vectors. The faster boat would experience a greater angle, the slower boat, a lesser angle. I know 15 knots is not a reasonable boat speed for a 25 foot displacement hull, but it illustrates my point.
Here's where my argument really began: someone said, "
You can't point as high as the same boat if you are slower." I could be wrong in this, but that just doesn't work that way with the vector addition. A boat has a limit to how high it can point. There is a maximum angle to windward before the sails will just not hold their shape and lift is lost. This angle is an apparent wind angle. The angle of the wind across the deck. Between two boats, otherwise the same, the faster boat will reach that maximum angle sooner because of the greater apparent wind change, than a slower boat.
If you want to go faster, clean the bottom, lighten the boat, trim good sails effectively, improve ballast to stand up straighter. If you aren't pointing high enough, trim good sails effectively, balance the helm, improve your heel angle with better weight distribution. I'm sure there are other things like leading edge turbulence, but going faster isn't going to enable you to point higher.
I'm sorry if my communication skills are failing here. I know Jackdaw and DrJudy know what they are talking about, certainly a lot more than I do. It just feels like nobody seems to know what I'm talking about
.
Oh well. It's still great fun to be involved.
- Will (Dragonfly)