2 Cruising Boats

[Don Guillette]

Just got back from a 2 week trip in my land yacht.Whenever you have 2 cruising sail boats going in the same direction you generally, but not always, have a race. Some folks aren’t into it but I’m not one of them. Every YC and marina has at least one guy who thinks his cruising boat is the fastest and Long Beach, Ca is no exception. There was on guy there who was always telling me how fast his C30 is.There are some sail trim lessons to be learned from the following story.On this one lazy, hazy day my wife and I were just cruising around. She was soaking up sun, reading a book and sipping a wine. I was enjoying a “tinney” – Aussie for beer!!Out of the corner of my eye I saw the above guy but what first caught my attention was the 2 cute lassies in skimpy bathing suits. After taking that in, I prepared for the job at hand and what was about to take place. Way up ahead he cut across my bow and headed downwind to come up behind me.During this time I made sure my mainsail and jib were perfectly set for the existing wind conditions and then sat back and waited.Shortly, my wife told me a Catalina was coming up our wake. She commented that he has the whole harbor and asked what he was doing. I told her what he was doing and said to watch what happens.I was on starboard tack and needed him to pass me on the port side so I pinched up and he went for it just as I thought he would. LESSON: I needed to give him a dose of bad air as he tried to pass me.At this point, remember my sails are set for the conditions. I really needed an inside jib track but I get around that with a barberhauler. Anyway, back to the story. I told my wife to tell me when he was about 75 to 100 yard behind me and then I dropped the traveler a bit and eased off the barberhauler. Why did I perform those 2 moves?LESSON: I’m changing the ANGLE OF ATTACK but doing NOTHING to the set and shape of the jib and mainsail. Effectively I’m just letting off on the gas (power).All my sail trim controls are led aft to the helm, which makes adjustment very easy. When he got at about 75 yards behind I merely fell off a bit, pulled up the traveler and tightened up the barberhauler thus powering up the boat to full speed. He got within 50 yards of me, according to my wife, as I never looked back. That was the best he could do and actually I was pulling ahead of him when he finally broke off. Saw him later at the YC bar and he never mentioned the encounter.Sooo, if you run into one of these guys you can try my system to deal with them and see what happens.

 

[Alan]

In light air...

... the exhaust of your sails can extend 10 mast heights behind the sails. It could have been a C36 and he still wouldn't have passed you to leeward. The trick is to climb up and sit on the weather hip of the guy in front and just hitch a ride.I did this once on a distance race with my 35. I jumped on the weather stern wave of a C&C 40 and sat there for what seemed like 15 miles. He couldn't nor did he need to shake me and we were moving at the same speed as the C&C, much faster than if he were not there yet we were not affecting his boat speed at all. ;D

 

[RichH]

A better trick for light air

Simply slowly power pinch up to weather until your mast head windex is pointing (180 degrees from) at his relative position, then aggressively pull IN on the mainsheet so that the battens start to hook to weather. The 'turbulence' that comes off your sails will become an impenetrable wall for your 'opponent' to sail through. When you do this you will know that the turbulence is 'dead on' by watching his mast head windex start to go 'funky'. .... and he will think that he fell into a 'hole in the wind'. Takes some practice to position correctly and keep your apparent wind at 'full' .... but is 'deadly' in light air. Yup, as Alan states the windshadow in light air goes back about 10X the height of the mast. Once the 'opponent' begins to fall into the vacuum, then bear-off a bit and accelerate away. The same method will work when reaching, slightly overtrim the mainsail and 'shoot some turbulence' at your 'opponent'. ;-)

 

[Don Guillette]

Questions

Yesterday I received a phone call from a sail trim forum listers inquiring why I used the traveler to kill the boat speed instead of the mainsheet. That was a good question and I asked him why he didn’t submit it to the sail trim forum because others may have had the same question. He told me he was embarrassed to do so.I really didn’t like to hear that because I remember what it was like for me when I was trying to figure out sail trim for my main and jib. I had lots of questions but was reluctant to ask dock neighbors and YC members. On the rare occasions that I did ask, the answers I got back didn’t make much sense but I tried them anyway. Many times I would ask about twist or draft depth and the answers were a combination of both. Most could not tell me which controls to use to trim the main and jib in the situation I was inquiring about or when to use them. It was a very difficult learning experience for the relatively simple matter of sail trim.I never have forgotten that difficult sail trim learning experience and I hate to see beginner sailors go through it. The main problem was that the people I was talking to could not explain sail trim in plain English and in a logical manner. Turned out most did not know much more about it than I did but I though I was the only sailing idiot in America.Anyway, here is why I use the traveler instead of the mainsheet. For the 1 millionth time (sorry about repeating this but there is no other way of explaining sail trim) there are 4 elements we are adjusting and they are draft depth, draft position, twist and angle of attack. When you adjust the mainsheet you are dealing with 3 of the elements – draft position, twist and angle of attack so when you ease or trim the mainsheet you might be getting an unintended consequence that you are going to have to deal with later. When you adjust the traveler you are only dealing with one element – angle of attack.The reason I use the traveler first to kill the speed is because I want to see if I can get through the situation without messing with the set of the mainsail. Moving the traveler is like easing off on the accelerator. Once the situation passes I can move the traveler back to its original position (applying the accelerator and powering up the boat0 and the set of the sail remains the same. Here is how that happens. Picture your screen door with a pin in the corner that rides in a track on the floor. That is the traveler. Does the shape of the screen door change when you open and close it? Of course it doesn’t. In the situation I was describing, all I wanted to do was kill the speed enough to sucker him in and then I wanted to go immediately back to the original situation. Using the traveler fulfilled that purpose.Last note – always be nice to sail trim forum listers so they do not feel embarrassed. Remember you were in their shoes once – unless your were born with sail trim knowledge. Beginners are the main focus of this forum. I do not want them to go through what I went through to learn how to sail a silly sail boat and there is no such thing as a silly question.