An easy addition to improve downwind performance

[Richard Gottlieb]

I own a 2000 Hunter 270 with a roller furling 100% jib. I don't own a reacher or spinnaker. I recently went daysailing with a fiend of mine who runs the sailing school at my yacht club. During the course of our sail, while going downwind, we experimented with drawing the active jib sheet around the shrouds and outboard of the boat. This had a dramatic (I thought so) improvement in performance. As the clew of the jib held further outboard, the "slot" between the main and the jib is opened. Furthermore, the jib is not being constantly blaketed by the mainsail which previously caused the jib to repeatedly open and then collapse.This got me to thinking. And I then went to West Marine and picked up 60' of 3/8" sta-set line, a pair of 57mm carbo block and a pair of snap shackles, along with a set of "winchers" (rubber caps that fit onto the lewmar 6 winches to make them self-tailing and self-cleating). I doubled the line over and attached the same to the clew of the jib *below* the attachment point for the existing jib sheets. I then ran each line outboard of the shrouds to the blocks that are attached to the stainless steel loop on the aft railing and then over to the winch.The effect of all this is to create a second outboard set of jib sheets for downwind sailing. When sailing downwind, the inboard jib sheets can be left alone to be "lazy" set of sheets or used a a barber hauler to fine tune the set of the jib. Upwind, the outboard jib sheets become the "lazy" set of sheets. I can now run downwind wing and wing with much greater stability.Food for thought.

 

[Michael Stephens]

Winchers?

Sounds like an interesting setup. I have been looking at the rubber winch covers myself. Can you give us a review of these as far as functionality? Which size did you get for the Lewmar 6? How was the installation?

 

[Richard Gottlieb]

Winchers!

>Sounds like an interesting setup. I have been looking at the rubber winch covers myself. Can you give us a review of these as far as functionality? Which size did you get for the Lewmar 6? How was the installation? I've used winchers before on a past boat and they work well (particularly for halyards) to make them self-tailing. They come in 3 sizes, the smallest is useful for Lewmar 6 winches and the installation took all of 15 seconds.

 

[nelson Brinckehroff]

short sheeting reaching/downwind

Great minds think alike. I just posted this before reading your similar article, which possibly improves on my/our discovery. After 2 years on my 96 water ballast H26, I found a great but cheap way to speed up this small jibbed boat: running a short sheet from the jib clew back to the stern pulpit stanchions. I'm getting up to half knot faster speed on reaches because the aft-pull rather than the mast-a-beam jib sheet block allows for better wind adhesion/lift on the jib, making it far more efficient. Someone also suggested putting more wind indicators on the jib further aft to show the effect. My present experiment used a dog-leash like shackle and twine. I'm going to try better sheets. I presently call it my "secret weapon"!Try it. I'm doing much better racing after trying it. It basically overcomes one of the limitations of this boat.

 

[Kevin Larson]

Good Tip!

Guys,I'm ashamed to say that for the first four years that we raced "Legacy" we didn't figure this one out. Man!!You guys are right- the Hunter 26 jib blocks are too far inward and forward to do a good job of controling a jib on a whisker pole.We traveled to northern Minnesota recently to participate in the annual Leech Lake Regatta and there was another Hunter 26 there that just smoked us going down-wind. Aside from having about 2 feet less mast rake than us, he was using the jib sheet outside the shrouds trick. We tried it on the last day of racing and the added speed was very noticable. On White Bear Lake, it's our trick now...By-the-way, he couldn't point anywhere's as well as us. I think it was due to the lack of mast-rake on his boat.Thanks Richard for the great solution but remember... on White Bear Lake it's our trick now...Good sailing everyone.