Mates: Want to see what a nicely set of sails looks like? Go to "ask all salors" and then drop down to "post a picture" and drop down to the 2nd post and look at the post by Alan titled "Blue Bayou etc". Say you were going head to head with Alan in a match race (both boats are identical) with the finish line 100 yards away and your second with your bow just ahead of his mast what might you do as a last resort to possably eack out a tie or a win by squeezing out an ounce more speed? Ramming him is not the answer!! Stealing his wind is not the answer either because its too late for that. In many races I've been in I can normally tell how easy or long and bad a day it is going to be by checking the sail set of those in front of us. If the sails are poorly set I know it is just a matter of time before we will overtake them. On the other hand, if the sails look like Alan's I would think to myself that it s going to be a bad and long day. You don't have to be a racer to have this kind of fun. If your a cruiser, for practice, try overtaking boats in front of you just for the fun of it. It will make you feel good as you fly by them. They will never know what your grinning about!!
I have about 30 seconds to gain the lead. 6 knots is 3-3/8 yards / second, so 100 yards takes 29.62 seconds. To gain 4 yards with 100 yards to go means that I have to average 6.24 knots to his 6 knots to beat him. Match racing in identical boats, if I could pull an extra .24 knots from somewhere, I'd be ahead. Finding some trim change to get from 6.0 to 6.24 in 30 seconds and 100 yards is not going to happen. Even if he was close hauled and just able to fetch one end of the line and I was fetching the other end, it would be tough to fall off and gain enough speed to sail extra distance and beat him with only 100 yards to go. If we are both close hauled, and my bow is forward of his mast and I'm to weather, we are close to dead even. If he's left me enough room to fetch the line, at one boat length to go (about 3.5 seconds to the line) I can head up to cross the line at 90 deg and hope that it's enough to nose over the line before he does. I suspect that Alan would have seen this coming and made sure that he is on the layline for the favoured end of the line. If he's ahead with 100 yards to go, I doubt that he's missed the last tack.