Don- Just finished your book and found it very useful. However, there are two areas where you could include more info. First is fractional rigs- maybe a seperate section that addresses the differences with these rigs. My Hunter 420 is a fractional rig. Second is in mast furling mains. Many new boats come with this and they don't have battens. A little section saying what you do diffent with this kind of sail would help be a lot. By the way, my main came without telltales that I soon added. Pete
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Pete: Thank you for the comments on my book. There really isn't any sail trim difference between a fractional rig and a mast head rig. In other words, you trim the sails of both rigs exactly the same way. The only difference, and it really isn't a sail trim difference, is on a fractional rig, the engine is the mainsail and on a masthead rig the engine is the jib, so you want to pay particular attention to the "engine sail" but not to the determent of the other sail. They both compliment each other sort of like a 2 barrell carb on a car. You can't just adjust one barrell and expect the motor to perform to 100%. On in mast and boom furling: same thing there. You trim them exactly the same way as you would a conventional setup. With in mast and boon furling rigs what you have to do is be a bit more diligent with your trim due to the batten situation. Until recently, I had never sailed on a boat with in mast furling and prior to going aboard (it happened to be a Hunter41) my thought was that this was going to be something else to adjust. Turned out I was pleasently surprised at how easy it was to get a good adjustment and that was in light winds -I could get a monkey to sail in medium wind if I fed him enough bananas - the real sail trim trick is light wind. I imagine that a boom furler would be pretty easy to trim also. Telltales are very important on any sail. I don't know how mates trim without them. It is hard for me to do it without them and I know what I'm looking for. They are very important on in mast and boom furlers because you need all the sail trim info you can get. Telltales, when understood and read correctly, can tip you off to an impending problem before it becomes a problem.
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