how flat do you sail your hunter ?

[Gunni]

The winged keel was an attempt to augment the aspect ratio of the foil and make it continue to function on heel. We played with them in small boats years ago mostly to improve the function of the rudder foil. They do improve foil performance but not enough to overcome the huge amount of boat hull you are pushing through the water on heel. Your hunter ain’t an old IOR design or AC boat. Sail it flat.

 

[JamesG161]

Respectfully you're totally wrong.

Well I respectfully tell you the you are not understanding the keel point to the thread.
At no time did it ever see the Sail [foil] enter this thread.
____
This makes me wonder if anyone ever reads the preceding comments.
Respectfully done with this thread...
Jim...

 

[jon hansen]

i vote: flat as you can for max performance. at any given wind speed the vessel that is standing taller will go faster. lots of huge friends on the rail to keep the vessel tall. as to your assumptions about dipping one wing by heeling over. i say no.

just my $0.02, based on 59 yrs of sailing and over 1,000,000.00 miles at sea as well as being a student of this fun hobby

pass the cupcakes please

 

[Jackdaw]

The winged keel was an attempt to augment the aspect ratio of the foil and make it continue to function on heel.

It might serve to add a tiny bit if lift, but never enough to overcome the loss of the main foil structure going off vertical. Still a net loss as soon as you add heel.

If wings were indeed effective boat builders would be using them on high performance boats. But they are not. They only now exist on shoal keel boats as a way to get weight low without adding draft, and as a marketing gambit.

 

[Jackdaw]

Well I respectfully tell you the you are not understanding the keel point to the thread.
At no time did it ever see the Sail [foil] enter this thread.
____
This makes me wonder if anyone ever reads the preceding comments.
Respectfully done with this thread...
Jim...

That's ironic. Please read what he wrote.

22 degrees is theoretically the most efficient point of sail for such a keel

For such a keel. He is not talking about a boat. All keels are best when vertical. I explained the difference between this and optimal heel angle for the boat in my post #16

https://forums.sailboatowners.com/i...-do-you-sail-your-hunter.192993/#post-1478504

 

[Bill Roosa]

I'm with jackdraw. heeling the boat involves keel, rudder and sails. You can't "just heel the keel" so you need to take the other two into consideration also. The keel, rudder and sails all operate best when 90 degrees to the water surface (0 degrees heel.) That can't happen in a sail powered boat though so you have to balance the loss of sail power and forward thrust, the loss of rudder control and lateral resistance and the loss of keel lateral resistance. As you heel the boat the center of lateral resistance moves forward due to the rudder also being heeled and loosing depth (no fins on the rudder, right?) The center action for the sails does not move aft to balance and you loose forward thrust so you get into a weather helm situation with less driving force (aka the boat slows down). The fastest you can sail is also the flattest you can sail. course that begs the point, what is the flattest you can sail? On my hunter 40.5 it is around 10 degrees and I have a wing keel
On a related note; the angle of "greatest depth" of the wing keel is kinda dumb as that only accounts for the tip of the wing and not the majority of the keel doing work against side slip. kinda like assuming that if you had a string trailing from the keel it would make the keel longer. the wing is not that big an addition to the lateral resistance. Also 45 degrees is NOT that angle for greatest depth as I can attest to getting off numerous bars by heeling Bardi Sea only 5 degrees.

 

[Bill Roosa]

oops, typo. that last line should say "...only 15 degrees."

 

[Jeff Gray]

Am I right in thinking "flattest = fastest" really means we want to get as flat as possible, while still trimming our sails optimally to the wind? Maybe that's obvious, but I'm wondering whether there might be a scenario where I might get more speed by trimming to less than optimal sail performance with a flatter boat.

 

[Jackdaw]

Am I right in thinking "flattest = fastest" really means we want to get as flat as possible, while still trimming our sails efficiently to the wind?

Correct.

Often this will mean twisting off the sails a bit on a heeled boat to flatten it 5 degrees, even when it ‘felt’ fast beforehand.

 

[Jeff Gray]

Makes sense, thanks... Will make my wife happy too!!!

 

[Meriachee]

Try it. Get the boat wound up, irrespective of heel, note the speed, and then, as Jackdaw says, twist it off a bit to stand it up, and see what it does. Only you can predict how much is enough, or too much, but the numbers don’t lie. It’ll go faster but only to a point, then it’ll start to fall off.

 

[Jeff Gray]

Thanks Meriachee. Can't wait to try that. I've been sailing for a long time, but only really started taking the sail trim/optimal performance questions seriously when we bought this boat. Lots to learn! Lots of subtleties!

 

[Jeff Gray]

Sorry to ask another dumb question but I'm curious if this is a legit thought: I have no traveller on this boat, so I can't pull the traveller up and ease the sheet out to create twist without changing boom angle. I also have no boom kicker, so I can't do it that way. I do have a topping lift though. I'm thinking I can ease the sheet a bit and tension the topping lift to create a controlled amount of twist without changing the angle of the sail (with vang off, of course.) Does that make sense? I know the topping lift is not normally used for sail trim, but it seems to me this should work...

 

[Valerio]

sailing a race rig like a j24 is like an art to sail as flat as you can, but there are many things you can do to flatter the sails, not the same with my h41, so yes i think around 20 degrees she sail best.

 

[Meriachee]

Topping lift will add twist to the whole sail. Not really what you’re looking for.
Trim it with what you’ve got - there’s a totally disproportionate list of stuff you can do, and after you’ve emptied the bank account there’ll be something else.

 

[Jeff Gray]

Ok... cool. I’ll experiment. It just seems that without a traveler or boom kicker my options for adding twist at a particular angle are limited, unless I’m started with a hard vang flattening the sail. I also have no cars for my jib sheets on this boat so my headsail twist pretty much is what it is for a given trim.

 

[Meriachee]

Vang brings nothing to the party upwind. Think in terms of outhaul and boom position upwind. Do what you need to get the boom as close to the centreline, use the outhaul to add or remove draft to the sail.

As a word of advise, work with one sail at a time. Set the job and forget about it. If you’re trimming the main, then trimming the jib, you’ll never have a clear picture of what the changes to the main did.

 

[Jeff Gray]

Thanks for the advice. I haven’t played with out haul much. Will give that a go next time out. I am kinda aware of the “one sail at time” thing. On our old boat (Catalina 22, great boat, IMO ), with basically nothing other than “ease ‘til it luffs and then tighten up a bit” for guidance, I’ve watched from the helm as my two teenage kids duked it out trimming the main and jib, with the old man steering like a drunken sailor not helping any. (for the record... I was never actually a drunken sailor. I just steered like one!)

 

[BobbyFunn]

Disappointing thread.

Can someone make a real sailing manual that is fact rather than rule of thumb. Then, we burn all these garbage text books ad shame threads that say heel at n degrees, or hull geometry causes rounding up, or sail area geometry determines sail balance, or vang is useless upwind, yadda,yadda,yadda.

Is there a link on this site for settled science of sailing?

 

[Meriachee]

fact rather than rule of thumb.

The fact is that sails are sails, all of them work basically the same, and my boat has more toys than yours, thus, I have more stuff to play with. If the conversation isn't suitable for your tastes, why not chime in with your particular knowledge on the topic? I'm sure you have pictures of how a "yadda, yadda, yadda" attaches and the inherent benefits therein.