I have been doing some recreational racing with my C310 and the results have not been very good. I would like to attribute this to the 15 year old 'bagged out' sails, but actually they are in pretty good shape. What I am finding is that I lose too much speed when tacking. Winds have been low this year and most of the races have had course changes during the race, to shorten it. Most other boats seem to tack quicker than I do, probably because they have been racing with the same crew or with more experienced crew and skipper. There are only 2 of us on board, when tacking my mate moves the traveler to put the main more or less in the middle, then I release the sheet as I turn the wheel, by then he starts hauling in the other sheet. When the boat is on course and the headsail is set, he dials in the main. By then I seem to have almost stopped. I'm wondering if I am tacking too quickly or too 'sharply', would this stop my forward motion? Or should I turn the boat as quickly as possible to get the headsail across quicker? With the low winds it takes a while for the headsail to come across, sometimes it gets hung up on one of the stays, but eventually makes it. All this probably seems worse than it is, because I am the only cruising boat on the course. There is everything from J24s, J88s, J105s, Bene 36.7s C&C 33/36s and one C22 that does very well. A couple of weeks ago the winds were about 10knots and with corrected times I beat the two 36.7s and lost by 4 seconds to a Redwing 30. All this was because of a wind change, I was behind everyone, they were looking for wind near shore, the wind changed and I went straight for the mark, 4th around the mark out of 16 boats....but then they all caught me.......
Cheers
Cheers