spoke too soon
My bad. Poor arithmetic on my part. Rich, if you will reference the polar site that I previously indicated, there is a column dedicated to "true wind" and if you subtract these figures from 180 (DDW), you'll find that in lighter conditions, 6 to 8, the boat optimally heads up 39 and 34 degrees. OK, somewhat in the ballpark of your 45, give or take a few. But in anything above 10 (which is, in my book, just when the sailing is getting good and it is worth going out), the optimal heading drops under 20 degrees off DDW, and eventually clear down to 6 off DDW. I realize that this is one example, but the other polars I have seen for displacement boats have been pretty similar, with most of them benifiting bigtime from heading down when the winds pick up. For those without polars, I certainly wouldn't toss out 45 degrees as an overall rule of thumb. More like 15-30 degrees off true. For what its worth. I'll stop being contentious now.