New sailor experimenting with sail trim

[Don Guillette]

Ross: My choice would be the Garhauer Rigid Vang.

The advantage of the Garhauer adjustable fairlead system over the pin type is sailors and humans will do what's easy and not what hard and it's hard to adjust the pin type when they are under load and therefore sailors "set it and forget it". It's hard but not impossable. With the adjustable system you can "dial in" any adjustment you want.

I don't know about the adjustable backstay for your rig but Alan (wonder where he is as I haven't heard from him for a while), Joe from San Diego or Rich H can probably fill in that info.

I switched the outhaul setup on my C30 from internal to external. The internal setup never worked because it was poorly designed and no matter how many times I fixed it it would jamb again. I used 2 small Harken triple blocks, which were expensive little buggers, but did the job. At 6:1 I could pull the cringle out of the clew of the sail if I wanted too.

 

[Alan]

Hey Don, have been very busy lately so haven't had a lot of time to play on the forum but I'll try to make more effort. I too converted my outhaul from the crap factory setup to an internal 6:1 cascade system which works so easily and makes adjustments very effortless. Any sail controls that are difficult to use will invariably not get used and sail trim (sailing performance) will suffer.
A backstay adjuster for Ross's Precision21 would be another great upgrade to aid in de-powering the main. Bending the mast back (tensioning the backstay) flattens out the main as wind speed increases. It will have a lesser affect on the headstay sag. Many skippers will skip this de-power step and go straight to a reef like shifting from 2nd to 4th gear. Flattening the main and playing the traveler and vang can negate the need for a reef then when the lulls come through the sail can easily be powered up again. Once the reef is in the power up becomes too time consuming to do.