Yesterday, I was talking to a Phoenix, AZ sailor who was complaining that when he made a sail trim adjustment using the SAIL TRIM CHART nothing happened so he's adjusted the controls even further and his trim turned out messy. I used an analogy to solve his problem. I told him that when I adjusted the carburetor jet on my 1954 Bel Air Convertible (why did I ever sell that car!!) I always had to wait a bit for the carb to catch up. When there was silence on the other end of the phone I assumed he was wondering what's a carburetor and why would it have jets so I changed tack - so to speak.
I used a shower analogy - when you change from cold to hot water does the temp change immediately? It doesn't and that is what happens when you make a sail trim adjustment. You have to wait a few seconds for the sails to catch up. By not waiting for the sails to catch up and by making another adjustment, the Phoenix sailor made the situation worse by going past the correct adjustment.
How many times have you seen this happen? When the boat is tacked the jib trimmer madly pulls in the jib sheet and starts cranking the winch. He should stop and smell the roses while performing his job. When the boat is in the process of tacking, the trimmer should take up as much slack as he can. He then waits for the boat to come head to wind and for the jib to backwind, which pushes the bow over, and for the other trimmer to cut the sheet. At that point he starts to apply pressure but go slowly (I don't mean to take the amount of time it takes to eat a Hoagie) and allow the sail to power up. Once the sheet is released from the side that was powered and a couple of wraps taken on the winch, that trimmer generally assumes his job is done - it isn't. He should turn his attention to becoming the tailor and help power up the sail.
One more point - the new trimmer has an important job to do before he starts cranking himself to death. Just before the boat comes head to wind it's his job to check the "break of the sail". Why does he care how the sail breaks? The reason he should care is the break tells him the new setting of the fairlead car. This is extremly iimportant with pin type fairlead, which are no fun to adjust under load. It's not so important with an adjustable fairlead system but since he just sitting there doing nothing he should make the adjustment anyway.
When done correctly, the tacking process should take less than 30 seconds and you should only lose less than 1 knot of speed. When the jib is madly cranked in and not allowed to power up it just hangs there like a limp rag. That causes more speed to be lost.
I used a shower analogy - when you change from cold to hot water does the temp change immediately? It doesn't and that is what happens when you make a sail trim adjustment. You have to wait a few seconds for the sails to catch up. By not waiting for the sails to catch up and by making another adjustment, the Phoenix sailor made the situation worse by going past the correct adjustment.
How many times have you seen this happen? When the boat is tacked the jib trimmer madly pulls in the jib sheet and starts cranking the winch. He should stop and smell the roses while performing his job. When the boat is in the process of tacking, the trimmer should take up as much slack as he can. He then waits for the boat to come head to wind and for the jib to backwind, which pushes the bow over, and for the other trimmer to cut the sheet. At that point he starts to apply pressure but go slowly (I don't mean to take the amount of time it takes to eat a Hoagie) and allow the sail to power up. Once the sheet is released from the side that was powered and a couple of wraps taken on the winch, that trimmer generally assumes his job is done - it isn't. He should turn his attention to becoming the tailor and help power up the sail.
One more point - the new trimmer has an important job to do before he starts cranking himself to death. Just before the boat comes head to wind it's his job to check the "break of the sail". Why does he care how the sail breaks? The reason he should care is the break tells him the new setting of the fairlead car. This is extremly iimportant with pin type fairlead, which are no fun to adjust under load. It's not so important with an adjustable fairlead system but since he just sitting there doing nothing he should make the adjustment anyway.
When done correctly, the tacking process should take less than 30 seconds and you should only lose less than 1 knot of speed. When the jib is madly cranked in and not allowed to power up it just hangs there like a limp rag. That causes more speed to be lost.