Dinghy sailing in bigger winds

External Since: Oct 29, 2003 Posts: 2

Stephen Page <steve.TakeThisOut@the-page-family.net> writes:

>Hey chaps/chapesses

>My two sons sail/race Cadets and, being light (50kgs+23kgs) struggle
>badly in the bigger winds (f4+). I don't have the expertise to guide
>them but I believe it is as much a matter of technique as weight.

Rig tuning is essential; you can get that out of a cookbook. But there
are two key skills for heavy air:

1. Sailing the boat on the traveller and sheets, not the tiller.
Play the traveler (and then the sheets) to keep the boat flat and the
helm just to weather of neutral. The tiller is just a mechanism for
transmitting informtion on how to play the traveller and sheet, not
for steering the boat.

Playing a traveller in heavy air is hard, hard upper-body work. The
mainsheet trimmer will need to build upper-body strength and stamina.

2. Reading the wind. To play the traveller and sheets effectively,
the trimmers must anticipate every puff and hole. The crew has to
watch the wind on the water and count the puffs and holes down to the
boat. Then the maintrimmer can ease or tighten in anticipation of the
change, not in reaction to it.

Caveat: I don't know anything about Cadets; I sail one-design
keelboats (such as Etchells and Sonars). But the principle is the
same. I've seen light crews do very well in national and
international regattas; the key is to keep the foils -- sails,
keel/centerboard and rudder -- from stalling.

--
dhs spencer.TakeThisOut@panix.com

External Since: Sep 01, 2003 Posts: 47

Matt Colie wrote:
> Andy,
>
> The big difference, is the dynamic characteristics of the two boats. It
> is much more than the sail area to weight ratio.

True but...
>
> There is also a big difference in the fact that a Lazer is a "wet ass"
> boat (sailboard) and can not flood.

I picked a Laser because everyone will know it. You could pick almost
any single hander.

I sail a National Solo, which AFAIK is only sailed in the UK, Holland
and Australia. I'm about 80Kg, and there is a lady who almost
invariably beats me who is nowhere near *that* much. It floods on
capsize, and the sail is bigger than a Laser. The same is true of the
better known Finn, or the OK, and I'm sure many others. But that
doesn't matter, *unless you are overpressed and capsize*.
>
> My Lazer has very different performance characteristics than any pram.
> It will accelerate and plane, thus both decreasing the hull drag and
> increasing the hydrodynamic load capability of the foils (board and
> rudder). This allows me to pull the relative wind forward with my own
> forward velocity and thereby change the effective trim without moving
> anything. No pram that I know of can do this.

IMHO they'll be having most trouble on beats, when the apparent wind is
highest (though not by much at Cadet speeds) and the force from the
sails is mainly across the boat. That's when you run out of weight. If
your Lazer (sic) planes upwind, then you aren't talking about the same
boat I was.

>
> There is also the experience factor here. If both onboard a Cadet are
> as old as the class allows, I quite certainly have more sailing
> experience than any two cadets sailing. This does matter. IMHO

We agree there. As I said,

"There are three things that really matter.

Practice, more practice, and even more practice."

Andy