Paul,

My guess is that the mast is a little bigger than needed, both taller, thicker and heavier than the mast of my Ingeborg.

• ·         Its length is 11m versus 9.7 on Ingeborg
• ·         It is 170mm thick versus 150mm on my boat. Higher windage of the naked mast.
• ·         The way the top section is shaped, makes the walls thicker up there and this moves the CG of the mast upwards.
• ·         Its weight is around 60kg versus around 53kg on Ingeborg, even though Ilvy weighs only around 2000kg ,while Ingeborg weighs 2150kg.
• ·         The sail generally rides higher up, creating more heeling moment than on my boat.
  

These factors are not enough to kill the performance of Ilvy, but for racing, their combined impact may well reduce her performance with 1-2% (..what do I know...), and that is noticeable when racing.

I suggest you just accept this as it is, calling that mast a cruising mast.

Enjoy the season!

Arne

Paul,
thanks for letting us hear about your racing experience. You are asking for much if you want to beat Folkboats to windward, in particular if their crews are good. I crewed in a Folkboat for years in our local Wednesday races. They surely are good upwind in the conditions you describe.
Still, by racing, and having other boats of similar size around you, it is easier to learn to wring out a little more boat speed.

These races around the cans mostly favour upwind performance as they generally start at the leeward mark and finish at the weather mark, after one or two rounds. Right?

S-bending of the battens.
This didn’t look so bad  -  what are the dimensions of the battens? My guess is that 22-25% mast balance (or should I rename it sail balance?) is what leads to minimum batten bend in this or that way. On my Ingeborg, the boom and two top battens are Ø50 x 1.5mm and the other battens are Ø35 x 2mm.I never notice any bend in them. Mast balance around 15-17%

Mast.
In these conditions, the weight and windage of the mast start playing a role. What are the dimensions and weight of Ilvy’s mast?

Windex.
You appear to have a Windex.
I find it very useful to use the two vanes (hopefully set up symmetrically) to help me settle on a good close-hauled course after each tacking.

Keep up the good work!

Arne

Eric, Arne,

thanks for your input! I agree, she slows down too much while pinching, dramatically increasing leeway. Summed up, I need to work on my steering. From bm sailing I'm used to steering by the luff telltales, one in luv and one in lee. I'm missing those on my sail right now - I think that's why I tend to leave the groove too oftenly. Luckily, those are not too hard to make.

About thightening the sheets: I pull as long as the sail comes closer to amidships. There is always that one point where, if I pull even harder, the sail is not closing more but is mostly being drawn aft (by mast bending) by the sheets. I avoid that, and just haul in up to the point where this aft-drawing is just not happening. The end of the boom is then just above the gunwales.

We cleaned Ilvy's hull three days before the regatta...

Eric  wrote:

 Keep your boat running.

Eric

That’s the core point, Eric.

However, a single, cambered junksail is not much different from any single sail catrig, so I guess one has to avoid over-sheeting cat-sails as well. On my Ingeborg I generally sheet the sail until the clew is over the gunwale or thereabout. The full sail sets with very little twist.

Now, I have never sailed with a SJR, but since such a sail actually is two sails in front of each other, my armchair guess is that these are sheeted (boom and battens) closer to the centreline than a standard JR.

Arne

Anonymous wrote:

Hi Paul,

No need to say that my twin keeled, heavily built kingfisher 20+ is not a race animal. Nevertheless, I find also that the groove on Shui Jen is quite narrow and I like to squeeze out of her as much as I can.  Junk sloops are cat rigged and I sail her as a laser…now, when I started learning sailing on my laser the instructor (a former laser racer ) explained me that the groove is a fluid concept. The wind has no steady direction but swings constantly like a pendulum. Its oscillation is not symmetrical and every regatta field on the upwind leg has a good and a bad tack: on the good one the wind swings  more frequently to windward. On this tack you can luff up more frequently than on the other tack and sail accordingly higher (closer to the mark). Moreover, the wind oscillates also in his strength and when it strengthens, the vector of the apparent wind moves astern meaning that you can luff up again. Anyway, after an acceleration as your speed increases, the same vector will move in the opposite direction meaning that you have to bare away again…of course to this should be added the motion of the waves (one should luff up while climbing up and bare away while sliding down the wave in order to keep the boat going). I think that this concepts can apply not only to lasers but to every cat rigged boat including a junk rigged sloop. Of course on cat rigged racing dinghies must be trimmed also weight, camber and twist…anyway, the groove to me looks like a lively moving snake :) Following it properly deserves a lot of attention and practice….

cheers

Mauro 

Bonjour Mauro

These notions apply to all type of riging, not only cat boats.

Eric