Bonjour
With the two long and flat bilge keels, the skeg and the small rudder Mingming has a tendancy to go strait ahead. It's nice when you sail offshore.
With such a long low profile surfaces the efficiency of the rudder will anyway be limited.
I added some camber (beheind the mast) in the (flat) sail by using flexible battens and a double sheeting system. When I sail headwind, the helm if not firm at all but set far to windward (about 40°). It induces heavy turbulences.
To tack, I must take some speed and inertia and then put the helm slowy almost awarship. At the end of the tack, the speed is almost to zero and the boat drifts until the speed increases to allow the keals to grip on the watter.
Some improvements could be made :
- add some stuff (epoxy foam for example) on the inside of the keels to provide some ort of (assymetrical) profile.
- add endplates to the lower part of the keels but they should be sufficiently solid to support the grounding efforts.
- add some stuff(epoxy foam for example) to the skeg and ruder to provide some sort of profile.
-extend the ruffer downward (balanced towards in front of the lower part of the skeg) to the level of the keel and backward to increase the rudder surface.
- add endplates to the lower part of the rudder.
Eric