Trimming your sails Part 3 the mainsail

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fafalle66 smith - 6 years ago

Ebay the best low rangeyacht broker much fun

Socratic469 - 6 years ago

Have you did videos on how to sail non fore and aft sailboats or maybe the yawl and ketch

Tenwalls - 7 years ago

Interesting video. I suppose it's difficult to actually film the sails as the adjustments are being made and discussed. Makes for a rather useless instructional video.

Beauregard Beauregard - 7 years ago

Agreed. When you can't clearly detect the subtle (at least when on video) changes ostensibly taking place it detracts significantly from the point of having a visual portion to begin with. Put another way, when we can't "see" what you're talking about, it might as well just be an audio file, cassette tape, etc.

John Martin - 8 years ago

All very well in a modern boat, but if you are sailing a classic without vangs/ Cunningham's etc then other means of maintaining speed are vital.

jolllyroger1 - 7 years ago

Vanes Cunningham etc.... Every boat with a sail can be adjusted this same way.... A vang can be rigged on any boat that has a boom its just rigging..... And there are many ways to accomplish the same effect........ A Cunningham's effects can be done with uphaul... But then you must adjust other things... The Cunningham near helps isolate adjustments...

It's all in the rigging... If you're boat don't have it you can rig it with lines... A sail has 3 corners and 3 connections at those corners... And ways to tension the luff the leech and the foot... Those three change the shape.... You can in a fractional rig put a bow in the mast affecting sail shape..... Mast rotation controls can affect the sails shape.... Boom travelers for your sheet affect sail shape..... It's all in the rigging

You just think the sail has 3 corners you can pull on... You can pull on some in many directions some things allow you to pull along the sides between the 3 corners... Like semen you bend the Mast you pull forward on the sail between the head and tack.. This pulls along the entire luff but but equally due to the fractional setup and Mast design.... So the whole point is if you have triangle sails you can pull on them in many directions to change shape and if you don't have certain things on your boat to do this pulling you can rig it.....
Often times with to many available adjustments it is easy for the sailor to kill the sails shape killing speed or power......
While I'm watching this video I see a sail that has a huge drastic exaggerated deep V shape running up from the middle of the foot to the head..... It's hard to tell shape from video but that V has flats fore and aft..... IMHO flats in a sail are inefficient as hell... Now he has the best boat speed of the day which says he is doing something right but I'm certain from that shape the flow over those sails could be improved considerably from what I see in the video.... This aversion to flats comes from my aircraft design experience.... That said though even flat door shaped Wings make lift

Michael Hatzakis - 8 years ago

This is a nice video series. But, as a "advanced beginner", explaining the sail shape and why and when exactly to use the Cunningham and traveler to adjust the sail twist would be helpful in knowing when and know to adjust rather than just having one's eye on the hull speed and jockeying back and forth. I would be better to have a little more time spent to evaluating the sail depth to decide what needs to be adjusted and why

Jan Verbanck - 10 years ago

One small comment: the vang is most usefull going downwind. - on (very) broad reach. Why? Because at that point the mainsheet is to long and under a too flat angle to prvent the boom from "jumping up" when (small) wind changes occur. this, in it's turn, changes the twist too much. Close hauled however, the mainsheet is almost directly under the boom, at a very steep angle. This perfectly keeps the boom down. The role of the vang is now very limited. Conclusion is that it's better to use the traveller to adjust the mainsail to the wind (angle) than the mainsheet. The latter also inflences twist, the traveller moves the boom mostly horizontally which leaves twist unchanged. So, the longer the traveller, the more angle you can actually cover - so the better.