More solo sailing today. Working to reduce my reliance on the autopilot I got the boat out of the harbor sailing without it and then took a brisk few tacks upwind without it. Having cleared a few miles offshore in a building breeze I turned back on shore and set the spinnaker. Doing a "gybe set" (meaning in this case, gybe then set the pole, then hoist) took a while and getting the pole setup was taking ages so I started using the AP again - beats running bow to stern all the time. Knowing to press the +1 and -1 on the Raymarine ST60 to adjust the accuracy is awesome!
Once set I took a 045 course heading for the pier, some way off, and played with trim. For this last year we've been playing the spinnaker with the pole just above head height and the shoulder breaks, perhaps the top 60-70%. Today I started pushing the pole up, first six inches, then a foot and finally about 2 feet higher than normal. This brought the break right down to the middle and lifted the speed .5kts, perhaps more difficult to tell as the breeze lifted from 8 to 10kts while I was playing.
The spinnaker felt a bit more skittish when trimming but what was really interesting to me was that when I turned downwind and gybed it seemed a lot steadier than normal - I always avoid Dead Down Wind as the vortex off the main wraps the spinnaker around the forestay in a jiffy but today I was sailing just a little above DDW without worry. I also feel that the speed was held deeper than before which could be very useful.
Three gybes complete, all pretty quick and painless and I came up on a reach, (about 100 to 120) back towards the pier. As the breeze got up to 12kts at times the AP was definitely having problems holding the course and I hand steered a bit. Probably could have done more to help it as I released the vang but didn't otherwise try and depower the main. Didn't spend much time on the reach but next week I'm going to experiment with pole back down again to try and pull the draft forwards, vs up to flatten the sail.
I learnt a new trick during the gybes, perhaps more obvious because of the higher pole position - snugging the uphaul pulls the pole forwards to the kite on the new guy. Getting the afterguy, uphaul and downhaul all nice and snug helps hold the pole forwards (I'm still debating foreguy vs downhaul - see downhaul vs foreguy).
Speed peaked at somewhere over 8 knots.
Managed to keep the kite dry on the drop this time and got home in time to put Wyn down for his afternoon nap.
Gotta remember to mark the new pole position.
Really happy with the new trim. We've been sluggish downwind, not terrible just sluggish and as well as doing lots of reading on tactics but getting a bit of extra boatspeed would be killer!
I wonder about rigging a small line from the wheel to the bow so I can steer from up there.....
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