Monday, October 6, 2014

Gear: The importance of Cloth Weight

We were in a hot and sticky and suprisingly long race at the weekend - 6 hours to complete a 15 mile course.

There were only five boats in the race and we were the second fastest boat. With the wind shifting from offshore to weak onshore and a pursuit start my guess was we'd lose our lead over Gringo right at the beginning, quickly overtake the slower boats and end up in second place. We did end up in second place but didn't get there in the manner I thought.

The first leg was 2.5 miles slightly above close hauled. We made some good wind choices in 4-6 knots of breeze and some experiments with twist kept us moving nicely, rebuilding our lead over Gringo.

The second leg started deep downwind, and as the wind shifted south ended tacking upwind in 2-4 knots of breeze. During the downwind phase Gringo closed right down on us but once upwind again we held our own and even stretched out a couple of times until losing our advantage by tacking one too many times at the end (we tacked to miss a hole that gringo ploughed through - ploughing was the better choice as it saved two slow tacks).

Round the leeward (now windward!) mark we gybe set, lost all our speed and watch Gringo get their spinnaker pulling faster and pull away. During the rest of this leg breeze was generally below 4 knots and we watch Gringo continue to build that lead while our spinnaker hung like a limp rag.

Lesson 1 - in light air don't gybe set under another boat - losing all boat speed. For a moment there with the current against us we were completely stopped (I was watching a lobster bouy right next to us, and wondering if we were going to drift back into Mainbrace who was anchored for a mark).

Eventually we got bored and dropped the spinnaker, finding us sailing higher but faster with the Genoa. Then we pulled up the lighter spinnker that I generally only practice with on the basis it's pretty blown out and....

... went from 2 knots of boat speed to 4.

The spinnaker just held up better in the wind. Had shape. Got the boat moving and generating more breeze.

Lesson 2 - cloth weight is critical in light air, even if the fabric itself is in slightly worse condition.

We're ordering a new light air spinnaker form North at the moment. Until we get it though our current .5oz will be the goto sail below 6 knots (perhaps 8?).

I think we'd have won the race with the right sail. Pretty excited by the difference this new sail is going to make, it's slightly deeper section and light cloth should really help in our light air races.

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