Monday, October 6, 2014

Technique/Gear: Two spin sheets or one

When we started sailing Kraken she was equipped with sheets and tweakers, one sheet per clew and tweakers to bring the pole side down.

Our initial gybe approach followed the dip pole setup that I was most used to, so we added lazy sheets and guys.

A year into racing and while our gybes have improved significantly we're still not as smooth as we could be. While the fordeck seems pretty comfortable with end for end (we switched back) gybing using the lazy sheets there are often mistakes made in the cockpit, lines loosed leaving clews un constrained, wrong lines being pulled post gybe.

So we're going back to lines and tweakers. Initial tests have been positive though the wind too light too really tell.

The main concern is going to be how it affects the spinnaker when the foredeck crew are attaching to the new line, which will be active.

If I don't change things up every month or two... everyone would get complacent.

One other change I've made is that the downhaul can now be easily converted to a fore-guy in a few seconds. We've found that in gusty conditions, like those found under Point Loma where we race fairly frequently, the pole tends to dance around a bit, something that the foreguy tensioned against the afterguy alleviates. On the other hand the fore-guy setup makes setting and dousing harder and is an extra complication with frequent maneuvers. Now it's easy for us to prioritize tip control over the ease of use if desired, for instance in gusty conditions or on long spinnaker runs and reaches.

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