36.7 Sailors - Use the Cheek Blocks

A couple of regattas back I gotten bitten by the change bug. We changed our foredeck to drop the pole to the deck (typical in SD) rather than into the boom bag to see if it went faster. We stopped using the cheekblocks to lead the sheets because twists in the line would snag there. We had some crew changes - just down to who was available.

And going into the regatta thinking could be a top three finish we came out second to last of seven boats.

The main issues were:

• Cheek blocks, without them you get overrides, more on one side than the other, and more so as the wind rises. Out practice had been with a slightly smaller sail in lighter winds. There could also be a technique issue here but the sailors on board were good sailors so I'm inclined to think the problem is worth avoiding - use the cheekblocks!
• Dropping pole to deck. We've got pretty good with the pole in the bag but during the Yachting Cup (2nd place overall) we'd concluded that the bag was slowing our douses a little bit. Going to pole on deck worked well in a practice but when tried in anger, while pushing douses as late as possible (errr too late!) things went wrong.

So, don't change too much, especially when things were working okay.

We changed things back for the CYC fall regatta and placed 3rd, one hole in the wind off second and a hole in the wind plus a little pointing off first - think our genoa is getting a bit old.

We definitely made a few other mistakes and at times in the lighter winds other boats had that "we've got more air" look about them downwind.

The future of sailboats

It's increasingly concerning to me that sailboats represent such a waste of resources. This is actually self harming to the industry as well, we end up with large numbers of basically unwanted sailboats of ancient designs clogging up our marinas, and looking extremely dated to the newer generations who are increasingly aware of both material impacts on our environment and what modern designs are out there.

So the two main sailor types the "lets get out into our environment"s and the "lets do something exciting"s are both put off.

No wonder sailing has an identity crisis.

There is some hope out there though - this last weekend I was talking to some fellow Krakheads about my misgivings on the sport and right after SA ran an article on some people who care.

Personally I'd be very interested in a recyclable SeaScape 27 or similar. A go fast go clean machine.

So, there's a market of one if anyone wants to build it!