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Post by davideso37 on Jun 8, 2013 22:45:34 GMT
Three races ago at the start of the upwind leg of the course we broke our adjustable backstay on our Sun Odyssey 37, Passion. As I had a check strop in place we were never going to lose the mast but the forestay took on a large sag and the mainsail bellied up. We were well positioned in the race and decided to soldier on to the finish sailing a little lower and with the genoa not cranked on so tight. To our surprise we held our position remarkably well and finished with a third on handicap. This experience caused us to review how much tension we use in the backstay and we have been pleasantly surprised with the performance with a fuller mainsail and fuller genoa.
The other tweak was to tighten the intermediate stays to straighten the top half of the mast and I have been impressed with how much fuller the head of the mainsail is with just two turns of the turnbuckles.
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Post by tedp on Jun 9, 2013 17:08:26 GMT
Did you sail in light winds at the time? A full bellied sail will perform better in a light wind.
I have a rather full mainsail which does well in light winds. Once it's reefed it becomes much flatter and it does well in force 4 or over. This weekend we sailed in nothing under a 5, with a single reef and a few turns in the genoa, with the geonoa blocks adjusted accordingly on the track. The boat did very well at 6 knots on the wind and over 7 running. Part of the reason was the new mainsheet track I described last year.
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Post by davideso37 on Jun 10, 2013 12:35:01 GMT
Ted, No it was 15 knots and the crew were yelling at the cockpit man to crank on more back stay which is why the adjuster broke. We usually sail with no back stay tension in light winds or if caught with a smaller genoa than the conditions call for. Our mainsail also flatten well when reefed. There is a photo in the Jeanneau Owners gallery just loaded that shows Passion in 30 knots with two reefs in the main and a 105% LP genoa and we are smoking. If it gets above that we can go to three reefs and a storm jib as in the photo below The purpose of the post was to comment that we had been overdoing the backstay tension and over flattening the main in the medium conditions.  |
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Post by tedp on Jun 10, 2013 14:10:52 GMT
I like that jib! Couldn't find the other photo though. Do you have a direct link?
Your boat has another arrow shaped rig. This should stand up of its own in light loads - evidently it survived the loss of backstay tension. You have been lucky in that kind of wind!
I only use the backstay tensioner on my boat to stretch the forestay as the 9/10 rig won't allow much control of mast bend or mainsail shape. My mast was set up in a curve as well, though not as much as yours in the photo above.
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Post by davideso37 on Oct 17, 2013 3:50:44 GMT
As a result of our yacht performing better with less back stay tension I had the mainsail re cut with more luff round so that we can apply high back stay tension to keep the genoa luff from sagging in strong winds without over flattening the main. It has taken a few weeks of tweaking but finally we can go from 9% draft in strong winds to 15% draft off the breeze and in lighter airs.
The extra luff round lets us get the shape we wanted without having the lower and intermediate stays set up very tight.
In the process of re tuning the rig after the luff re cut I re learnt that a couple of turns on the rigging screws has a pretty dramatic impact.
One of the rewards from this attention to detail was a crew member and very experienced helmsman saying the mainsail looked perfect.
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