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Post by psychotiller on Feb 25, 2015 17:21:35 GMT
Anyone looking for some sail-porn to get you through the rest of the winter? Our southern hemisphere friends are of course invited to enjoy some sail porn too, but you're probably too busy actually sailing! Last weekend was the final two races of the Corinthian Yacht Club Midwinter Regatta here in San Francisco bay. Saturdays race was delayed by almost 2 hours due to no wind but when it turned on, it turned on big. The rest of the day was blowing around 20 knots. We got caught with our 155% headsail up which made things interesting to say the least. Sunday it blew even harder, 25-30 knots most of the day. So much for our usual light winter winds. We didn't do so well but overall managed 6th place. Still a whole lot of fun, what place you get only matters if you come in 1st  Here's a video of Saturday and our perfectly executed SOB recovery (shoe overboard). Sorry Hoppy, still just one gopro on the port stern rail. Too busy just trying to survive the race to move the go pro |
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Post by dbostrom on Feb 25, 2015 21:27:49 GMT
Even non-racers become twitchy when viewing that.  Good stuff. I really like the way the Gopro catches the sound transmitted through the structure of the boat. Maybe need two versions, one with TH and one with boat noises? |
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Post by so36idavid on Feb 26, 2015 2:01:06 GMT
Great video! I spent many years racing and sailing the Bay, I miss it dearly. I'm thinking of taking my boat up there this summer and doing a week in the delta. A few unsolicited suggestions from someone who's been around the cans a few times... Every boat is different and all I know about yours is what I see on this video but I saw a couple of things that you might try to help get out of mid-fleet and onto the podium. This isn't intended as criticism, you guys did great so take this all with a grain of salt. - The person who's tailing the jib sheets on the tacks is pulling towards the chest from a sitting position. They could try getting up on their feet and driving the elbows back behind as fast as possible while flicking the wrist back. Not getting a lot of line in while head-to-wind is hurting the grinder. With a reefed jib that sail shouldn't need more than one or two turns from the winch to sheet home. - There's not a lot of room for the trimmers to squeeze by the main trimmer. He is moving quite late on the tacks and is not giving the jib trimmers time to get set up. He needs to move earlier, or maybe not move at all until there is a lane for him to dive to the other side. Possibly close the hatch top and have the jib trimmer go that way which will make a lane for the main trimmer to move as you tack. Something to talk through with the crew. B.t.w. he's trimming from the cockpit, I think you'd be flatter if he got his weight outboard. - The grinder is struggling to get the jib in on the tacks, which is totally understandable in the conditions. Maybe try getting a new winch handle with the knob on the end, like this, I like the Lewmar. Have your crew grab the handle as normal in one hand and get the other hand onto the knob. Then get her chest completely over the winch, rather than reaching out to it from inside the cockpit. Maybe get one knee up on the deck and one foot on the seat. She'll get a lot more power and leverage, the jib will come in a lot faster. - Off the wind, the topping lift on the pole looked pretty slack at times, such as when you crossed the wake. It bounces a lot and collapses the shape of the chute. Costs you time, shortens the life of the sail and makes the boat unstable in heavy air. The topper and foreguy should be snug at all times. As the driver this is something you could keep an eye on. - I didn't see you ease the backstay after you rounded the windward mark or harden before the leeward. Possibly that was edited out. I would expect a lot of backstay going to weather which has to be eased as you round. Then again the main was reefed, so maybe the backstay doesn't come into play. -The outhaul was pretty soft at the start and the luff looked pretty soft on the beat. I would expect more halyard or cunningham in heavy air. You and the main trimmer should be talking about sail shape from time to time. On the whole he did a great job, very neutral helm. Anyway, most of this is probably inappropriate for your boat, you know what you're doing. But just some things to think about. David |
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Post by psychotiller on Feb 26, 2015 6:06:19 GMT
Even non-racers become twitchy when viewing that. Good stuff. I really like the way the Gopro catches the sound transmitted through the structure of the boat. Maybe need two versions, one with TH and one with boat noises? Yes, it is really interesting how the gopro picks up all the vibrations through the stern rail. I tried doing a video without music and just the true sounds but it put me to sleep. It probably helps I get to pick music I like though:) And I'm still twitching from the really heavy winds on Sunday. Thanks for checking our video out! @ so36idavid: Hey David, thanks so much for the very detailed analysis. Many great points and suggestions we are going to try out for sure. If you end up back in the SF area without a boat you can come on Psycho Tiller with us anytime! And maybe we will see you up the Delta this summer. The video is really interesting for us as crew to see as there are so many things you just don't catch while sailing. Especially for me, all I saw was the windex, the telltales and an occasional mark The heavy wind really caught us off guard, at the start it was probably only 10-12 but once we made it out of raccoon straits it really started picking up. There are a few tweaks we are still making to the boat, the outhaul is really hard to tighten unless the main is luffing and the halyard slips when the mainsheet is really tight. So that is partly why the luff of the main and outhaul look too loose, which they were. Initially they were set for the conditions at the start, but that changed quickly. Whether or not we released the backstay on the downwind run is actually a really good question. Although usually I always release it downwind I honestly can't remember if I did it that race or not. I very well could have forgot. Nice catch! I really like your suggestions about how the crew can work more efficiently, great observations. A 32ft boat is small for a crew of 6 but certainly we can work on getting much better as you suggested. We usually do fairly well in light to moderate winds, in last months race where we had winds of 10-15 we placed 1st. But we are still figuring out how to make the boat go fast in heavy wind as well as just getting used to how she handles while racing in heavy air. Our sail inventory is also not what we need for heavy wind so in some ways we brought a knife to a gun fight. But mostly we just need more practice racing in heavy wind and incorporating your suggestions will help tremendously. The boat is still relatively new to us, bought it a little over a year ago and still tweaking things and building a larger sail inventory. We did a lot of heavy wind cruising last summer but racing is of course different. The main halyard slipping through the clutch is still a puzzle I'm trying to figure out. I replaced the halyard hoping that would fix it but it didn't. I suppose I could always add a cam cleat in front of the clutch but drilling new holes and adding more hardware isn't something I want to do unless I can't find another fix. Any ideas? Thanks again for all the great suggestion and thanks for watching Jim |
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Post by hoppy on Feb 26, 2015 16:20:26 GMT
You could have stone motherless last and being happy that you recovered the shoe after completing the race. That is an impressive effort and the club should present you with a trophy for it I like the video even if you only had one angle. I miss the days when I used to club race like that. You could get one of the crew to move the camera occasionally  The new GoPro Hero is a great 2nd, 3rd, 4th... camera. it might be stripped of many nice features but it still shoots 1080p30 but at $129.99 is a bargain. Actually it's also a perfect introduction gopro camera |
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Post by hoppy on Feb 26, 2015 16:36:45 GMT
-The outhaul was pretty soft at the start and the luff looked pretty soft on the beat. I would expect more halyard or cunningham in heavy air. You and the main trimmer should be talking about sail shape from time to time. On the whole he did a great job, very neutral helm. Yeah, I picked up on that as well. PT What clutches do you have? Is the slippage over time or when you lock the clutch? I find that when the halyard is on tight, I get slippage mostly when I remove the halyard from the winch. For ages it was driving me crazy and then I found that if I pressed down on the clutch cam (Spinlock clutch, by lifting the leaver so I can get my finger in) as I ease off the winch, the cam grips the halyard so much faster. When I give my clutch "the finger", the handle does not move at all. Something I have not tried this and probably should, is to do the same but quickly release the halyard from winch to see if it makes the leaver snap shut. Better to do it as a test than find out the hard way If it is slippage over time, maybe you need to replace the cam due to wear. Maybe your line is a bit to small for the clutch? Perhaps if your halyard is at the low end of the size range for the clutch, one option could be to insert some line inside of the halyard at the point where it is normally in the clutch. That will give the clutch a bit more meat to grip onto. |
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Post by psychotiller on Feb 26, 2015 22:04:51 GMT
I'm pretty sure we have the spinlock clutches. It seems to hold ok at first but I think it slips when we are close hauled and pull the main sheet tight. As the leech of the main tightens it must be pulling the halyard down a bit. It is really painful to see the luff go loose, I really need to fix that. Also need to fix the outhaul so we can tighten it without luffing the main. So many projects, so little time (sigh). The halyard line is new and I made sure to get the right size, hoping it would fix it but still the same issue. You're probably right, the cam might just be worn out. Is it possible to just replace the cam and not the whole clutch? I know!!! What are the chances he would lose his shoe at the start and we just happen to run across it 2 hours later at the end of the race? And then to successfully pluck it out of the water. What does a guy have to do to get an award in this race? Win or something? It was quite a scene, there we were weaving in and out of all the boats trying to finish the race attempting to get the shoe. A lot of boats thought we were looking for crew overboard. As you can see, we take our footwear very seriously |
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Post by so36idavid on Feb 26, 2015 22:11:46 GMT
We usually do fairly well in light to moderate winds, It looks like you're using a roller furling jib. If so, that's not going to help your heavy air performance. Not a great sail shape and there's a big slot at the base of the sail. This would be a fairly expensive issue to change. Pointing in heavy air really boils down to good communication with the mainsail trimmer. The driver should actually be doing very little, feather light touch on the tiller. The traveller should be working really hard. Keep the lee rail out of the water in gusts and power up in lulls. A little bubble in the main is ok, but the battens should fly at all times. Also flatten the heck out of everything, particularly the backstay. If you have checkstays, hard on those too. If you can't grind in the outhaul while powered up then dump the traveler and fix the problem. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds which might cost you half a boat but that's better than 30 minutes of sliding to leeward. Off the wind you'll want to sail as deep as the polars will allow and then take a dig with each gust as it comes down the course. You'll pick up half a boat with each dig. Much of heavy air sailing boils down to minimizing errors because any slip is very costly. Communications, time and practice is all you can do there. >The main halyard slipping through the clutch is still a puzzle I'm trying to figure out. Check the cam size, some clutches have different cams based on line diameter. If you have the right size check the cams for wear, they're replaceable. |
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Post by hoppy on Feb 26, 2015 22:21:57 GMT
Spinlock are pretty good in the replacement parts department. Most chandleries that stock spinlock clutches I've been to tend to also have a good range of spares and even if your locals don't, all the parts are easy to find online. www.westmarine.com/buy/spinlock--cam-module-lock-up-xt-xc-xts--7453426Also they are good that they don't seem to change the mount holes when they upgrade their models. I was able to replace a double XT with a newer triple XTS and just had to drill the extra 2 holes. Not sure if it was a coincidence, but when I did that upgrade I was replacing a smaller XAS that was next to the XT and the holes were so differently placed between the two models, so going bigger just meant filling in the old holes with silkaflex and drilling new ones for the XTS. Before hand I was worried there would be an overlap. |
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Post by psychotiller on Feb 27, 2015 4:20:16 GMT
Yes, the furler is definitely a big disadvantage for racing. There are actually a few compromises with the SF 32i for racing. Overall it's a great boat and I can't imagine a better boat for our needs. We also have a 20' boat we race one design, the 32i is a boat we spend many nights on and cruise it quite a bit. It's a great compromise though, relatively quick and set up reasonably well for racing as well as cruising. But with all compromises it can't do everything well. So in heavy wind racing it is definitely as I like to say "bringing a knife to a gun fight". Besides the furler the boat is really made to perform best for racing in light to medium winds. It has a very round hull with a lot of volume because they have put a lot of interior in the boats. As a result, you get a boat that will round up or down when it gets windy. Boats that are more heavily raced in SF bay like the Express 27 and J boats have narrower and flatter hulls which are more performance-oriented and easier to sail in heavy wind. Most definitely many things we as a team still can improve on, especially communication. I really appreciate everyones feedback. Even if it's things I already know it never hurts to hear them again. Racing a 32 ft boat with a crew of 6 is much different than the 20 ft boat we are used to with a crew of 2 or 3 We have a good handle on what needs to be done but still working on who does it and when it gets done. We will get there eventually..I hope. We would love to get a 3200 or even maybe 3600 but then our overnight trips and cruising are not nearly as comfortable and the lady admiral is not ready to give up all the comforts of home. Happy wife, happy boat owner:) Thanks again for all the great feedback! |
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Here's a video of Saturday and our perfectly executed SOB recovery (shoe overboard). Sorry Hoppy, still just one gopro on the port stern rail. Too busy just trying to survive the race to move the go pro 
Good stuff. 
The new GoPro Hero is a great 2nd, 3rd, 4th... camera. it might be stripped of many nice features but it still shoots 1080p30 but at $129.99 is a bargain. Actually it's also a perfect introduction gopro camera