J24 Blog

The wind for tonight’s race is looking like it’ll be back into our normal 5-10 knot range. This should put us back into focusing on handling and trim, and not so much on survival and keeping the boat right side up like last week.

So far this season, we’ve been getting nice clear starts and feel good about our upwind boat speed. We’re tending to get to the first upwind mark ahead of some other boats in the fleet in the first beat, losing a ton of ground downwind, fighting to keep or close gaps on the second beat, losing more ground on the second downwind, and struggling to finish within 10 boat lengths of the tail end of the fleet. Clearly we have some work to do on roundings and sailing fast downwind.

However, one improvement we’ll test this week is pointing ability on the upwind legs. I know it’s the classic balance/tradeoff between pointing high with less boatspeed, or choosing to point lower for faster boatspeed. Finding optimal VMG. Since we have been consistently losing crossing battles with other boats, we started thinking that we were choosing to sail a bit too low for the tradeoff we were gettting in speed gain.

Easier said than done. We’ve now entered the zone of tweaks and nuances to get slightly better pointing ability.

First on my list is the outhaul. We haven’t upgraded to 6:1 pull so it’s almost always too loose according to the specs in our tuning guide. The result has been a leech that refuses to hook to windward, even with the traveler all the way up and mainsheet pulled on all the way. Tonight, we’ll try setting the outhaul on harder than before (and leaving it on in the downwind legs if need be) to see if that nets us a more trimmable main sail.

Next upgrade project will be assembling and installing a 6:1 purchase kit like the one Annapolis Performance Sailing sells here.