J24 Blog

Our heavy air jibes need work. They can be a bit, shall we say, hectic. I came across this from an interview of John Alofsin by Dave Dellenbaugh in Sailing Breezes:

As the wind builds, you make less and less of a turn through the jibe. When it’s quite windy, you need to steer an S-course jibe. To do this, bear off to start the jibe and get the main to come across. As soon as the main starts across and you know the jibe will happen, bear off immediately. There are two reasons for this. First, you have to counter the tendency of the boat to round up after the jibe, which is the most common (and disastrous) mistake in heavy air jibes. And second, by keeping the boat on a downwind course, you make it a little easier for the foredeck crew to do their jobs.

Here is the rest of the article can be found here.