Shown at a recent measurement session at Kvichak Marine Industries are, from left, Scott Milne, Measurer Noel Morgan, Richard Demmler, Measurer Mike Johnson and Keith Whittemore. Milne's and Demmler's boats were being measured, and Whittemore, also a J/24 owner, is a partner at Kvichak and provided the space for the boats.

[source: CYC Seattle]

In a cavernous construction space at Kvichak Marine Industries in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, measurers from J/24 Fleet 26 are hard at work.

It is Thanksgiving weekend, and three boats are lined up on trailers inside the big shed, where they have been packed with heaters and fans for a couple of days to suck out the moisture before they are weighed. A fourth boat, already measured, is parked on the street.

Mike Johnson and Noel Morgan, armed with tape measures, templates and weighing scales, are climbing all over the boats, inspecting for measurement integrity and taking both notes and photos which they will later add to a database to track each of the about 30 active boats in the Seattle fleet. Measuring all of them will take several more weekends and countless hours of work, all in preparation for the J/24 North American Championships, to be held on Puget Sound in May.

Full article here.

We had planned to buy the outhaul replacement kit from Annapolis Performance Sailing, or just buy the same parts from Fisheries Supply or West Marine locally. The kit comes with all the parts and line you need and 3 of the 4 swages completed. The last swage connects the wire to the shackle end after it passes through the sheave-box on the end of the boom, so it must be done as the last step of installation. This means that buying or borrowing a swaging tool…

I sent and email to our fleet listserv and got back some offers to lend swaging tools, but more importantly, got some guidance on upgrading the outhaul to an all-rope system and eliminating the wire portions all together. 3 different replies came in from top boats in our fleet with the same recommendation: go with the high tech ropes, get all the wire that isn’t required by the class off your boat. One recommendation even eliminated the shackle – they just tie the end of the outhaul line into the sail with a bowline. That is serious go-fast mode.

My new plan is to buy the couple of double and triple blocks needed, then construct the rest from rope. I’ll probably go with knots to ensure that I can get all the lengths right, and decide later if we should pay a rigger to go with splices instead.

The intended shopping list is:

• Harken H227
• Harken H228
• About 35′ of 1/4″ line with a poly jacket that will be the cleating end that also runs through the block system inside the boom
• About 10′ of 1/8″ 12 braid line from which I’ll make the two different portions
• An 18″ pennant that runs from the sail shackle, through the sheave and connects to the block system inside the boom, and
• A 5 1/2′ section that connects the block system inside the boom to it’s anchor point inside the gooseneck

I’m hoping to get it all assembled and installed this weekend. We’ll see how it works in next Tuesday night’s race.

So Peter and I finally found some time to get down to the boat on a non-racing day to work on re-tuning the rig. We’ve worked on the rig settings a number of times in the last 2 years of owning the boat and have come to realize that it’s a process of continuous tweaking. What’s also helped is the level of understanding we’ve gained each time by starting back at zero and working the rig back up to what we believe is “optimal.”

Now, if you’ve ever tried to find information on tuning your one design sailboat’s mast and standing rigging you’ll inevitably find an avalanche of information available online. A great deal of that information will depend on the brand of sails that you fly, and most of this collective mass of information will prove to be inconsistent or contradictory across all the sources. Hence, it’s taken us 2+ seasons of working on it, and we’re still not quite there… However, once you hit critical mass from all that information intake, some things finally start to knit together.

More insightful information and a neat matrix after the click…

After our recent results in the Tuesday night one-design series at Leschi, we once again found ourselves brainstorming all the possible ways to improve our performance. More time on the water and more fleet races under our belts would help for sure, but the typical questions of whether the boat was setup and prepped correctly always pop up. I dug back into our sailmaker’s tuning guide. This time a couple of statements seemed to pop out differently than before. In the section on rig setup in our tuning guide (Shore sails guide) the author focuses on some details of forestay tension and pre-bend that other guides gloss over. This prompted us to really focus on getting the right balance of the two for our rig.

I think most other guides assume that if you set the mast butt in the right place and set the uppers and lowers to the tensions that they spec that the pre-bend and forestay will automatically be in the right settings. On our boat that was certainly not the case.

This prompted us to re-tune our boat with a single minded purpose of dialing in the right pre-bend and forestay tensions. We started out with this chart constructed with information from our tuning guide. (These forestay and pre bend settings are for Shore Sails.) Note that we left the shroud tensions blank. The tuning guide does give us some as a reference starting point, but it’s clear that you need to find whatever combination will get you to the right forestay and pre-bend settings for your boat. The shroud tensions themselves don’t matter; they are only a tool for getting the other settings correct.

This all probably seems pretty obvious if you already know how a sailing rig works. But when you are new to the sport and all the other tuning info skips this critical point, it’s easy stuck with a bad rig setting. On our boat, when we setup the mast butt in the “correct position” according to the guide, then dial up to the prescribed shroud settings for 5-8 knot wind, for example, we were getting WAY too little pre-bend. So our main would look nice and full on the race course, but actually be too full for optimum speed.

Here’s and excerpt from the tuning guide that describes our situation:

“If the mast butt is positioned too far forward, the mast will have too little pre-bend resulting in a main that is too full and susceptible to backwinding. The headstay will be too tight resulting in a genoa that is under-powered.”

And

“Prebend Light Air
…The exact opposite to overbending can happen in light air. The luff curve in the sail has too much curve in it relative to the mast, or, the mast is too straight. This is much harder to detect than an overbend wrinkle, but it is every bit as disastrous to performance. The visual indicator of this problem is simply a mainsail with too much draft, too far forward, or a knuckle right around the spreader window area. While we want the sails to be full and powerful, we don’t want them to be too full, because an overly full sail creates too much drag. So we have to flatten them a bit.

We could flatten the sail by tensioning the backstay, but we would pull the headstay too tight in the process. We solve this dilemma by pre-bending the mast”

So it’s now Monday afternoon, the boat it sitting with a perfectly tuned rig, and we have one more day to wait to find out if it’ll help or hurt the boats performance in the next race.

I’m counting on a bit more pointing ability and boat speed. We’ll find out tomorrow night.

Aaron Koopman’s comments are in italics.

Tuning

Mast position: The boat was designed with the keel too far aft. This means the center of effort of the sail plan is not in line with the center of resistance of the hull. That’s why the mast needs to be shortened, and moved aft. Keith only uses the Loos gauge in two situations. The first is when the mast goes into the boat. Basically he gets the shrouds set up so there is a separation of 4 on the gauge; he starts at 21/17 (uppers/lowers) or 24/20. The second situation is when it is blowing really hard and you want to get the shroud tension in the neighborhood of 34 on the outers (-4 or 31 on the inners) before you hit the water.

When he got to the boat the first thing he did was sight the mast to determine which way the middle of the mast was bending. This is determined by sighting up both sides of the mainsail track. Ours was bending to port so he had me loosen the lower port shrouds 1/2 turn and tighten the starboard side.

In general all further adjustments are done such that the upper shrouds get two turns for every one on the lowers. He explained that this is because the uppers are basically twice as long. The 2:1 rule doesn’t apply in either extremely light tuning or extremely heavy tuning, but it does for most situations. He felt like the initial tension on our shrouds was high (by feel) so I ended up giving the uppers a total of 5 turns to loosen and the lowers 2 1/2. They had been set up at 23/18 based on the Shore Sails guide.

He advised that we keep the facets of the turning nut squared off with the boat and to always do multiples of 1/2 turns. He suggested that only one person (usually the bowman) make the turns so there is no confusion on how many have gone on or come off. Keith also said he puts turns on the backstay as the shrouds get tensioned. He has three positions marked on his backstay barrels for increasing wind conditions. He would probably let you take a look at his boat to make marks on your boat.

On the Melges we have calibrated barrels so you can always make sure each side is even, and it helps from losing count of turns, which is easy to do in the heat of battle. We also write down the number of turns on/off.

Once we were out sailing and were on starboard tack we checked the port shrouds by feel (both Nate and I felt this). He found the lowers to be good but the uppers too tight. We adjusted the upper tension to match the lower tension by feel, and then applied the same number of turns to the upper shrouds on starboard. He added that we should always do this in the lulls. It’s easy to tighten up the rig with the sail controls but you can’t loosen it past where the shrouds will let you.

Approach

Tundra Rose leaves the dock at least a 1/2 hour before the first race on a Tuesday night, but at weekend regattas they aim to be at the starting line 1 hour before racing starts. They raise the spinnaker at least one time to make sure it’s run properly. Go to weather to adjust the shrouds and get a feel for the wind (more on wind below). Get back to the start area 10 minutes before the start. Do a line sight. Luff up into the wind several times to gauge wind direction and to determine favored end (upwind end). His method for this is to point the boat into the wind. If the jib is up the bowman will gather the jib to keep it off the mast. The trimmer holds out his arms and points one hand at the committee boat and the other at the pin, making it easy to determine which way the boat is pointing: if it’s pointing more towards the committee boat, the boat end is favored, more towards the pin, that end is favored.

Keith and crew will also do time/distance drills before racing starts. They will attempt to get to a mark (he used the little round buoy between the committee boat and the pin, which is the pin for the snipes by the way, as an example) in a given amount of time. This is a very important skill to develop for starting.

Wind

Keith gets an idea of median wind direction by noting the direction of tacks when sailing to weather before the race, by pointing head to wind several times in the moments prior to the start, and by watching other boats. I asked about compass and he steered me more in the direction of sighting objects on land and using these as reference. This is easy to do on a small lake with shores on both sides and bridges at both ends. Keith also has a Tack Tic on the boat, which is better practice for new teams, rather than just memorizing Lake Washington land marks.

Assuming that the windward marks is set roughly at the dominant (median) wind directions, if the wind is to the left of this we would want to be on port tack, to the right, we would want to be on starboard.

He described the wind on the lake as coming down from above and sort of splattering out in all directions. This means that when you see a puff to one side or the other of the boat, the new wind direction will probably be from that direction.

Lake Washington racing is basically puff racing. You can be 50 feet from your competitor and be sailing up to 15 degrees different headings in puffs, especially in Southerly winds. The winds come over the low spots of land between Leschi and Mount Baker area in Southerlies, and by the West end of 520 in Northerlies. When going North, you usually want to go West, tack, then get lifted up to the mark. But beware, go too far West and you’ll run out of pressure. Keith never goes as far West as his tactician would like him to go.

When you are headed, tack. Now. (This is a sailing 101 rule of thumb, but like all rules there are times when it would not apply. There are many, many books and magazine articles on when to tack. Most of the time you are trying to balance Strategy, tactics, and risk/reward. I would recommend that one of you subscribe to Dave Dellenbaugh’s Speed and Smarts newsletter. It’s a very dense collection of racing advice/info.)

Trim

Basic jib/main and trimmer/helmsman interaction The trimmer sees the outside jib telltale lift, you’ve been lifted, he eases the sail just a bit to get the telltales flying. This also causes the main to out-power the jib and round the boat up slightly, which is exactly what the helmsman wants on a lift. The helmsman heads up a bit. The trimmer trims in.

On a header, the inside telltale lifts, the trimmer sheets in a bit. This causes the boat to have leeward helm and want to fall off which is exactly what the helmsman wants to do: fall off. One on the new course the trimmer eases the jib to perfect trim.

Keith called the aforementioned steps “the ideal in theory”. In practice you can do this in light wind, but in moderate to heavy wind the puffs come and go too fast and you need the weight on the rail more than you need to change the jib setting.

Also, Keith feels that most J24 sailors sheet in too hard on the jib. He says to keep the jib 4-6 inches off the spreaders in even heavy wind, in light winds 8-10. Also, set the leads by finding the point where the jib touches the chain plates and spreaders at the same time. This was about 2 holes back from where you had it. As with most boats you only use about 6” of jib track, once you find the sweet spot. We were able to find this no problem (in the past we haven’t, correct?). Your spreaders are marked for 2” and 4”, but based on Keith’s trimming advice I would say put one at 6” and 8” also.

The jib halyard should have just enough tension to begin to take the scallops out of the luff. You should pull on the halyard until the scallops just go away, then ease the halyard just a tiny bit, so you just see scallops.

Main: The main is built with too much draft forward, because of the huge wind range the sail has to be ready for; 5-40 knots. So you need to prebend the mast or else the luff cut of the sail will not match the mast, which will pull the draft or knuckle forward even more.

When sailing you want all the tell tails to be flying at least most the time, especially the top one. In light wind this meant pulling the traveler to the upper bench for lots of twist. Also, because the boom is so heavy, Keith has someone lift the boom in light racing to keep the leach of the main from closing. Keith also said the rules allow only 4:1 max purchase on the main sheet. You were rigged for 5:1. He also recommended only 3:1 for light wind racing.

The spinnaker tack should be pulled all the way to the pole and the tack and clew should be pretty much at the same height. The pole should be as level as possible. He doesn’t feel a pole that is tilted up is fast. His experience testing with Vince Brun is that Vince had his pole lower than Keith and was faster.

When sailing down wind the trimmer is constantly communicating with the helmsman to talk about pressure on the sail. If the pressure is good, the trimmer tells the helmsman to steer the boat downwind. If the pressure feels light, or there are waves, etc. the trimmer tells the helmsman to steer up. This is usually in increments of 2 to 5 degrees. “Up 2, down 2, up 5, down 5”, etc. is how we have communicated in the past.

The most overlooked trim tool is crew weight. Crew weight can play a significant role in the balance and steering of the boat. The rudder is a boat brake, the more you use it the slower you will go. Too much crew weight too leeward and the boat will turn up wind (weather helm). Too much weight to windward and the boat will turn down wind (lee helm). The helmsman can tell when the weight placement is just right by the feel of the helm. He should be constantly communicating to the crew on weight placement. I asked him about the mushy feel I sensed on the boat a few weeks back. He said that was normal. So, if the boat starts to head up, everyone needs to hike harder. If the boat is turning down, crew needs to move in a little bit.
Start

The jib goes up with 5 minutes to go. Keith likes to approach the line on port tack and find a hole to tack into. This gives him the ability to control the start better. He feels that the boats that sail off on port and come back on starboard are at the mercy of boats like him that can tack in at any time and luff them up above the line. He said the usual things about the importance of clear air and getting a nose ahead of everyone else.

Windward mark

Keith likes to slam in on port at the windward mark. When you are leading, coming in on Starboard is fine. But when you are in the pack, “there is money to be made” coming in on port”. I can explain a lot more in person but here are the basics in big fleets: Everyone but the starboard leader is slightly above the next guy on the layline so he isn’t in bad air. After 5 or 6 boats there is a good boat length between their course and layline. If you come in on port you can find a hole (which usually requires you run down the starboard layline a bit) or you can tack underneath the overstood starboard tackers and make the mark. If they are not forced to luff to avoid you, you can tack right under them (outside the 3 b.l. circle) and they are powerless to stop you.

When you do this you can set up the pole on the mast, tip on the deck so the only extra task on the hoist is to raise the pole after the tack.

When coming in on starboard with plenty of time to get the pole up, etc. The bowman attaches the pole to the mast and the mast man raises the pole and secures the guy (note that Keith likes to leave the topping lift attached, Aaron likes to leave the foreguy attached too). The bowman now goes to the mast for the hoist. The trimmer prepares the bag while the tactician goes to the spinnaker guy. He will handle this until the trimmer can take over. Tundra Rose doesn’t pre-feed except to get the head of the spinnaker up and out of the bag. When the windward mark has passed to about the rear stanchion and Keith is sure that the spinnaker won’t hit it as it’s raised, he calls for the hoist. The bowman hauls as fast as possible, the trimmer eases the jib sheet just a little (one foot), but not so much that the jib gets in the way. Not much at all. When the spinnaker is flying and the tactician has pulled the tack back to the pole, the mast man eases the jib halyard 3’ to help the spinnaker fill, and once the spinnaker fills, drops the jib to the deck. The bowman needs to stay off the bow as much as possible. As soon as possible the bowman moves the jib to starboard for the leeward mark hoist.
Leeward mark

Ideally you douse on starboard tack. It sounds like even Tundra Rose doesn’t like to douse on port. Approaching the mark, move the jib over to be ready for the port tack upwind, and set all of the upwind controls. Then raise the jib, steering down a bit and floating the spinnaker pole. It’s not possible to float the pole on a reach which I believe we’ve tried before. So heading more on a run, the bowman releases the spinnaker pole while the tactician holds the guy out to compensate a bit for having no pole. The bowman gets the pole on the deck and under the jib sheets so the jib is clear to tack right away. The crew moves weight to the weather side of the boat to help bring the spinnaker to that side of the boat. As the spinnaker comes around the bowman releases the spinnaker and the tactician pulls the chute into the bag. When the pole is stowed, Keith’s bowman leaves the topping lift attached and runs it through the jaws of the pole, like Aaron recommends.
Roll tacks

Lean on leeward rail to cause the boat to round up and tack, after the bow has crossed through the wind, transfer weight to new leeward rail to cause boat to stop turning and settle on new tack. Move weight back to new windward rail to flatten the boat. Three types of roll tacks that Keith will call: full roll, light roll, and no roll. In big wind no roll is necessary; it is best just to scurry to the new windward rail as fast as possible. These take time to master, because the timing changes with different wind, sea, weight conditions, but they feel great when executed correctly.

Helmsmen also participates in roll tacks. Standing up in the cockpit he leans toward leeward with the rest of the crew. He allows the crew weight to turn the boat to weather and come about. Keith said that tiller handle should never cross the vertical plane of locker sidewalls (easier to explain than write). This minimizes the braking effect that the rudder has. Once the boat has come about and new trim is set, the helmsmen crosses to the new windward side. Couple additional comments on helming:

• Helmsman to sit as far forward as possible, either straddling the jib winch or sitting forward of it
• Helmsman and trimmer to work together to avoid over steering. It is better to call crew weight shifts and trim the sails appropriately vs. use the rudder (i.e. brake)

Other

• Cheap diver every race. This makes a huge difference, even just after a week of sitting in the water. Real diver every third race!
• Leave everything not necessary for sailing at the dock; fenders, lines, covers, porno, egos.
• Practice, practice, practice. Specifically: mark roundings, time-distance drills, spinnaker trim down wind.
• Self ratcheting jib blocks are a worthy investment.
• We should install spinnaker cleats. Look at the other fast boats in the fleet to best position them.
• Driver should be very far forward, everyone should. It gets the stern out of the water and reduces wetted surface drag.
• He liked the way the boat felt and the way the sails looked. He said the main looked great. From the stiffness of the main it looks almost new. Because the main is more of a trimming sail, rather than a driving sail, it’s the least often replaced. The spinnaker is good, if it still has some crinkle sound to it. Keith also said that the jib looks OK, (I think he was being kind), but that it was too flat, and you needed a fuller sail. Sometimes jibs can be recut to extend their life, but as they say “nothing goes to weather like money.”
• Fix the jib/spinnaker halyard issue. The jib needs to come out of the lower center slot. Even if we had the jib on our actual jib halyard, that isn’t good either. If the halyard isn’t centered it has a different effect on the jib leach tension for each tack causing the sail trim to be asymmetrical. The spinnaker needs to be coming out of the upper mast slot again so the bowman can haul it up correctly. Keith recommended a turning block at the base of the mast for the jib halyard so that the bowman wouldn’t have to crouch down to haul it up.
• Rotating crew positions may be democratic, but it is surely slow.