Posted by Larry Powers (lapowers57@…>)
There have been some good posts recently on sail trim on a Cat Ketches. I
have an F33 with fully battened sails and one thing that is very frustating
is sailing to windward. These boats will never be stellar performers when
sailing up wind but I would like to maximized what the boat can do. I have
never used staysails with the boat and I am wondering if the use of a
staysail can improve windward performance?
Posted by Brian Guptil (sailordude@…>)
Larry
Stay sails are
reaching. I have found on a 44 that to flatten the sails, really flat, and
then sheet the main till the (free running) traveler just starts to lift off
the leeward end stop then sheet the mizzen to match the mains twist, and bring
the traveler in till there is little or no evidence to back-winding from the
main.
The other trick
is to keep the boat moving. When you pinch, the sails look good, but the keel
stalls and the boat slides off to leeward significantly.
Stay sails take
up the space between the main and the mizzen, so you need to let the main out
to make room. Thus, you loose your windward pointing ability.
There has been
much discussion on this net about sail trim. There have been lots of “experts”
but I suggest that you take all of that as information and experiment till the
boat teaches you how to sail it. On a cat ketch, the hard part is to correctly
assess the leeway in relation to different sail trim experiments. I have found
“the grove” on Cayenne to be on the
windward side of maximum up-wind speed. There is a clue in the way the boat
heals as well. A crude check is speed thru the water near 1/3 of the relative
wind speed or ½ of the true wind speed, up to about 75% of hull speed. But in
winds under 8 or so, well there doesn’t seem to be any correlation to
what is happening.
Brian of
Cayenne_86
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Posted by Michel Capel (mike_c_f35ck@…>)
Larry,
There are some examples of the use of staysails on catketches when
beating. First of all, you need a flat (‘blade’) staysail, and you
can’t tack with the sail up, because it interferes with the main. I
had one on my F33. Always put the clew off center to leeward. I must
say I never achieved anything more than a lot of hassle, but there
are some who actually could make the blade staysail work, notably
Gerald Freshwater and John Oakeley. A few months back, you can find
Geralds posting with instructions on how to rig and sheet the blade
staysail.
There’s an F40 named Kristine II with two small staysails on each
mast. The F44 Frog Kiss, several times winner of the Newport-Bermuda
race, has a small high aspect staysail on a sprit from the bow and
claims to point higher and gain 0,5 knot. I believe this, certainly
when reading Steve Haarstick’s instructions on sail trim posted here
last week. Bottom line of Steve’s story is that without a jib,
however small, the laminar flow along the leeside of the mainsail is
more easily separated, resulting in stall. That’s why we need tell
tales on the leech, to detect the moment of stall. What some forget,
that on a catketch, you need to think of the main as a large genoa.
You shouldn’t sheet in the main of a catketch as if it’s a main, but
as if it’s a genoa, so much further out than the centreline. John
Oakeley’s (he imported the first Freedoms to Europe) instructions on
board of my F33 were very clear: never sheet in the main further in
than the side of the cabin top. I don’t usually sheet in much
further than the lifelines. The mizzen can be sheeted in further,
but this depends on the laminar flow also. This flow is improved by
the main.
If you ever studied a photo of a 3 or more masted schooner, you see
that the further forward the sail, the further out it was sheeted.
Only the aftmost sail was sheeted like a mainsail.
— In freedomyachts2003@yahoogroups.com, “Larry Powers”
<lapowers57@h…> wrote:
There have been some good posts recently on sail trim on a Cat
Ketches. I
have an F33 with fully battened sails and one thing that is very
frustating
is sailing to windward. These boats will never be stellar
performers when
sailing up wind but I would like to maximized what the boat can
do. I have
never used staysails with the boat and I am wondering if the use
of a
staysail can improve windward performance?