've been wanting to race my boat more often but I’ve had a very hard time sailing anywhere near close to my rating of around 270. On an upwind leg, I get totally destroyed by my inability to point. I have finished dead last every time I’ve tried, even with a brand new square top main.
I think part of the problem is that the boat is designed as a cat rig but with compromises to support the gun mount spinnaker, resulting in a much smaller main than most cat rigs. Add that to the fact that cat rigs just don’t sail to weather very well anyway and you don’t have a very competitive boat.
The boat was sold with the ‘blade jib’ option, but it’s always felt pretty hacked on: the way it’s tacked to the pulpit and trimmed to the cabintop cleats means you really can’t get a very good shape.
I decided to try something new with my boat. I wanted a jib that would tack to the deck, rather than the pulpit. I wanted to keep it small so I could fly it in up to around 15 knot breezes. I wanted to be able to point efficiently, which means as close a trim angle as possible.
What I came up (along with my sailmaker) with has worked really well - in my first race with it I finished 3rd! It’s also easy to sail and makes the boat so much more fun.
The tack comes down to a Suncor 3 1/4" diamond padeye bolted to the foredeck. The position is determined by stretching a line tight from the halyard block down to the deck. The line should just touch the pulpit crossbar without any angle there. To install the padeye I drilled 1/2" holes, filled them with epoxy, and re-drilled 1/4 holes to keep the core dry. Then I used two thinner backing plates (one smaller than the other) instead of one thick one so that they could curve to match the deck camber more easily. A short dyneema strop picks the bottom of the sail up about 6" off the deck.
The sheets run from the sail through 300mm Selden System 15 tracks with low-friction ring pinstop cars. I found them on eBay for $200 for the set. Then they run to blocks mounted on the forward stanchion base, back to ratchet blocks on the middle stanchion base, and up to camcleats on the cabin top.
It’s important that a high-tech low-stretch halyard line is used. I used 1/4" Samson MLX3 but I wish I’d gone a size up so it was easier to handle. It’s also the spinnaker halyard.
The sail is Tyvek with carbon fiber reinforcement. It’s got dyneema luff ‘wire’ that takes the halyard load to the deck, and one full batten about 2/3 of the way up that stops the sail from wrinkling toward the top. The sail is very thin and flexible, which makes it really easy to drop down on to the deck. I also added grommets that run up the luff and laced a thin 1/8" dyneema retrieval line through them so that I can pull it and the sail flakes itself.
Now that this project is done, next thing is to find or design an asymmetrical cruising spinnaker… my fleet won’t let me race in the cruising class with the boat’s normal symmetrical kite.
That jib looks fantastic Ian. You can get a much flatter shape than my blade with camber spar. I find I can sheet the jib in but I can not change its shape, which is fixed and a compromise. In a blow I can not flatten it and head up. The other factor that limits pointing ability is the fat mast but you can’t do much about that. I used 5mm dynema for my halliard which is a bit smaller than your 1/4" and yes not easy to handle. I tend to use the spinnaker halliard winch to tension it and cleat off the tail as I found I couldn’t cleat it under tension, it would slip through the jammer. It means I can’t reef on that side but my first reef is on the other side but then I have never used the second reef and if I had to, I’d probably want to drop the jib anyway.
As a matter of interest, how do you intend to fly the asymmetric?
The other factor that limits pointing ability is the fat mast but you can’t do much about that.
Yep, absolutely. A 12 degree sheeting angle is, I think, about as close as you can possibly get before the slot is just too small to be effective.
I also had to significantly change how I trim the main, which was surprising to me. With the jib, the traveler really wants to be almost centered.
My plan for the asymmetric is to tack it down to the bow pulpit I think, keeping it as far forward as possible. I’ll probably add a center patch to make a retrieval line similar to the normal spinnaker, then I can hopefully just pull it into the same sock I already have. I’d have to have a crew member go to the foredeck to swap the halyard between the jib and kite as I still only have one halyard. This is very much an experiment that I want to try but I need to find a cheap used spinnaker with a 20’ luff first, and that’s been surprisingly hard. Most of the used ones I’ve found have been much larger. I’d hate to buy new if it turns out not to work.
I also had to significantly change how I trim the main, which was surprising to me. With the jib, the traveler really wants to be almost centered.
I don’t think that is surprising. Your jib is turning the airflow onto the main, so that can take a closer sheeting angle now but as it is a fractional rig you will need some twist at the top to keep that working. I also sail a 2.4m class boat on a local reservoir (we are 3 hrs drive from my F21). This also has a very fine sheeting angle on the jib and when beating I will keep the boom on the centreline, in light winds I will even have the traveller well out to windward to get more fullness in the main.
I’d have thought you might want to use the gunmount pole for the tack to get the asymmetric further forward than the pulpit. You could also add an external block for the jib. I have both the spinnaker halliard (internal) and an external block just below that that I run the jib halliard from. I have a continuous line back to the cockpit that allows uphaul and downhaul from the jib head, which means no one needs to go forward.
That’s some good info on the main trim - I’ll have to play with traveler position to see how twist affects it.
I would definitely put the asym kite out on the pole like a bowsprit, but the primary goal here is to be able to race with it in cruising class (so I don’t have to go up against the planing sportboats in racing class). Our local PHRF rules require cruising spinnakers to be tacked “to the deck or anchor roller”. I think I can get away with the pulpit but the pole is probably pushing it.
I am considering attaching a block to the jib halyard and running a spinnaker halyard through that. I’d leave the jib flying downwind and then I could hoist the spinnaker from the cockpit without going forward. I haven’t tried it yet though. Honestly my brother would probably rather have the excitement of foredecking
My son and I were sailing yesterday, we just sailed up and down the coast. Broad reach out and close on the wind back. With the spinnaker up we were doing 6 to 7 knots in 10 to 14 apparent. However coming home the best we could make was around 1 to 2 knots in a fairly consistent 12 to 16 apparent. I was wondering what sort of sea state you sail in. We had a swell right on the nose mixed in with some offshore wind chop and we just couldn’t get any momentum going through it. I know Rockin needs a haulout but that was painfully slow. To get home we had to resort to motor sailing.
I’ve definitely noticed my boat doesn’t like to sail into chop. In flat water at 12 knots breeze I can consistently get around 4-5 knots upwind, especially with the new sail. But add in some decent swells and that’s down to 3 knots easily. 1-2 is pretty rough but I could see it happening.
Did you reef at all upwind? At around 14 knots breeze with the full main I end up with so much weather helm that the rudder starts stalling and it really slows me down. I really don’t like holding the tiller more than about 5 degrees off center - having a reef in at that point is noticeably faster.
We may have had a bit of a tide against us to start with but no more than 1/2knt, but on the bigger waves… bang and we were almost stopped. I think next time I will try it with fuller sail (more power), even though we had a good breeze. I tend not to reef until 16-18 knts and do not have any trouble with weather helm until then. Do you have a flat plate rudder? I had the same problem when I first bought Rockin but added a foam cored NACA 0010 profile to it after the first season. It made a big difference.
I do have a flat plate rudder. That sounds like a cool project and I’ve read your posts about it, but unfortunately I think it’s outside the limits of what I can accomplish working out of my apartment. It’s great that you got such a good result though! Weather helm has always been my nemesis on this boat.
