Quote:
Originally Posted by soul searcher
I tuned my rig for twenty knots I figured that was good middle ground for us.
And did not exceed 15% on the lowers 20% on the caps.
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How does one go about optimizing the
rig for 20Knots?
The
rig I would like to set is a twin spreader aft swept 7/8
rig with a set of lowers and intermediates. The mast is a keel stepped affair. The mast is held firmly at deck level but the base can be moved fore-aft.
Currently the boat is getting quickly overpowered in high winds, constantly broaching into the wind in the gusts. It looks like pulling hard on the backstay and cummingham has little effect in flattening the middle part of the sail.
My other problem is that I do not own the boat so, of course, before playing about with other people's stuff one must be extra careful on what one is doing.
From the excellent info found in this thread I conclude that, for this
rig setup,
the rake will be determined by the forestay length while the prebent will then be primarily determined my moving the mast base fore-aft keeping the shrouds fairly tight. The uppers should then be set to the 15% loading mentioned earlier.
It would seem then, that to optimise the
rig for 20knots, say, one has to play about with the lowers and the intermediates.
Currently reducing the tension on the lowers results in some significant bending of the
rig forward when pulling the backstay but the bent is nowhere near the 2% of mast length originally mentioned by Alex. Also the leeward shroud now becomes fairly floppy when sailing at 20knots so I am not sure if we have created another problem with the mast bending to leeward.
By the way, getting a rigger with a loos guage did not help much as apparently all he did was set the tension in the upper shrouds in port and more importantly the broaching problems remained.
regards