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weather helm
One last thing...
First of all, great treatise from JeffH on sail trim in a freshening breeze.
Modern boats often have flat, beamy rear ends. Take a look at the hull shape of boats like recent EDS Atlantic Challenge winner Kingfisher and you can see the extremes of this design. That boat is shaped like a wedge of cheese.
When you heel a boat with a wide, flat rear end, the rudder gets lifted out of the water more than it would on a more traditional underbody. That means the rudder is much less effective at countering weather helm. It''s less effective, period.
So, what do you do? You reef.
That''s what it''s like on my boat, anyway. Even though it displaces about 12,000 lbs, we''ve got the first reef in at 15 knots.
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