Yesterday morning saw just myself and Mark at the SAMYC lake in Kohler, WI. Winds were light and quite variable so we decided not to race with two regulars missing. It was one of those pleasant warm days when messing about with boats is the perfect pastime. Now Mark’s Kittiwake hasn’t been the fastest in our fleet and I am sure that it is not the skipper so I took the opportunity to watch it carefully and try to understand why.
After a while we swapped boats so that Mark could try out my Pond Sprite and I could get my hands on his Kittiwake… trusting soul that he is. What was obvious was that his boat just would not settle on a course and maintain drive. Not that it was wandering like it was badly out of balance, just that it would keep popping upright and losing drive for no obvious reason. I put some extra curve in the foot of each sail to suit the light conditions and tried to bring it back to the starting point I discuss on the ‘tuning your sails’ section here. That had little effect on the problem. It seemed that the mainsail was unwilling to swing very easily and the jib didn’t respond well either to light puffs. I checked the mast rings to see that the mainsail cleared the mast when pulled back, it did. Main luff tension was ok too, just enough to hold the luff straight. The jib seemed to swing easily enough in the hand but it didn’t have a balance weight at the front so I thought that was why it was reluctant to go wing on wing downwind.
The overall effect was that the sails were stuck in the middle and didn’t respond to the light puffs which saw Mark and the Pond Sprite sailing happily by me. Then after a half hour or so I found it, the Jib swivel was standing nice and straight due to a pretty tight forestay, I slackenned that a little and saw the mast relax. The jib sail luff tensioner was also tight so I slackenned that off so it was just enough to hold the jib luff (front edge) straight. Everything freed up at once, the mast bend was clearly causing the mainsail to stick.
Back on the water the Kittiwake was now much more responsive and able to maintain drive. I added some jib leech line tension to twist the jib off a little so as to soften the luffs in the occasional gusts and then she was sailing well. A footy needs to be able to respond on it’s own to the slightest wind speed or direction change and to do that both sails need to be able to move very freely. Even at the cost of a little forestay tension.
It was a fun morning, I hope that you got a little sailing in too.
Graham
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