VT_Jeff wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 9:47 am
Interested to see/hear what the upwind performance is like. Will she point?
Congrats again, nicely done!
Thanks!
I do not know angles or anything, but the wind was coming directly off the ramp we launched from, and our routine for night one was; do a few laps around the bay and then back to the ramp and change 'crew' so all the boys got a chance, we did that several times and never any issue coming back into the ramp at an angle then turning directly into it right at the end and coming in on momentum.
The rudder steering is stiff, but I am very happy with how smooth the traveler system turned out, super easy as well and the ratio on the sheets is high enough that it takes no effort to hold it tight either. For tacking, we would center the traveler tighten the sheets start the turn, if needed I would give a stroke or two of the paddle, then once past center loosen the sheets and manually push the boom over by hand, usually that was good enough, sometimes I would need to do another stroke or two of the paddle because the wind was so light. I figured I would get comfortable with that before playing with jibing much, but I think it should be fairly safe with the traveler and sheet system I have as long as I stay aware.
To secure my rudders down, I found a super slick method was already in place...... I had set up the retract cable which worked well, by sliding the cable each side of the rudder down under the lower screws on the case for pulling it down, it uses the same cable to pull down instead of up, no rerouting needed! They will float so no need to pull them up in the water, just for securing them up on the trailer, so it is an easy switch at the beach launching and trailering to slip the cables over the screws to transform it from up to down and back.