2nd wednesday regatta of the season in the Kiel fjord. It was blowing F5-6 gusting to 7. Only 15 yachts participated in three groups (instead of usually 40). 2 boats had to abort due to ripped foresails.

We've been three crew onboard Ilvy: two sitting on the windward edge, me at the tiller. Due to the easy junk rig reefing, sailingat those conditions in fact didn't feel and went any other than at F4. Only, it was a bit more wet. 

We started with three panels reefed, but unreefed one panel shortly after the start signal. Overall, we reefed/unreefed about 5-6 times (it was gusty, and the Kiel fjord is spicked with wind shadows...).

Result: 5th place, out of 5 in Ilvy's group. Last, again. Quite frustrating. The folkeboats simply pointed a bit higher while being faster - and I surely need to train more on my upwind junk rig helming. I'm still pinching too much (didn't fasten the luff telltales yet).

However, we again raised some eyebrows and were complimented about the sail construction and especially about the choice of sail color. 

There is a lot of potential, and I take it on me to get better! Anyways, I get the feeling that already only the presence of a junk rig at that regatta is good advertisement, regardless of her placement :)

Paul S,

just a dumb question:

When did you last scrub the bottom of Ilvy?

Arne

Anonymous wrote:

Today we had pretty much exactly the same conditions in the Kiel fjord at the regatta on wednesday: NNE F4-5.

I headed out for some training, trying to stay in the groove while sailing upwind. Turns out, Ilvy's tack angles/ angles to windward werr still not too good. What did I do wrong? How did I manage to get to almost 90° in Sweden last summer?

Then I got distracted from shooting some videos of the tacking manoevre of a junk rig. I did a lot of tacks, but focussed on filming. After that session, routinely checked my GPS track: Wow! Now this is what I had expected while racing: almost 90° in every tack. Was it possible, that I sail better angles if I didn't focus too much on steering!?

What an unexpected result...

Cheers, Paul

(Find the according screenshots attached)

Bonjour

There is a misleading thing with junk rig. When sailing windword, the sail is aparently more open than the Bermudien sails. If you are racing against a bermudien, you are tempted to pull the sail to hard. The result is that your speed drops and the keel is less effective. If you ave some waves it will be orse as when the wae pushes the boat leeward the kell doesn't resist sufficiently and stall for a short while. It creates a lot of drag.

When sailing winward with any boat but particularly with junk sails, the most important parameter is the speed over water (but the speed over ground, provided by the GPS, gives a good information also). If the speed is too low, ease the sheet a little until the boat speed recover the good value for the keel to work properly.

In general, if you have the fealing that your junk is not sailing properly winward, ease the sheet. If the sheet is a little too loose you will lost a few degrees and win in speed; noting realy important. Keep your boat running.

Eric

Hi Paul, 

no need to be sorry, I like your definition! Thank you for the clarification. To me low alpha tolerance is a new concept that well explains the “narrow groove” which I feel while sailing my boat. 
when the trim is right the boat “falls in the groove” and sails higher and faster…But as you pointed out the groove is narrow and I now understand why I need so much concentration to follow it and keep my heavy, fat bowed and flat bottomed twin keel boat going. I noticed that when sailing close hauled the two top panels stall while the lower ones have attached flow. Is it the same on your sail? As said in an another thread, probably adding camber to the top panels would improve the upwind performance and would be useful in a racing setting. Here the wider alpha tolerance provided by the yard could help to compensate the discrepancy between wind shear at the top and the null twist of the sail…make this sense?

Anyway, reading the threads about shape, battens and racing made me understand better why my sail works in the way she works…

Thank you for this ;)

Mauro

Hi Paul,

No need to say that my twin keeled, heavily built kingfisher 20+ is not a race animal. Nevertheless, I find also that the groove on Shui Jen is quite narrow and I like to squeeze out of her as much as I can.  Junk sloops are cat rigged and I sail her as a laser…now, when I started learning sailing on my laser the instructor (a former laser racer ) explained me that the groove is a fluid concept. The wind has no steady direction but swings constantly like a pendulum. Its oscillation is not symmetrical and every regatta field on the upwind leg has a good and a bad tack: on the good one the wind swings  more frequently to windward. On this tack you can luff up more frequently than on the other tack and sail accordingly higher (closer to the mark). Moreover, the wind oscillates also in his strength and when it strengthens, the vector of the apparent wind moves astern meaning that you can luff up again. Anyway, after an acceleration as your speed increases, the same vector will move in the opposite direction meaning that you have to bare away again…of course to this should be added the motion of the waves (one should luff up while climbing up and bare away while sliding down the wave in order to keep the boat going). I think that this concepts can apply not only to lasers but to every cat rigged boat including a junk rigged sloop. Of course on cat rigged racing dinghies must be trimmed also weight, camber and twist…anyway, the groove to me looks like a lively moving snake :) Following it properly deserves a lot of attention and practice….

cheers

Mauro