Thread: GIS sail tweaking

Originally Posted by warm beer

Very cool. thanks Bruce

Does the velcro clew strap have any effect holding the clew leech flat in relation to the boom?

In a Laser, yes, very important to get the clew very tight against the boom. This is because the mast bends so much and the traveler block meets the boom block when sheeted in tight upwind. If it's not tight, you miss out on vital leech tension.

It's not necessary to use a velcro clew strap though. A dyneema tie-down works just as well.

I bought the 5mm Paraloc Piranha - will comment when I receive it and test it.
Most definitely needed to update my halyard, as I kept noticing that with my prestretch, the yard was an inch or two lower at the end of the sail than at the start. As I run my halyard through a clamcleat, the idea of the no-slippage sheath design is appealing.

Duckworks had the best price, (though I would have bought it from them anyway even if they didn't)

New video shot from the top of my yard:


I wanted to get a look at my upper leech and see how the new leech battens were working. The wind velocity was 11 knots. From this angle you can see exactly how far off the boom the sail is, and the foot shape. The first thing I noticed in the video is that I need much more outhaul for the wind velocity, particularly with the boom on the leeward side of the mast. I had thought that that tack would require less outhaul as the sail wraps, but I was mistaken - the sail in front of the mast takes none of the outhaul slack, so all the slack goes to the sail aft of the mast wrap, which is a shorter distance, so more belly. The two lower battens worked perfectly, and an upper batten just might do the trick, though I will need to have a sailmaker add a batten pocket. For this sail, I went with Christophe's yard lashing position and bleeter length. I liked it. The two tacks were well balanced, and I did not notice any change in weather or lee helm.

I did not include the sections of video where I was pointing, as the upper leech vibration was so vigorous, that I'm lucky my camera survived!

Excellent video! What camera do you have?

Sent from my cell. Please excuse brevity and typos.

Originally Posted by paulie

Sent from my cell. Please excuse brevity and typos.

Sorry to hear that, hope they let you out soon

Originally Posted by paulie

Excellent video! What camera do you have?

Sent from my cell. Please excuse brevity and typos.

Thanks! It's a Nikon AW100. I thought about the GoPro, but wanted a waterproof compact camera for everyday use too.

Thanks! I've been trying to figure out what to request from my wife for Christmas. (Assuming they release me by then, of course.)

Sent from my cell. Please excuse brevity and typos.

Originally Posted by paulie

I've been trying to figure out what to request from my wife for Christmas.

Hacksaw blade maybe?

Very cool angle for the vid. I've been meaning to bolt my GoPro up there but you beat me to it. Good call on getting the Nikon instead of GoPro if you are looking for an all around rugged camera. The GoPro is great for it's wide angle and ability to survive ridiculous abuse but it's handling and image quality are terrible compared to any of the good quality waterproof point and shoots.

I've removed the dual fore and aft vangs and returned to the stock single downhaul. It does the job just great and is much easier to use. I experimented with the bleater some more and I'm less enthusiastic about it than before. It seems like moving the downhaul back 6-8 inches lessens the vertical pull enough to prevent the yard form bending enough to remove the horizontal wrinkle. There is so much tension on the bleater that it makes the boom groan very loudly against the mast. Sounds like a square rigger in heavy seas. Or at least what one sounds like in the movies . I love the fact that the bleater keeps the boom from scooting forward when hoisting sail so will probably use it with a vertical downhaul. Basically an evolution of the square lashing.

I wanted to see what mid boom sheeting would do in an attempt to remove the mainsheet-tiller tangle potential. This has caused only two capsizes and those were early on before I got used to it so not a big issue. Did not like the mid boom sheet at all. I could not get all three of the leech telltales flying simultaneously no matter what I did. The boom was not bending significantly but the angle of pull is different enough that it's just not the way to go for my sail setup.

So after all of this farting around I'm back to a basically stock setup and loving it. I can hear MIK's I told you so all the way here in Florida.

Next tweaks on the plate are an outhaul that's adjustable on the fly, trying for a simplified version of the McLuvin and an easy on the water reefing system.

I'm where you're at Simon. I like the straight up and down downhaul best, with a bleater only to counter the forward pull of my vangouthaul. Coming back into harbor with the wind astern, I got stupid for a second and gybed (intentional) with the traveller sheet in front of my body (not intentional). Gack - round up, untangle myself, fall off quickly lest I ram into a docked Coast Guard patrol boat. If the camera had not run out of battery charge, that would have been great video segment.

I think I said a few pages back that I did NOT like the combo of bleater and vanghaul and for exactly the same reason. It sounded like the bleater would saw right through the mast. Just a horrible noise! But bleater and vertical downhaul seems to work just fine. The boom stays where I want it and I can control sail twist with one string. I'm sticking with that for now.

As for the tiller/sheet tangle problem, I found that moving the traveler back to about midway between bulkhead 4 and the transom solves it. I was afraid that the angle would mess up the sail when close-hauled, pulling the boom back and screwing with the CE. But the downhaul tension seems to prevent that. Works fine and I haven't had a tangle since I moved it.

I want to improve my outhaul as well, but I really must build a stiffer boom first. That was on last winter's to-do list and didn't get done. It will definitely happen this winter.

I checked out sailrite's do-it-yourself batten pocket video, and it looks pretty simple.



My plan would be to defeat my upper leech flap with a batten, with the leech end of the new batten pocket halfway between my upper reef point/upper full length batten pocket and the peak. The two short battens I put in the leech end of my existing batten pockets worked really well.

A bit of 2" dacron tape, some elastic, some double stick and thread. How difficult can this be?

I ordered the sailrite batten pocket materials, I plan to cut down my old full length battens for the new battens - thin fiberglass stuff.

I have two layouts for one or two batten pockets sketched, does anyone have an opinion on which would be best? I already made battens of similar length inserted into the leech end of the two lower full length batten pockets.
full sal - two battens.JPGfull sal - one batten.JPG