Christian,
the downside to adding more purchase to the jib is that it will not stay
correctly sheeted when you go two sail reaching (the two sails will not be in
sync with one another). I have seen the problem you describe but it is
usually
associated with something in the jib sheeting system causing excessive
friction. Normally, you should only experience this in the last two inches of
boom travel and you can quickly pull hard and the jib will come in.
I've thought a number of times about changing the radius of the jib track,
however, I've learned to use the car travel to my advantage right after the
start. Normally, I find that if the jib car is moving to weather, I've over
sheeted the jib--an advantage sometime to gain a lee bow position. The
exception is in really light air and when like to see the car move a couple of
inches to weather. It is easy enough to order any radius you'd like if you
prefer
something different.
Bram
In a message dated 2/12/2008 1:23:06 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
swiftsolo@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Not sure what the context is for people wanting to move their cleat, but
since we are on the subject, there are some real improvements
that could be done to the sheeting system. Here is a couple and how I've
tried to improve it.
1. When sailing up wind I have often wanted to sheet the jib harder. But If
I set the relativity to that, I get a situation where
pulling on the main, just makes the main go in. E.g. the force from the
jibsheet behind the mainsheet cleat is higher than the force
it takes to just move the main in. So the sheet is not moving through the
mainsheet cleat. Possible moving the mainsheet cleat aft
could alleviate some of this issue. The solution I have tried is to use more
purchase in the jib sheet. Sailed with that most of last year
and it appears to work fairly well. But obviously down wind your jib is not
going out as far as it would with the original system. I don't think
this has an impact on speed, but does require a little more accurate
steering.
2. Another issue is when sheeting the jib hard, the cart moves inward on the
track and chokes the slot off. I feel the boat could have a better upwind
performance if I could sheet the jib a bit flatter. The root cause of this
problem is that the (49er) track does not have the right geometry
for our jib. Jordan showed me a way of eliminating some of this, by running
the jib sheet to the sides of the track.. See attached picture.
I have only tried this out a few times, and it has hard time working in
light air due to the extra friction of the blocks. I am going to try
and taper some line to make it lighter through there and see how that will
work out. But otherwise it looks promising.
Christian
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