it depends on wind strength. also if you are sailing along a speed bank the angle to the wind comes into it.

light winds less downhaul and strong winds more downhaul.

thing to remember is that you are rigging to suit the apparent wind when you are planing

Its not the tension, its the SHAPE. For lighter winds, the sail needs to be deep to generate more thrust. In strong winds you need to control the thrust, so a flatter form but still with aerofoil shape is the go. DO NOT wind it up until the sail is flat and hard for strong winds, because it must curve to work.

Whatever the wind speed, the form of the sail should be sweet to gaze upon, free of wrinkles with the mast and battens obviously filling their pockets straight and obviously shaped as design intended.

Its taken me a fair while to achieve that with scabby mix-n-scrounge gear and I am starting to get there helped by advice and practice. Now I want to mount telltales - little bits of wool - so I can better understand the airflow.

A couple of years ago I was foredeck hand on a Spacesailer 22 and the sailmaker came for a trimming cruise with us. Just a few words from him had the boat going as fast as it ever had gone; the first leg of the race gave us a lead that many screwups on the remaining legs couldn't quite eradicate.

Smooth airflow. Shape.

http://www.ezzy.com/sails/se08.cfm <<go here and click on the SE rigging video link. I think the basic concepts described by ezzy here pretty much apply to all modern sails, thou obviously each sail probably has its quirks. And exactly how much looseness is required in the leech to get the appropriate amount of twist to suit the conditions.

www.north-windsurf.com/en/support/Download-Archive
www.ezzy.com/sails/pdfs/2008/se_rigging.pdf
you can also go to these links and download the rigging guides, its for northsails and ezzy, but again I think the basic concepts hold true.

I kinda blitzed the web looking for rigging advice, after it was made pretty apparently last week that I pretty much didn't have a clue what I was doing.

As far as luff lengths etc go, I think they are a good rough guide, but use the visual cues from observing the looseness of the leech to fine tune the sail.


Two of the clips from the ezzy site:



*edit* just realised, you probably already knew all this and just wanted to know how to make them extra fast, i feel kinda stupid, anyway, this stuff helped me, mebe it will help someone else.

KA make sails fast

The best and quickest way to make the sail fast is to let me use it, I'll make it go fast.

mathew said...

Nice work "Matty R" - are you Brucie?

clearly the answer is yes

To go fast:

More downhaul, less outhaul, sail broader. You'll be surprised