Asymmetrical on an old boat

[Euphonyx]

Has anyone ever considered putting an asymmetrical on an old boat for shorthanded racing? Am kicking the tyres of this idea. Mines a UFO 31 masthead rig. Old IOR mast quite far back. have kept the furling foresail for the same reasons. Is it unworkable? Who knows about this stuff? Thanks

 

[flaming]

Has anyone ever considered putting an asymmetrical on an old boat for shorthanded racing? Am kicking the tyres of this idea. Mines a UFO 31 masthead rig. Old IOR mast quite far back. have kept the furling foresail for the same reasons. Is it unworkable? Who knows about this stuff? Thanks

Depends...

I suspect not though. The IOR type hulls don't benefit from much speed increase with hotter angles. So you will be significantly slower if you can't sail downwind. And if legs are long a symetrical kite poled back is more stable (hence shorthanded friendly) than trying to drive as deep as possible with an A sail.

If however you expect to do a fair amount of point to point stuff, then it might be worth it. Many offshore focused boats go to A-sails, even if they then fly them off the pole, as an A-sail is faster than an S sail, but much harder to gybe. So if you're not doing a lot of gybing, and largely not trying to sail DDW, then it could really pay.

And then finally there's rating considerations... Assuming you're racing IRC, then kite area is cheap (rating wise, not money wise..) so go as big as you dare, and you get up to 3 without penalty, so I'd consider a massive symetrical runner, a medium asymetrical for reaching, and broad reaching in big breezes, and a small "chicken" chute. Symetrical if you think you'll do mostly windward leward, and Asymetrical if mostly offshore.

Or... If you think you're quite likely to completely forgo a kite in winds of 20kts +, then swap the chicken chute for a big A-Sail for light wind reaching

 

[dt4134]

I raced on an IOR boat that got an asymmetric. The owner basically had one made to be the same size as the largest spinnaker (so no change in the rating).

It was useful for reaching legs in round the cans racing. We flew it off the pole.

As Flaming pointed out you tend to be able to sail very deep with a symmetric on IOR boats, sometimes even a dead run worked, so it really depends upon the sort of racing you'll be doing. Not worth carrying an A-sail instead of a symmetric. It would have to be in addition.

Of course with more sails, there's more sail choices to be made and more room for error. Took a few races to work out exactly where the boundary lay.

 

[Euphonyx]

Thanks for that. It's just a kernel of an idea at the moment. Am considering long legged coastal and offshore short handed races. I'll let it brew for a while!