how would you reef/slow down this further ?

[bilbobaggins]

Assuming a Grainger 'Essential Eight', which is a lightweight weekend flyer with a relatively big rig, it seems clear you're working in the Amber Zone - where you're whittling away at your reserve of stability in the ambient wind/wave conditions until you find the whereabouts of the Red Zone, where you have no reserve of stability left to lean on and it's just a matter of the wrong gust, and a slap from an awkward sea, at exactly the wrong moment.....

If that seems a little ungentle, consider the time-honoured dictum that "monohull racers reef for the lulls; multihull racers reef for the gusts..."

It seems clear that your boat needs a much deeper last reef in the main. There will be plenty of occasions when the true wind is over 30 knots in the gusts, and you cannot always rely on being able to go downwind to get home. Similarly, a much-rolled genoa is not the optimum foresail in such conditions, and you should certainly have something smaller and flatter that you can substitute, when you really feel the need.

How does your boat go on 'deep-reefed ( and flat ) headsail' alone?

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In anticipation of the Sunday Supplement Sailors' howls.... yes, I do have some background in multihull sailing and I quite fully acknowledge the difficult issues involved in calculations of static and dynamic stability, and what experience has to teach us about keeping small multis the right way up in big wind.


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[simonfraser]

Hi Bilbo, you know it's an 8m !

thanks for the info, yep i realised that at 30 knots aparent there was no prob, but more wind would have been a different story :-(( i did considder running downwind if there had been a further increase in the wind, i'd be in walton on naze by now !

flat main, yep i forgot yesterday to pull the main sheet in tight and let the traveller out, that would have helped & i could have wound a bit of the genoa in at the same time.

i somehow doubt the tri will sail to wind well with just one sail, she is a very responsive / delicately balanced boat, i'll have ago next time.

my head sail is not flat enought, it's cut as a genoa, now i have a big code zero for reaching the head sail can be flatter and would thus be better in a blow.

1) sort out a fourth reef
2) remember to flatten the main in a blow !

 

[pappaecho]

Re: how would you design a new mainsail?

Buy a ketch! Much easier to balance the boat. I have never used more than one reef in the mizzen, even in F8+

 

[simonfraser]

Re: how would you design a new mainsail?

haha, i'd just like to sail at more than 1.5 knots to wind !