Kicker to the cockpit

[nikkoo]

I certainly agree with your approach of using a top-end windspeed as a basis for calculating the maximum loads.

 

[Tomahawk]

Triming the kicker is one of the most i portant aspects of getting a good set on the sails..

I suggest you simply wander around the boatyard and look at any racing boat .. It will be set up for maximum efficiency and easy of use and see what you can copy from them.. Becst look at boats of a similar size to yours..

 

[reeac]

One way to do that would be to make the system double-ended so it leads to both sides, but that will require a lot of new blocks.

Here is a formula for calculating mainsheet load which you can plug into an excel spreadsheet

=((B10*B10)*(B11*B11)*0.02104*(B12*B12))/((SQRT((B11*B11)+(B10*B10))*(B10-B13)))


Where B10 is foot length in metres
B11 is luff length in metres
B12 is wind speed in knots
B13 is distance from outboard end of boom to attachment point

If you use B13 as the vang attachment point (and increase the distance from the end of the boom), you will see the loads shoot up. Of course it doesn't tell the whole story, because as wind speed picks up, you will reef and reduce the foot and luff length, but it might help your estimates.

I have a feeling that there's something wrong with the denominator in that formula as it appears to be the square root of the sum of a number of squared metres and of cubed metres - on the other hand I may be miscounting brackets.

 

[bbg]

Plug it into excel and have a play.

It is the square root of (luff length squared plus foot length squared)
Multiplied by
Distance from the end of the boom

 

[reeac]

Plug it into excel and have a play.

It is the square root of (luff length squared plus foot length squared)
Multiplied by
Distance from the end of the boom

I don't need to use Excel now that you've stated the denominator in words as it's all in units of metres now and makes sense. It would be nice to know what units the load is in though. Sorry, I'm being finicky in going back 60 years to A-level stuff.

 

[bbg]

The result is in kg