Good morning all,

I'm just going to go out on a limb to say my fiancé' and I are newbies. We've been out a number of times on our J30 with very gracious guidance from the previous owner and a couple other new sailing friends. We had her out a week ago...our first solo (just the two of us) cruise. This past Saturday, we put both the main and jib up. It went pretty well considering there wasn't much air...6kts max.


With all of that being said, we got good opportunities to start understanding a little better what makes power and what doesn't Another post here helped me make power with the jib by moving the jib sheet car forward. Now, I'm kind of at a loss with using the traveler and main sheet. I tried to play around with positioning port to starboard, but with the light air, I couldn't really tell what effect it had most of the time. So, we were relegated to trimming with the mainsheet while tacking. It was a good day.

Now, I'm looking up vang use and am wondering how I was supposed to use it...if at all.

So, are there any rules of thumb that I can start with as far as main sheet, vang, and traveler position for properly trimming the main? We were getting around 4kts in 6kt-ish air...so I'd like to think we were doing alright for newbies...but just the same, I'm missing something....or a lot of somethings.

Thanks,

Nate