Howdy All,

After a three year hiatus of mostly racing a few distance races we are finally gearing up for some 'round the cans racing at a local regatta this weekend. I was wondering for those of you who race regularly what your crew setup is - i.e. how many crew do you race with and who does what (from a position standpoint) on your boat.

Appreciate any input - our regatta is tomorrow morning so it will be largely trial by fire.

I'll take a stab at this...

we'll sail with up to 8 people. Weight does help when it's windy, and probably doesn't hurt too much when it's light.

- helm rather obvious... drives the boat, responsible for safety decisions

- main trimmer - trims main, makes strategic and tactical decisions. When things go wrong, he's the person in charge of getting it fixed (NOT the helm)

- pit - upwind, tails jib sheets on tacks. Downwind - takes care of guy and topping lift.

- Jib trimmer... does final trim on jib, adjusts as needed

- Spinnaker trimmer - trims chute

- Foredeck - sights the line at starts, helps get sails up, sets the spin pole, gybes the pole, takes the pole off on douses. Does all the magic up there that I have no clue about.

- Mast - jumps halyards, releases the spin halyard on takedowns

- 8th... holds the guy out as we're approaching a mark for a takedown, feeds the chute back to the companionway to stow in the bag (we set/douse into a bag in the companionway)

Thx Dennis - that is hugely appreciated !

on the Gulf we like to sail with 8. but we are looking for 1400 lbs. and can do 7.

the most important two are the port and starboard trimmers. They have to work as a team. focused entirely on short fast tacks. This is really hard with a 163 as there is a lot of sail to bring in really fast. and the bow man has to help it clear the shrouds without dragging and fraying the material ... too much.

Every tack with a poorly operating trimmer crew adds 10-20 seconds to a tack. There is only room for two strong,fast guys in front of the traveler. I'm thinking your spin trimmer is basically your port trimmer. We put the stronger of the trimmers on starboard probably because of the prefeed and guy control when rounding the w mark.

We don't like to run spin back to the companionway as it obstructs the driver's view and attention. And it is a very long prefeed especially with boat motion. so OK on a j/22 and j24 in/out the companion way, that works, but the spin can be on deck in a hand held pack and tossable, that not easy on j/30.

good luck with the race ... takes a while for crew to mesh with a spin program ... especially if the RC decides 2 or 3x around short course. Us old guys like once arounds ... so the crew can clean up and prep at a somewhat medium stress level.

To add a few more items to Herr Bartley's list:

On the chute set, the driver releases his own main sheet while the main trimmer helps the chute out of the bag/pit area. (i.e. pre-feeding the foot/guy and then calling the hoist and making sure the chute comes out cleanly.

We also use twing lines on the guy so during a jibe, so the old twing needs to be released and the new one hauled on. This is usually the chute trimmer as they move to the other side of the boat or the 8th pair of hands.

Foredeck - since he/she is the first one to cross the finish line, they should immediatly go below and get the crew beer!

G

More detail here on the class web site J/30 Crew Assignments and in Bill Kneller's Rhapsody crew guide, an Excel spreadsheet that you can modify to suit your preferences.

Moveable ballast in the form of crew on the rail helps more in breeze than it hurts in light air so seven crew is a good target, though it's easy enough to sail with six. If you don't cross sheet the Genoa, match a light person for final trim with someone who is big and strong.

On Blue Meanie we try to sail with 8 when possible to get as close to 1400 pounds as we can. In PHRF, the eighth man is a floater feeding me GPS info from the rail and helping on takedowns, human guy etc., in one design the eighth helps me on main trim and tactics (both of which I handle myself in PHRF). We go with a port and starboard trimmer, a separate spin trimmer, pit (handles halyard up/down and tensioning, twings, helps yank the chute down the forward hatch and does a quick run of the tapes, calls time at the start and monitors radio, and is the bartender for post race cocktails), mast and bow. Bow handles topping lift and foreguy, we tail the spin halyard back to the cockpit (and into the cabin) to minimize spaghetti forward. We launch and douse the chute out of the forward hatch to keep the already crowded cockpit clear.

Most importantly, we keep a nice selection of canned beer, and a bar stocked with premium gin, vodka, rum and tonic (all in lightweight plastic bottles of course). We rotate on lime duty...

Thanks for the added tips guys - the info. was helpful - we ended up going with 7 on the Saturday and 6 on Sunday as one crew couldn't make it out. We discovered very quickly that 7 is a nice number and with 6 we missed the extra body.

We side launched from the rail and did take downs through the front hatch as some of you suggested -this seemed to work well. We definitely need to add some twings/tweekers though. At least we got the well stocked part part figured out

Steve, so the eighth crew is bartender and lime cutter?