If you don't care about One Design, the modifications I made to Natural High are the best thing I have ever done. Desperado (ex-Gracie) followed suit even more aggressively.
The yachts major strength is up wind in moderate to heavy, and its weakness is downwind in light to moderate. Working from that principal I justified the following changes:
- Exchange the PHRF hit from the headsail to the mainsail. i.e. Decrease the headsail and add to mainsail by the same score, or even go Code 7 on the mainsail (like Desperado did). The justification is that headsails do nothing for you downwind, but the main is up all the time. May be a slight cost upwind in 3-5 kts, but the extra mainsail up in the downwind I felt helped a lot. Plus the extra roach makes it super tweaky for fine tuning for extra speed. The bigger main also makes the #2 a much more valuable sail with a bigger wind range as you can't hold the #1 as long (unless you like flogging the piss out of the mainsail)
- By far the biggest performance boost I got was bumping the spinnaker hoist by 3 feet and putting a taller kite on. Just to where the taper starts. The mast is a tree-trunk compared to similar sized yachts... it can take the force that far above the shrouds. My spinnaker luff length is now 37.25', and the additional power just rips downwind in the heavy air, and is actually more stable than the old "thimble kites" because the width to height ratio is much skinnier (but the total width remained the same) and the head is less shadowed by the main. Helps a lot in the lighter winds having the kite higher and bigger.
There have been some recent changes in the code breaks at our PHRF authority that has caused me to go up and down, but currently my total rating hit has only been -6 from OD config. I'll trade that any day for the ability to sail downwind at 8 knots in 15 kts of breeze (steady 9s and 10s once the wind is up over 20 in flat water with no wave surfing).
We have been winning so something is working.
