Mark Leach:I assume you have an old Doyle tuning guide from the early-mid eighties. When I shared my Doyle guide with my sailmaker (Doyle), he didn't even know the author. I tried the Doyle guide for about 1.5 seasons with pretty good results in light air against 30' masteheads. I then tried the Banks guide on the J30 website with better results in mid-heavy air. Since then, I have developed my own settings for my local area and PHRF fleet. IMHO, a tuning guide is directly related to your sails - if you have an old blown-out main, then you will likely need more prebend to flatten the sail. On Lake Ontario, we either have light air or heavy air and little medium winds so my sailmaker cut my main (for example) quite flat and my rig settings reflect this - I carry a very straight mast with minimal prebend to make the main as full as I can. The prebend suggested in the old Doyle tuning guide would result in large overbend wrinkles in my new main. I also find the Banks tuning guide is not competely applicable to the PHRF sailor and I tend to carry a very tight rig with 40+ on the Loos guage (like Mark from lake Carlyle). The tight rig is necessary to generate enough forestay tension for pointing when the wind isn't strong enough for backstay tension - convincing the J30 to be competitive against masthead rigs requires some experimentation. At the end of the day - any tuning guide is a suggestion and you must consider the cut and condition of your sails.
One last note on weather helm - we smoke (I mean s-m-o-k-e) when its windy so I'm confident in our approach to heavy air. The helmsperson (my wife) strikes a balance between feathering the boat into the wind and scalloping a little for power. We play the backstay quite a bit and make small adjustments in the main and genoa (we're talking +/- 1" adjustments) as we power up and down. The genoa is constantly trimmed to be 1" off the speader. We will roll boats that owe us over 15 sec/mile to windward in big chop and gusty conditions. We do, however, have weather helm and the Tarten Ten fleet noticed (as we pointed higher and sailed faster) that my wife steers with two hands and has to muscle her way through the waves. A flattened main, a properly trimmed genoa, and feathering will greatly reduce waether helm but its the nature of the boat.
Gotta love the J30!
Mike Kern
Hull 477
"Transmission"
