J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum Racing Tools and Techniques light air downwind racing

we are racing a J30 that has been out of comission for some time. we race on the Ohio river is a fleet of 50 boats in a JAM class of 9 boats. the conditions in the summer are winds of 5-6 knots with a down wind leg of mostly down wind upriver against a current of about 2 knots. most of the boats go wing to wing. we are having trouble getting the boat going. we have tried 135 to 155 Genoa's and going broad reach and wing on wing. any suggestions would be appreciated
St Elmo's Fire No 44

Dead down wind just isn't a fast point of sail for the J/30. Experiment to see if your VMG (-VMG in this case) is better by heating the boat up somewhat, sailing angles and gybing.

Have you tried using the spin pole as a whisker pole, then adjusting pole height to get maximum pull from the jib?

I do race my J30 in spinnaker class and in non Spin class. In 2010 won the Non spin championship / 2011 was second (in a mixed fleet)
The winds during the summer are oftern light,...and Bill is correct in saying dead down is not always the best option

This year I have been trying something different going downwind
In light winds <5kts
I take the traveller up to the windward end, with no vang, sheet out the main and "play" with the sail's position while holding the sheets in my hand (pulling it forward)....untill I find (feel) the sail pulling
Surprisingly, the boom was just off center with a huge twist going downwind at 120-125 degrees

I have found that as the wind increases, I gradually increase the vang, lower the traveller and point more downwind (always trying to find the position that pulls the most

Last night the winds were 16kts+ so we were with the 110 Genoa and full main,...we were dead downwind, wing-on-wind and doing between 7 and 7.8 Kts on the knot meter
The etchelles could catch us / nor could the J24's

That's what works for us

Breakaway
Hull 532

thanks to both
we have been centering the traveler, easing the backstay and tensioning the boom vang to flatten the main. we have tried both sizes of genoa, and have had difficulty both in wing on wing and broad reach filling the genoa. we'll try putting the traveler to windward; that would seem to put more body in the main. we are also looking at rig tuning to ease forestay tension.
all advice is much appreciated

If your genoa isn't filling on a broad reach, you are sailing to low. Heat it up to 90-110 apparent wind angle. Once the boat speed builds, your true wind angle is going to be down somewhere around 140!

thanks
that seemed a solution to us also. we are also looking at the mast tuning blogs in the forum as we suspect we can use some adjustment there; as the boat has some age on it, we're a little reluctant to tighten the shrouds too much though. we have rod rigging and haven't seem a lot of info on boats with this type
any ideas appreciated.
we'll try both the traveler ideas and the point of sail this Wed and see what that does

Rod rigging on a J/30. Interesting.

All of our boats have some age on them. Mine is a '79 model and I run my shrouds around 1300/1100 but I think I might up that. That said, if your shrouds are too loose, that won't hurt your downwind speed but won't do you any favours upwind.

Have only sailed non-spin during frostbite when our rules won't allow crew out of the cockpit or up on the foredeck, so no pole. To sail dead downwind we use a preventer rigged from the boom to the jib car and back to the secondary winches on each side. This allows you to sail by the lee with the air flowing over the mainsail from leech to luff. Same way you sail downwind in a Laser. Helps to have a 'springy' luff, meaning not too much vang.

Damned Laser sailors

This is where my Star experience comes to play.
1. Heel the boat to weather to expose the Genoa
2. Use the spinnaker pole as a whisker pole. I have also used light weight whisker poles that can telescope to enable the use of smaller head sales.
3. Remember that higher reaching angles require the pole to move forward.
4. Backstay TOTALLY off. Loosen the turnbuckles for the backstay as much as you dare. The rig should be max forward going downwind. Ease jib halyard to bag the sail.
5. Ease the vang, don't tighten it. Need to open the top of the main, exposes more sail area.
6. Related to 4 above, shrouds should be loose. In 5-6 kts of wind, I would try 900 uppers, 700 lowers. When you turn upwind, shrouds should just be kissing slack.