J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment Asymmetrical

Well, so much for not having to tack an "A" sail.
The sail is definetely fast and controlable on a beam to slightly forward of the beam reach in 15+ knots of wind (what we bought it for). But not being able to jibe cost us 1st in class as well as overall. Wind shifted aft about 2/3 of the way down the 2nd leg. Lost some speed with having the A sail up when the wind moved aft but nothing compared to sailing with our #2 while we get rolled by an Evelyn 32 as we re-ran lines to set up for a re-hoist of the Ace. Time for a re-think.

Russ - what I did (without the pole setup) was run a tack line through a block at the base of the forestay, then have both spin sheets at the clew - then you can jibe. But my problem was that when we were on starbord reach the tack line would put a lot of load on the forestay. But with the pole up this would fix the issue.

What I have is a block that has a strop around the base of the forestay. This holds the tack line down. I think then you would run the tack up to the outboard end of the pole and it would work well and keep everything off the headstay. Aditionally it would free you to jibe and allow you to adjust the tack height.

Just some thoughts.

David
#397

Dave, thanks. That will work; but I will also need a lazy guy for the pole. And, both guys would attach directly to the pole instead of to the sail.

One thought was to put a snap shackle on a very short tack line off the sail. Then connect that directly to the pole. On take down, we could just blow the snap shackle (assuming we could reach it.

Also, if we had to go from the A sail to the standard chute the two guys would be on deck at the pole and almost ready to run with the new chute. Hmm

Russ,

Noticed in last America's Cup, they gybed the sail, but not the pole, leaving it to leeward of the headstay. There is probably some video around on YouTube showing this.

I picked up a new A-Kite (APR 70) last season and it works very well in open winds (like offshore racing). We have run a tack block off the bow to enable us to pull the kite down in tight reaches and let the tack out on runs. It works best when set on the spinnaker pole. In the tight reaches we crank down on the tack and then tighten the back-stay to the limit. It takes a minute or two to hit full speed (hence the need for fresh winds). In offshore longer legs the A-kite performs very well especially when the competitors need to reach offshore to get the right angles for the full kites. I highly recommend this type of configuration when doing these types of races.

Bob,
Thanks for the input. We plan to jibe similar to the A/C boats. We'll run two guys thru the eye of the outboard end of the pole. On the first jibe set, the pole will be trimmed away from the forestay. On the opposite jibe (assuming the we use the A sail) we will not jibe the pole; we'll simply trim it toward the forestay. We'll attach the tack of the sail directly to the pole off of a short line with a snap shackle to the pole. We'll run two sheets off the clew. We can adjust the pole back and up on one tack but only up on the oppisite tack. Seems complicated but I don't know how else to do it.


PS. Bob, Anna will be at the club Wednesday night to show off her Gold Metal! See you there.

Russ,

Sounds about like what I saw on the AC boats, but I don't know how the strop will work on the launch. Seems like you want the tack line attached at the bag pulling the sail out to the bow as its going up. Another string to pull, but with the number of crew I have been seeing on your boat, you should be able to handle it!

Sorry to have missed Anna and Wildcat's season overall win celebration, but I was crying in my beer over my busted winch! Glad I had a ride home!

As you know, we didn't use the Ace on Wednesday. The winds were aft enough to carry Big Blue on the 1st downwind leg. The last leg was a little tighter but fortunatley the winds seemed to deminish and we carried the all purpose just fine. We were glad we didn't have to experiment with so much on the line with the Melges 30.

Next time we fly the Ace we'll probalby launch the kite with the bag nearer the bow so we can attach the tack directly to the pole before launch and eliminate an extra tack line for pulling the kite out of the bag.

Wednesday night there was no time for us to celabrate and not the place. Wednesday night belonged to our club and Anna(Anna Tunnicliffe- 2008 Gold Medalist in Laser Radials). You missed a heck of a party; A couple of hundred people, two TV stations with live coverage, newspapers and radio. Duane did a spectacular job of intro's and interview. She was so gracious with autographs etc. I actually got to touch the gold medal. We couldn't be more proud of her accomplishments!! Check out the Toledo Blade on line, they had a real nice article even though they were a little low on the head count.

Hopefully your beer was a "Sam". We'll swap out winches (or parts) with my spare one on Saturday and have you ready to rock for the Captian Morgan series.

OK has any one taken this further? I am looking at putting in a new spin hoist sheave 1-2 ft up from the normal sheave and using a 5.5 sprit. I would be just under the J92 dimensions.
I am sick and tired of the sprit boats passing me on long reaching races. I kill them up wind but as the wind goes aft in PHRF racing the chance of winning falls behind as well.

any one have helpful info to provide before I start cutting checks.

I sail mostly solo and have similar plans for spring. A couple of questions: What sprit do you have in mind? Custom fixed or retractable? Are you think of an asymmetrical on a furler? Have you identified a sheave box? thanks