Best sail for light winds on a 26X?

[dlandersson]

Had a great day with the kids today, but the question did come up. I currently have a 150% RF Genoa and a (Hunter 216) main - a touch bigger main than the 26X.

Seems like the best sailing days for the kids often have light airs - 5 knots of less. IS there a particular Jib or Genoa configuration (or make) for light airs?

[Erik Hardtle]

I have 2 kids that grew up taking trips with me and the boat for that past 10 years... one thing I learned: Do not use the main if heeling scares them.

I have spent many a trip just using the Genoa jib with the kids... and furling/reefing it to keep the heeling down. It proved good speed and very little heeling. When the kids reached the age of 12-13, they started to like the speed and heeling with the main up.

[Whipsyjac]

Sounds like you need a code 0...a "gennaker"

Read this thread about light air sails. It's about Judy's Potter but from the third post on its mostly about light air sails.

http://www.macgregorsailors.com/forum/v ... +B#p286227

There's another reference I'll try to find too about Windchime's cruising light air sail.

Remember in light air to keep your boom Vang loose as well as your mainsail outhaul so your main can shape in the light breeze.

Also for light air sails it's a good idea to have lighter sheets so they're not pulling the sail down or flat.

Willy

Edit: here's the link to Windchime describing his Gennaker... Amazingly concise compared to his advice on fishing techniques. http://www.macgregorsailors.com/forum/v ... 15#p275638

[mastreb]

The stock 150% Genoa on these boats is excellent as is for light air. You'll get more mileage out of trimming correctly _and_ trimming your boards specifically for light air than you will out of another sail. Easier to fix your sailing than to fix your sails.

Try these tricks:

1) Use a boathook through the clew of the genoa and lashed to the mast to keep it from flapping.

2) Pull the windward rudder and the outboard skeg out of the water.

3) Set your daggerboard for the point of wind:

100% down at 60 degrees off the wind
75% down at 90 degrees off the wind
50% down at 120 degrees off the wind
25% down at 150 degrees off the wind
0% down at 180 degrees off the wind

4) If the winds are too light to get to 15 degrees heel, have all your human ballast go to the leeward side of the cabin and cockpit to get the boat there. You want the boat at 15 to 20 degrees of heel to get the minimum possible waterline cross-section/wetted surface.

5) keep your hull clean. Even a small amount of growth kills speed.

6) Sail mainsheet-in-hand and un-cleated. In light airs, you can simply use your arm-strength to put constant appropriate tension on the mainsheet and that will maximize the forward momentum of every little gust. If the wind picks up, cleat off.

7) Use an autopilot to keep course. In very light winds, rudder stall from over-steering is the #1 speed killer, and it takes forever to recover from. Just a single over-steer can kill all your built-up speed for minutes, so I routinely control my rudder exclusively with the autopilot in light winds. This makes a HUGE difference to performance in light airs.

8 ) Get a cheap handheld anemometer for windspeed and a mast-top windex for wind direction. It's extremely important to STOP trying to increase speed if the windspeed just won't support going any faster. A handheld anemometer will tell you apparent windspeed, and when the boat is doing better than 50% of apparent wind, you're doing everything right. The boat is not going to do 3 knots in 4 knots of wind, and if you keep trimming because it seems like speed is low you're going to kill your speed. Knowing the windspeed helped a lot to understand when it was time to stop beating myself up about speed and instead take credit for the efficiency I was getting.

MacGregors can absolutely crush keelboats in light airs when they're trimmed correctly--I've been as much as twice as fast as much larger boats in winds under 6 knots because we don't have all the momentum to get over. The lighter the winds, the faster a MacGregor is compared to a keelboat all the way down to 1 knot of Speed-over-ground.

[dlandersson]

Nice point - kids are not fond of heeling past 10 degrees or so.

I have 2 kids that grew up taking trips with me and the boat for that past 10 years... one thing I learned: Do not use the main if heeling scares them.

I have spent many a trip just using the Genoa jib with the kids... and furling/reefing it to keep the heeling down. It proved good speed and very little heeling. When the kids reached the age of 12-13, they started to like the speed and heeling with the main up.

[dlandersson]

No - a Code 0 requires more crew attention than I can afford when I am with a 6 and 8 year-old.

Perhaps a "code 1".

I like the idea of a "light-air sheet". I've e-mail Judy B about this.

[dlandersson]

Some good points. Note that most 26x's don't seem to have a daggerboard, and when I am with my kids, I am not going forward to lash a pole (which I have btw) to the Genoa. Gotta keep it really simple at this point.

[mastreb]

Some good points. Note that most 26x's don't seem to have a daggerboard, and when I am with my kids, I am not going forward to lash a pole (which I have btw) to the Genoa. Gotta keep it really simple at this point.

I don't know how varying the centerboard height works, because it also moves the CLR back. It should simply make the boat track better as the CE lead increases, so it should be equally effective. I also don't know where the CB line is on an X--if it's in the cabin then that would be way too much hassle to bother with.

Anyway, I do quite a bit of light air sailing, and I honestly don't think a light air sheet would yield a valuable improvement over the stock genny. Other factors dominate.

I sail with a heavy 7oz genny with luff pads (judy b) that does extremely well in light air because it keeps it's shape very well without a pole. I also use a matching 7oz fully battened mainsail for the same reason. The suite was $1600 or so from her and well worth it. It does make the genny on furler quite a bit heavier when raising the mast though, and the higher weight aloft increases heel a bit.

[DaveC426913]

Try these tricks:

I am going to print this list out and pin it to my binnacle.

[Tomfoolery]

Won't that hurt?

[DaveC426913]

No. I've got a piercing.

[Tomfoolery]

Ba-da-bum <crash>

[Johnacuda]

After that, I'm waiting for a 'Prince Albert in the can' joke.

[Wind Chime]

Hey Willy,

- what the heck ... you didn't like my sail-fishing post on the MYCBC site? Lol! You probably loved my crabbing thread (part-1) as well then

To bad we never made it out of Roche Harbor to get to Telegraph Harbor last weekend, had big plans to get a nice salmon on the barbee for the group . Just couldn't leave the steamed Orcas Island clams and BBQ Vodka oysters. Sorry man.

Looks like we will have to wait for steamed crabs in the pot at Sucia Island at the end if this month.

There's another reference I'll try to find too about Windchime's cruising light air sail.


Willy

Edit: here's the link to Windchime describing his Gennaker... Amazingly concise compared to his advice on fishing techniques. http://www.macgregorsailors.com/forum/v ... 15#p275638

[DaveC426913]

2) Pull the windward rudder and the outboard skeg out of the water.

You know, I thought I knew what a skeg was, but as far as I know, Macs don't have em. So maybe I' m wrong.