It's also interesting to have students after they've been on a
dink and then take the more "advanced" class on a bigger
boat. In some respects, they have to learn where the wind
is all over again. At least that's been my experience with
a significant number of students.

Also, since the bigger boats don't react as quickly to the
wind, they have to learn patience to find the grove and
keep it there.

"N1EE" wrote in message
om...
DSK wrote

Frank Maier wrote:

Ole Thom pretty much answered for me. I've raced and cruised on both
masthead and fractional rigs. I guess I answered "masthead", assuming
as my default a full crew of experienced sailors who'd manually deal
with changing conditions on a constant basis. Then you don't need the
fractional rig to "automatically depower" for you.

Conventional wisdom has it that mast head rigs will point higher, and I
think
that's true in ideal pointing conditions. But I think the frac rig is
more
versatile.

Masthead rigs can also carry a bigger spinnaker
and go faster downwind.


heh heh the old Fredom 40 cat-ketch is one of my dream boats. They don't
point
so high either, but it's a marvelous cruising rig. Sturdy and very easy
to
handle.

I want to try one of those. They look like fun.


It's also a very good point that knowing how to get the optimum out of
the rig
you have is more important than pining away for some theoretical ideal.
There
are too many sailors who study teensy detailed ways of scrooching some
small
improvement out of their boat, when their basic sailing methods are
notably
below optimal. I remember acting as 'guest skipper' on a very nice
European
designed and built racer-cruiser, a boat that should have had good
performance
but usually did very poorly in casual races. The usual skipper stood at
my
elbow and appeared to be very interested in how I drove the boat and had
the
sails trimmed. He usally cranked everything in hard and made the boat
heel
'way over, when I skippered we did much better. The next day, I was
sailing on
another boat and he went back to doing the same old thing.... and was
complaining about it the rest of the season.

Lots of sailors jump into big boats and think
they know to sail them. The fact is they will
never get good, if the boat is forgiving.

Small boats make the sailor. If you learn on
a dinghy, and screw up, you end up in the water.
When you are wet, and cold, is it very obvious
which way the wind is coming from. I am still
amazed at the number of people, who can't tell
where the wind is coming from! I tell me
students if they screw that up, I'm dumping a
bucket of water on their heads to help them
learn. Threats seem to help.


Thom's keel mod is a good idea IMHO because he does not sail in the
conditions
the boat was designed for, so it benefitted from increased keel area.
For most
sailors, I don't think such a modification would be a good idea.

I'm not familiar with what Thom did, so I'll take
your word for it.


Bart Senior