On Oct 18, 7:08 am, jeff wrote:
Richard wrote:
It looks like I'll be sailing in Catalina 27's and 250's for the next
year.

I've been reading a lot about:
Tiny boat: Take every wind shift.
Huge boat: Not always! With the time/distance lost in turning a large
boat this may not be best.

So what would be the general rule for 25-27 footers?

What rules/guidelines do I use to learn properly the best way or
frequency or wind shift arc to tack?

It depends entirely on how much you like to tack! If you're racing you
would want to take advantage of every real shift, perhaps tacking every
few minutes. If you're daysailing with "no particular place to go" what
does it matter? A properly executed tack has very little loss; if you
have to explain which way to wrap the winch it might not be worth it.

I often sailed my Nonsuch 30 like it was a dinghy, tacking on every
shift, and often beating faster boats upwind because it was easy to sail
efficiently. I tack my catamaran much less frequently, and generally
power rather than tack out of a harbor.

FWIW, if you're going a distance upwind and you're always on the wrong
side of 5 degree headers, you could end up sailing 15% further. If,
however, you just ignore the 5 degree shifts, you'll perhaps be giving
up about 7-8%, or about 5 minutes on every hour.

Or, you could just adopt the motto "Gentlemen don't sail to windward."

Thanks. That was helpful.

The 12 different courses used by the club are mostly triangles, (using
different channel buoys to make shorter/longer courses) and the total
distances range from about 3 miles to about 5 miles, so the beats and
runs are about .5-.75 miles and the reaches maybe 1-2 miles. So I
guess I'd call these short courses. But that certainly seems long
enough to me to prove that a an equal boat taking advantage of wind
shifts will beat one that doesn't.

What I did notice in the last race series is that all of the 20-30
footers seemed to try and hold tacking to a minimum, and that seemed
like a possibility to exploit wind shifts if I can learn how to feel
and use them correctly.