Horse.

General chat about boats
Michael4
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Re: Horse.

Post by Michael4 »

PeterV wrote:On a rope horse the jammers allow you to have the horse, usually called a traveller, loose to centre the boom or tight which causes the mainsheet block to move out more to the sides of the boat. However, a single hander always needs the mainsail off the centre, so the traveller should always be tight. If you look at a Laser you will find they have the traveller so tight that the mainsheet block has trouble getting over the tiller, and it is kept this way in all conditions. In boats like the enterprise the original set up was to let the boom move away from centre in stronger winds and the mainsheet can still pull the boom down. Nowadays the kicker is a lot more powerful and this pulls the boom down, so the horse is never moved away from the centreline.
I'm really no expert but I'm interested to understand why a single hander wants to keep the mainsail off centre? Is this simply to take a bit of power out of the sail?
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JimC
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Re: Horse.

Post by JimC »

If you sheet the sails too close to the centreline you'll just create sideways force and no propulsion. But because of the interaction between main and jib too close on a boat without a jib is a bit further out than on one with a jib.
Michael4
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Re: Horse.

Post by Michael4 »

Thanks, understood.
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trebor
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Re: Horse.

Post by trebor »

Well done Michael, I have never got it !! regardless of how many times I read this post, it does not sink in, their are boats with Aft/mains taken from top of Rudder pintle, totally centred, boats with Jib and without, hows that work?? the mind boggles
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JimC
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Re: Horse.

Post by JimC »

If you have a none busy day in the club safety boat it can be quite educational to drive directly behind (and I mean absolutely directly as in rudder and mast in a line) various boats and watch the sails. Parts of the saol where you see the windward side are powering the boat along, parts where you can see the lee side are just creating drag. With the boom centrelined on a two hander you'll most likely see that not much of the sail is actually the "wrong" way. A moderate amount of 'wrong' is the best compromise for going upwind.
When you look at two sail boats you'll see that although there is more main the wrong way, the jib is very powerful, and that's because of the effect of the main.
Incidentally you'll see people of the 'a little knowledge ' style thinking that this means you should lose the main because the jib is more efficient. This is a spectacular misinterpretation, but you can't tell 'em...
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trebor
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Re: Horse.

Post by trebor »

Hi Jim, the windward/leeward sighting of sail, is this the reason you flatten main when beating ? presumably the flatter the main sail their will be less lee side showing ?
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Michael4
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Re: Horse.

Post by Michael4 »

So is this time to start talking about the slot (on a jib+main boat)?

I adopt the 'slacken off everything' approach so long as the sail still has shape and the jib doesn't back the main...or have I just proved that I don't understand anything!?

Anyway, I sail single handed a lot. I let the main traveller go about half way across the transom and then sheet down more than in. Add this to the kicker and things seem to work out OK.
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JimC
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Re: Horse.

Post by JimC »

trebor wrote:Hi Jim, the windward/leeward sighting of sail, is this the reason you flatten main when beating ? presumably the flatter the main sail their will be less lee side showing ?
Beware of reading too much into a simple picture of a very complicated subject! But yes, you could say there's a sort of element of that. But there's much more...
Rupert
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Re: Horse.

Post by Rupert »

I confess that while I love the subject of WHY the sails do what they do with jib or without, what effect the jib has on the main (and why classes which have choice generally have a small jib and large main, not the other way round), when it actually comes to sailing the boat, the theory can only paint the broadest of pictures. At this point, it is only the WHAT and HOW that matters - what happens when I pull this string, how does my pointing compare if I let the traveller off another 2"?

I know some excellent sailors who have no idea at all why things happen, but are spot on when setting up their boats so they are at their most efficient.
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Re: Horse.

Post by Pat »

Michael4 wrote:I adopt the 'slacken off everything' approach so long as the sail still has shape and the jib doesn't back the main.
Double handed on the Albacore we tend to pull everything in fairly tight, especially the jib, to get pointing and use a split tail mainsheet to centre the boom - a spliced one so the join and tails run through the rear boom block. It works for us.

At Blithfield Sandy let the RO (an ex Alb sailor) helm in a breezy club race after our racing and he pulled everything much tighter and they were quick!
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