Mastering the Spinnaker: Part I

Whether you are new to Club 420 sailing or you have enjoyed the boats for a few years, learning to sail with a spinnaker is an art form that you can always improve on.  Sailing with a spinnaker adds new dimensions to sailing downwind that you don’t typically see in singlehanded dinghy sailing.  There are a lot of little adjustments that many sailors miss, that can make you a superstar off wind.

Basic Setup and Trim:

The basic setup for your spinnaker is to trim the guy until the pole is perpendicular to your apparent wind, and ease the sheet until the outer edge of the spinnaker’s luff start to fold over about two inches.  Trim in the sheet from there, and ease to this point again.  Continue to do this the entire downwind leg.

Remember, when your boat is moving fast, the sails see a different wind direction than where the wind is actually coming from.  This is known as apparent wind, and all of your sails need to adjust to that wind direction.  To match your pole to the apparent wind, it is helpful to put a tell-tale on the side stays, or on the pole itself.  The faster you go, the further forward you will have to set your pole to compensate for the apparent wind.  This will happen in both puffs and waves.  Apparent wind is always changing, so the crew should have both the sheet and the guy in his or her hands at all times downwind.

Setting Up the Other Sails:

Getting your other two sails in the proper position is often the most overlooked detail downwind amongst Club 420 sailors.  It is important that the flow off of all three sails does not interfere with the other sails, or you will move slowly.  The biggest mistake that most sailors make is letting the mainsail out too far.  Whenever the spinnaker is raised, a good general rule of thumb is to trim it to the point that the boom is parallel to the spinnaker pole.  In other words, the two should continuously make a straight line.  Once your main is trimmed to this point, control the leech of the sail with the vang, so that that top batten is parallel to the boom and spin pole (tell tale disappears 50% of the time, and flies 50% of the time).  To sum up the main’s trim downwind, the mainsheet controls the position of the sail to the wind, while the vang controls the tension on the leech.

The jib is often more difficult to figure out downwind.  When you sail most sloops or keelboats, the sailors will take down the jib when hoisting a spinnaker.  This is done to create more space between the main and spinnaker, so that the flow off of each does not interfere with another sail.  In a Club 420, this is not possible, as the tension on the jib keeps your mast from falling aft.  Since there is nothing else that you can do about this, it is important to get the spinnaker and mainsail into the perfect position, and then move the jib to where it is as far away as possible from interfering with either of the other sails.

Pole Height:

The pole height controls the shape of the spinnaker, and how much wind it is capable of allowing into it at once.  The higher you lift the pole, the deeper and fuller you are able to make the sail.  However, it takes more wind to fill the sail completely.  The lower your pole angle, the flatter you make the sail.  With a lower pole, it takes less wind to fill the sail.  In light air, you will want a lower pole height, making it easier to fill the spinnaker.  On the other hand, in heavy air, you will want a higher pole to increase the amount of breeze you can get into the sail.  A good way to ensure that your pole is at the correct height is to make sure that the two lower corners are even, when the sail is trimmed properly off wind.  If the tack is higher than the clew, you should lower the pole to even them out.  If the clew is higher than the tack, you need to raise the height of the pole.

Using a spinnaker is not an easy thing to do, and takes years to perfect.  Sailing downwind with a spinnaker adds depth, technique, teamwork, strategy, and tactics that are different than that seen in one-sail boats.  However, everything discussed above is always under your control, no matter what your sailing experience is.  Making sure all of these things are perfect is the first step to going fast downwind!

See you on the water,

Zim Coach

Tracking Upwind in Waves

Have you ever gone over the top of a giant wave, and felt the boat slam down violently as you crossed over it?  It happens all the time in boats of all sizes, and is called hobby-horsing.  No matter how big or small the wave is, not having the ability to prevent your boat from doing this is will slow you down significantly.  The opposite of hobby-horsing is called tracking.  Tracking is the act of keeping your fully in touch with the water at all times, with no bow slamming or vibrations moving through your hull.  The smaller, lighter, and less stable a boat is, the more important tracking through the water is, as these boats will slow down much more quickly than large, heavy, and stable boats.  By keeping your speed up, helm neutral, and using precise steering and/or trimming movements, you can increase your ability to track through the water, and put miles of boat speed on your competition.

Steering & The Boat’s Ideal Path Through a Wave:

Waves are your best friend downwind, and your worst enemy upwind.  Upwind, not only does a wave serve as a roadblock, but is also a strong natural force that pushes your boat sideways.  The more the wave moves toward your boat from the side, the more susceptible your boat is to a sideways slide.  This makes you generally slower, and crushes your ability to point or hold your lane.  However, with the proper technique, this is something you can use the waves as an asset when sailing upwind.

When trying to track effectively through the water, each wave you sail through has an entry phase and an exit phase.  The goal in the entry phase is to minimalize the amount the wave can push you sideways. The goal in the exit phase is to keep the boat from hobby-horsing, and to power up again for the next wave.

Entry Phase

As you are about to enter the face of a wave, you need to steer up, and into the face of the wave.  The amount you steer depends on the size of the wave.  The smaller the wave, the less you turn the boat.  The larger the wave, the more you will turn the boat.  This will align your bow more directly and head-on with the wave in order to punch through it, effectively reducing the amount the wave can push you sideways.  Ultimately, you want to give each wave less direct surface to push sideways.

Exit Phase

When you turn into the face of a wave, you will reduce your speed at the top of it, making you much more susceptible to hobby-horsing.  To correct this, you must turn hard and quickly down the back side of the wave to keep the boat in touch with the water, and to increase your speed before the next wave.  Depending on the wind and waves, you may even want to exaggerate the turn over the wave, steering slightly past a close hauled course.  You should only do this for the most brief instant, and then return to a close hauled course to get ready for the next wave.

Steering:

One of the first racing principles sailors are taught, is that using the rudder is slow.  While this is true, hobby-horsing is much slower than using some tiller to steer through waves.  An alternative to using tiller is changing sail trim during the entry and exit phases.  Some sailors will trim during the entry phase to steer up, and ease during the exit phase to steer down.  In all boats, you will see some combination of steering and trimming to effectively steer through waves.  The exact ratios will depend on the conditions, your relative weight range for those conditions, and the type of boat you are sailing.  As a general rule, steering with the sails is more effective in doublehanded boats, while steering with your tiller is more effective in singlehanded boats.  Again, usually there is a mixture of both.

Neutralizing Your Helm:

Having a neutral helm will make your boat much more receptive to changes in steering or trimming.  Let’s consider a boat’s ideal path through a wave.  There is actually a relatively large amount of steering that is necessary to keep the boat tracking through the water, regardless of your speed and power.  If your boat is heeled to leeward at the top of a wave, giving you weather helm, then you must use a good deal of rudder, or ease the sail significantly, to turn the boat down the backside of a wave.  Thus, keeping a boat flat with a neutral helm, at the top of a wave, is critical to keeping the boat tracking through the water.

Maintaining Your Speed/Power:

Speed and power are essential to tracking through the water.  When you encounter a wave, slowing down, or entering the face of that wave with little speed or power will make it difficult to get over the top without getting pushed sideways, causing your bow to slam down on the other side.  When you move from wave to wave, the goal is to maximize your speed before the wave, use that speed to reach the top of the wave, and then quickly build it up again as you descend and move on to the next wave.  This takes a lot of intense focus and practice to perfect, so go out and start practicing!

See you on the water,

Zim Coach