Simplifying my sailing for greater speed

One of my winter experiments has been exploring the various switches and dials on my transmitter. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you’ll know I’ve used the dial to fine‑tune the upwind sheet angle, a switch to ease the sheet by 5–10 degrees, and the sheet stick to shift between high mode, VMG mode, and low mode. The aim was to find the optimal setup.

My usual approach has been to set the sheets fully in with both the switch and dial in their “in” positions. As I sail, I then adjust the sheet angle to suit the conditions. The problem is that easing the main boom by, say, 15 mm using the switch or dial also lengthens the running setting. That means the only thing preventing the boom from going too far out is the shroud. All this tweaking leads to confusion—and ultimately encourages me to sail with the sheets fixed, which isn’t fast.

On my DF, things are much simpler. I set the sheeting for maximum VMG—or even a bit looser—and then use the sheet stick, nudging it left to bring the sheet in whenever needed. It keeps the boat consistently quick without overthinking.

So now I’m asking myself: why not do the same on the IOM? No dial, no switch—just set the boat up for a fast, free mode and use the mainsheet stick to find the best balance of speed and height. With a weekend event coming up, it’s the perfect opportunity to try this approach. At the very least, I won’t be slow—and from the videos and observations so far, I’ve clearly been sailing with the main sheeted in too much.

Simplicity is everything.