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Writer's pictureNigel Barrow

The run in to the worlds tuning the rig and other news

It’s been a while since I posted a blog. All is well, I just have not had the time to post anything or have anything meaningfull to say. So whats been going on.


I had the pleasure to be away with the family and away from boats for two weeks. We had a great time walking in the pretty village of Shaldon on the river Teign. Actually felt good to be away from boats.


Following that I continued tuning and practice to build up to the worlds. 2 boat tuning, match racing, fleet racing. Thankfully I have some great helpers. Key focus was boatspeed and balance, high mode and fast mode and fast gybing downwind. I have two A rig racing masts with slightly different prebends and wanted to find out which one has the fairest bend for the new sails. The tricky bit is to have a rig for Gladstone (open water and chop) whereas the majority of our sailing is on flat water apart from Datchet. There was one technical issue when the winch started gobbling battery power. It is being upgraded to a RMG J version so fingers crossed all will be well for Australia. I have a Red Ant winch for temporary cover and will use in Aus if the RMG proves unreliable.


My world sails are deeper than usual and have a tiny bit more luff curve so I spent a while trying to achieve a fair bend in the mast to control the shape. I am increasing the shroud tension to stiffen the middle third of the mast. One mast has 15mm prebend spread over the top 600mm and with slackish shrouds, the mast bends more in the middle third which causes luff starvation so I have increased tension. The other mast I have has 16mm bend over 800mm which works better. The difference is significant and I have to bend the spreaders back with the latter mast. If you want to see the impact of shroud tension on middle third of the mast bend, try squeezing your shrouds together and see the impact on mast bend.


I used the same sails I have used all year for the ranking event just gone. Results were OK with a 6th and a 7th and all the top sailors bar Peter Stollery were there so it was a good indication of peformance. It was good to see that moulded sails last even though they have encountered several windy days. If my starts had been better so would the results. The reassuring result was Craig Richards in his Alioth finishing second. There is nothing wrong with the design of Juan's boat.


Having got that out of the way is was time for more tuning and practice and then to break the boat down ready for transport to Australia. A trial fit of the boat box went well. Final packing on Wednesday as the boat will be in it for 3 days at least. Let hope it gets to Aus. in one piece.


For a bit of last minute practice yesterday,I headed up to Huntingdon for their D~F 95 open meeting. The are always competitive and great fun so it was nice to come away with the win.


For those of you with Alioths, I use 18 on the rig tension meter for shroud tension, rake on the A rig is 1030mm and for the B rig 1035mm. The distance from the step to the bottom band is 135. The jib boom is 60mm from the side of mast or in my case 3 fingers and the main boom is a little under 10mm from the centre of the mainsheet post. On flat water I sometimes centre the main boom. When I engage high mode the boom is centred over the post. I am using Sailboat RC sails and use 3 fingers between the jib leech and the topping lift, significantly more than on sails I used previously but it seems to work. I use the kicker tension to balance the boat upwind.


All that is left to do is thoroughly check all the kit, set out the spares and tools and pack it all away. I could not be better prepared and the rigs look amazing but so will everyones at the worlds.


My goal is to have a load of fun whatever the results. A top 10 result would be nice but that depends on many things.

I leave Wednesday night, arrive Friday morning and race locally at the Gladstone club on Sunday afternoon assuming the boat turns up. Luckily I found an AirBNB 5 minutes from Gladstone Yacht club with a veranda overlooking the harbour. I am hoping to get some sailing at the venue next week but am not sure about access as they will build a perimeter fence to secure the site. Whatever, it will be a good time to explore the locality.


Have fun wherever you are sailing. I will post some stuff on `Facebook MYA downwind and the odd blog but you will be able to see all (warts and all) on the professional live stream.


Have fun sailing wherever you are.


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