You never stop learning

Sometimes, one needs a reminder that there are fundamental things we need to do when sailing radio yachts. Since sailing with Craig I have moved more and more to setting the boat up by eye. Thats what Craig does so I thought I should do the same. As my brother would tell you, I am a technical sailor so that behaviour did not really suit me.

On Monday I put the A rig on the Proteus and used the sailboat RC measurements to set the rig up with the boat lying horizontal on my desk. The only measurement I could not use was the mast rake as I was sailing a Proteus.

So I measured the following:

Pivot from forestay, jib foot camber, main foot camber, distance of booms from centreline, jib twist, main twist and of course position of shroud and rig tension.

I have been reluctant to do this in the past thinking I was good enough to set the rig up but I was surprised when on the following day racing at Gosport, to see how with all the measurements, the rig was near perfect on the water in winds from 3 to roughly 8 MPH. I did not have to touch a thing for the 8 races and had remarkable speed. The great thing about the precise measurements is you can set the boat up the same every time. The other thing I noticed was acceleration coming out of tacks and the ablity to get bow down speed which had been lacking in the past. two clicks of ease was all it took

I think the correct expresion summarising this is "How dumb and I". How many other obvious things am I missing.

The moral here. If your boat has design measurements, always use them as a starting point.