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Princess in pursuit


john_manchester

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Thought I'd tune in to share a couple of photos of P22 #19 "rounding the marks" on Lake Massabesic yesterday.  I get very few pictures of the boat for some reason - probably my face breaking cameras.  Anyway we finished third in both races.  In the interest of full disclosure, there were only 4 boats in the open class yesterday, but boat #4 was still decent with an experienced crew.  We took the lead in the first race on the downwind leg, but couldn't hold it upwind.  Stayed pretty much in 3rd place for the whole second race.

Criticism on sail trim is welcome.  The main for example looks like it's twisting too far off to me, even though I had the snotter pretty tight.  Mabye the sprit needs to be attached still farther up the mast?  Hard to tell I suppose because it's reefed.  This is the first time I've sailed the boat reefed.  It was gusting over 20, and I was surprised how tame she felt.  The Princess in general likes a lot of wind, and my experience has been that she's in her element when other boats (such as Catalina 22) are totally overpowered. 

I'm also sort of wondering about boat trim.  I get a lot of sloshing in the motor well.  Maybe the stern is sitting too low in the water? 

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First Pic does seem to have a lot of twist in sail.

Top 2 tail near as I can tell from angle seems to be streaming aft.

Could beneift from at least another tail lower down.  I assume you have a third telltale which is in th ereefed bunndle??  Perhaps an intermediate tell tale that is usefull when reefed.

Sprit angle looks fine, although as reefed the sprit front gets longer and hence is functionally at a lower angle.

Do you have standard 2 to 1 purchase on the snotter?  Could you tighten the snotter more??  If not you might want to add another block for 3 to 1 purchase.

Most races are won on the upwind legs.  You definitely can not afford to give up there.

And snotter tension is critical to pointing ability. 

Year before last I was sailing my CS 20 in Small Reach Regatta against Tom Lathrop in his Lapwing and Graham in his EC 22.  Both of them simply walked away from me upwind.  Embarrassingly so.

Graham saw my sail trim and told me to tighten the snotter tension.  Trimming the snotter flattens the sail and allows tighter angle of attack of the sail.  A fuller draft means the luff  luffs before it would other widse with a flatter sail.

I replied I had it trimmed as far as it would go and the blocks were touching.  Graham told me I needed to lengthen my sprits and sort of implied that the Builder must have screwed up and not made the sprits long enough.  (When I got home I measured them and found them 1 inch over specifications.)

I made longer sprits for this years SRR and was amazed at the difference.  The boat clearly points a good 15 degrees higher than before and I was out pointing and out footing the majority of the fleet.

I was so enamored with the pointing ability I think that had a part in allowing Sukie to outsail me home by a 100 yrds as she was sailing fuller and faster.I did make it in third out of a fleet of 60 something boats.  Second was a Thistle that edge right in front of me.

Transom pics look fine too,  no dragging to speak of.

Perhaps a panel to fill in there somehow for a cleaner underbottom in the well for racing purposes would be of benefit.

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Good on you for getting out there.  When reefed pay close attention to the Halyard, you may find dropping the halyard a few inches greatly improves the sprit angle allowing to achieve a much flatter  and  faster mizzen.  Also don't be afraid to crack off a few degrees compared to the sloopes, making up speed for pointing high.

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My thought is that you could add more snotter tension, based on the angle of the snotter  to the sprit although the sprit tends to drop when reefed.  You could also lower the main a bit to improve the sprit angle but the main thing, in my opinion is that full sails would have placed you higher.  Crew is well inside the boat and not up on deck and there is little heeling, which is an indication that there may not be enough power.  

The high coaming may not be well suited to hiking but, if you want to get the most speed out of the boat in higher wind, that is what you have to do.

Ray, A well sailed Thistle would probably clobber any of our boats around the buoys.  

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The Sea State sure doesn't look like it was blowing all that hard out there though.  And given that you were sailking so flat...

Do you think you could have handled it un reefed out  there??

Were you having to dump the main often to spill air?

Was reef mostly for gustiness of conditions??

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That's a good idea about additional purchase on the snotter.  It's currently 2:1.  I also found I had to go about 6" over spec on the sprit length.  Maybe I will have to make an even longer one.  That should be enough to trim that sail up?  Would rigging a traveler for example help?  After crewing on some of the other boats in the club, I'm amazed at how simple the sharpie rig is.  The boat is impressively fast downwind and on a reach (even without the staysail), but I get destroyed upwind.  I hope I'll see the same sort of improvements you did with proper snotter tension.  There are 3 tales, but you have me thinking I should add some in the belly and more on the leach--I had no idea for example the main has been twisting off as far as it is in the pics.

The lake is usually very gusty, although as you mention I can usually handle the gusts fine by dumping the main.  Mostly I was afraid of breaking something, and I was a little curious about sailing reefed.  I broke 2 main sprits last year--the second was a 2x3 I chopped out of a douglas fir board with decent grain.  This year's sprit is a handrail with a single layer of fiberglass tape on it, which has held up much better.  That started me thinking though about the stress I'd been putting on the main tabernacle, not to mention the mast where it pivots in the tabernacle.  (I had to replace my wooden masts last year - lost the mizzen over the winter in an ice storm, and the main in a race after stupidly stabilizing the bottom of the track with a big hose clamp which, I realized while watching the rig topple toward the water, created a stress concentration).  They're both aluminum now, haven't had time to build new wooden ones.

Does the EC-22 fly a jib?  I was under the impression that it did, but I went back and looked more closely last night and it looks like a down-wind sail (asymmetric spinnaker or maybe genniker?). 

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Your spirt was certainly long enough when reefed.  Lengthening the sprit would not help in this condition.

Extra Purchase would help.

Are existing blocks ball bearing blocks??  Having simple sheaves without ball bearings definitely induce friction .  Switching out to ball bearing blocks makes a noticeable difference in trimming ability too.

On My CS I originally had tenons in mast base that would fix masts and keep them from rotating.  This induces a whole lot of stress as sail bears off.  Sprit rotates around mast and tensions up.  I can see where a large sail might overwhelm a sprit in such conditions.  On one tack the sprit tensions, on the other it loosens.  

Eliminating that tenon was a big advantage on my CS 20.

On the Princess though with Tabernacle there is no way to allow mast rotation.

Best you can do is keep a close eye on snotter tension.

I would go with a double ended snotter line so I could easily trim or ease the Main Snotter on either tack.

On the fall of the snotter to deck height on the main I would dead end the fall on a single block.  I would have a stand up block on either side of the mast base and fair leads leading back to either side of cockpit with clam cleats aft of that.  A single line would feed from one cleat, forward to stand up block up to snotter block, down to other stand up block and aft to other cleat.

this would give you overall 3 to 1 purchase and allow trimming and easing main form either side of the boat.

I am guessing main Sprit is on Starboard side of boat.  When on Port tack the sprit loosens as sail extends out over boat side.  So trimming the snotter as the sail is eased will maintain sail shape.

On Starboard tack, as Sail crosses over centerline and out to Port side the sprit wraps around mast tensioning up the snotter.  In fact you end up having to ease the snotter  in order to allow sail to go forward of the beam.

Graham suffered a sprit failure in an Everglades Challenge race when crew mate gybed the boat in significant wind and sail slammed sprit up against mast.

Keeping an eye on the sprit tension as you tack and gybe also would reduce the twisting forces  on the tabernacle and pivot.  Good idea to ease the snotter before executing a tack or gybe for that reason.

In fact having a sprit that can fail first is likely a good safety feature.  Far easier to carry a spare sprit  than to try to cobble mast repairs underway.

Graham has an asymetrical Spinnaker on EC 22 with retractable Bow Sprit

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Ray, A well sailed Thistle would probably clobber any of our boats around the buoys.  

Maybe so,  but we were able to hold our own against this one... :D :D

Damn Ray,  There was a compliment hidden in there.

I saw that Tom,  Nice to see it rise to the surface too.

This particular Thistle was a Glass model form the 60's and likley had been ooushed hard in the past and lost some riidity in the hull.

Owner had some grudging respect for the CS series at end of weekend.  Was very surprised to see us pointing as well as Sukie and I did.

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Racers don't reef.  Most one design boats are not set up for reefing.  Learn to deal with wind gusts by luffing up or letting out the main.   

Thank you Joe!

I kept looking at the tiny little waves and the boat sitting upright and felt I was missing something!

If I recall, the Lightning class does not call their races off unless the winds are in excess of 35mph.  I've been in some races about 30 and it was crazy.  Still using the spinnaker and flying downwind.  No reefing, but sails set to spill as much air as possible...lots of twist in the main and boom just bouncing in the wind gusts.

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Racers definitely push their boats to the limits.  In Blue Jays, 420s, Lightnings and 505s there is no reefing.  We always raced all out.  I sometimes question though if the boats would be faster at some wind speeds if there was a reef.  In Ensigns we had varying sizes of jib (genoa) and would use at least a flattening reef in heavy wind.  There comes a point in any boat where reefing or some manner of sail area reduction is faster.  A flogging main does no good at all.  Once you are healed over too far (varies with design) you aren't going as fast as you could with less sail and closer to sailing flat.  Knowing when to do what on any given design is learned through experience by those who pay attention. 

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In around the buoys racing in small boats, there is no time to reef and unreef for different legs of the course.  If you are not over powered some of the time, you are under powered a lot of the time.  Very few small one designs have an ability to reef because it just doesn't pay off in the long run.  Crew weight, crew position, athletic ability and skill count for more in small racers. 

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