Paul356

Since that's me in the picture at last year's messabout, I'll add a few notes, all of which I think are consistent with the above. --The mizzen is indeed sheeted in hard, with the snotter set hard and the halyard/downhaul pulled hard. This means a flat sail as close to the centerline as I can pull it. On my boat, that's closer to the centerline than the gunwale. --The main is also set very flat. Halyard/downhaul taut, snotter taut. But it's sheeted with the end of the boom only to about the gunwale, so maybe not sheeted as tight as it looks, and definitely not as tight as the mizzen. --Note that these sails are set pretty flat even tho this picture was a light-air day, maybe 10 mph, if I'm remembering correctly. --Then the key thing, and the hard thing, is to keep all three of the telltales on the mainsail streaming freely aft when you're going upwind. This requires steady concentration. Once you find the sweet spot to set the sheet, you need to be watching ahead for the puffs and sailing the boat to match. --(The tell tales on the mizzen should also all be streaming aft.) --Head up in the puffs. Don't let the puffs overpower and heel the boat. CS wants to keep standing up, not get knocked. When the puff passes, then head off a bit, to keep the streamers streaming. --Meanwhile, if there is a "permanent" decrease or increase in the wind -- meaning anything more than a puff -- you'll need to adjust the mainsheet, probably, and your body position. You may even need to adjust the snotter/halyard/downhaul a bit to make the sail a little flatter or rounder if the bottom telltale is not streaming in the new breeze and if playing the sheet won't stream it. --Note a bit of heel, but not too much. This has seemed about right to me, with the lee chine biting and the weather chine out, but not much more. I'm trying to keep my weight centered fore and aft, to keep the stern up and the chine in at the bow. --I have the full-luff main with battens, which I think makes a large difference. I would suspect a large drop in upwind performance if you have the smaller sails designed to roll up on the mast. --I think it's better to reef and keep the boat upright in a blow, than to carry more sail and heel more. But my experience there is too limited for fully validated opinion. --A chop in the water as you head upwind will knock your boatspeed, especially if the bow is too high. You'll need to head off a bit to keep boat speed up at the expense of vmg. --So when do you use the snotter and halyard/downhaul adjustments? For (slightly) deeper draft when going cross- and especially downwind. As to your performance in the local races, against whom are you competing? If it's one designs with a lot of sail area, such as Thistles or Lightnings or scows, you can't hope to keep up, esp in light air. If it's bigger keel boats or centerboarders with longer waterlines, probably ditto. Just as one waterline example, Graham's CS 20 and CS 22 are noticeably faster than the 17. But if you're sailing against some of the smaller f.g. daysailers and such that weren't built expressly for one-design racing, like maybe O'Days, or against some of the other homebuilt designs, you should be right in there. Finally, see the posts in the topic below from Reacher and me on racing last weekend in Green Bay. It can be done! --p

Here's the only picture I have. The boats that went north around the island are coming at me. Could not get my GPS to download. One too many dousings, I guess.

Reacher and I tried something new on Saturday. We took our boats out with the PHRF fleet on Green Bay, and the heck of it was, we did pretty good! Reacher is a member at M&M YC in Menominee, Michigan, where they have a fairly active big boat racing program. This includes the annual "100 Miler" (which is only 45 miles long, for some reason) that usually attracts a lot of boats returning from the Chicago-Mackinac Race. Last Saturday, M&M held their annual Joey Shepro Memorial Doublehander, a more or less "fun race" and fundraiser for Make-a-Wish. Reacher suggested I trailer up from Milwaukee and we could enter our Core Sounds and see what happened. He has a 20, I have a 17. This race is c. 14 miles from their Club, out around Green Island in the middle of Green Bay and back. They were nice enough to give us PHRF ratings, which was interesting. Mine was 252. (That's seconds per mile, deducted from the final time, so I had about 62 minutes deducted.) Reacher's was 246, so they pegged him theoretically as 6 seconds a mile faster. For comparison, a Cape Dory 27 is 243 (New England PHRF) and a CD 22 is 282. The slowest boat in the fleet was deemed to be a Com-Pac 19-2, rated at 283, while the fastest was a Tripp 33, rated at 90. This was set up as a reverse start. The race started at noon, but each boat was given a unique starting time reflecting the handicap. In theory, in a perfect race, all boats would cross the finish line together. In practice, wherever you are in the race is your position at that time, since the handicap has already been accounted for. No need to figure out if you need to "give time" to a boat at the finish line, since that's all been handled at the start. Thus the Com-Pac, as the boat with the highest handicap, was supposed to start at noon, precisely. It never did, and we learned later that it could not point into the light breeze without starting its engine. Tip to consumers: don't buy a Com-Pac if you want to sail upwind in light air. I was next, at 12:07:02, and Reacher next after that 12:08:23. So it went until some 34 boats were off the line, with the last (fastest) one at 12:43. (Make sense?) The first leg was a beat of about 1.75 miles to a buoy before we turned to the island. Reacher and I kept company on the upwind, tho he passed me as we neared the mark. It was a blast sailing together. It was about 80 degrees out, full sun, the water sparkling blue, the wind maybe 6, puffing to maybe 8 mph, from the north east. I had us moving at 4 to 4.5 mph on the gps for most of the upwind. Then came a 3.5 mile close reach out the island. It wasn't until then that other boats in the fleet started to catch up. I decided to go south-about the island; Reacher and most of the fleet went to the north. Not sure if there was an advantage one way or another. I was hoping for more puffs on the broader reach back on the North side -- dreaming of a bit of planning -- but those puffs never materialized. GPS showed c. 5 mph on the way out, c. 6 on the way back. Reacher's larger sails definitely helped as the wind stayed around 6ish or a hair more. The water got a bit choppier, too, which hurt our light little craft when we had to punch into it but was still "flat" for the big keel boats. The last leg was around the buoy and back DDW to the finish. Almost caught up to a Catalina on that leg, but not quite. My speed was 3.5 to 4.5, depending. Their speed was flogging.... Results: As one of the big boat skippers said, in that light air, "it was a waterline race." In general, boats with longer hulls and therefore lower handicaps did better, which is typical for a PHRF fleet in light air. But Reacher was 18th of 34, and I was 26th, finishing in 3 hours 29 min. Reacher was done in 3:09. (Full disclosure: two boats abandoned and four were DSQ for whatever reason). Of the 28 that finished, I was in ahead of a S2 11.0 (handicap 161) and a Catalina 309 (HC 186), and Reacher also bested a Hunter 27, a Hunter 38, an S-9.2 and a Catalina 28, among others. I should add Reacher's a pretty fine sailor. Needless to say, Reacher and I were pretty darn pleased with these little boats. They kept moving in the light air, pointed well, reached well, ran well. We spent a long time after the race admiring them and talking about what mods we like on each of ours. We couldn't have kept up with the big boats in this year's Mac race, of course, given the 6 to 8 foot waves and the 30 mph winds on the nose. But in this race, hey, we were right in there. And it was a blast to be out on the water on such a beautiful day. And photos? I wish I had some, but sorry folks, can't race singlehanded and take pix, too. I might have one, and might have a gps track. Will see if I can find download. But be glad you have a Core Sound. Great boat.

Everything looks great, Amos.

roll tack is legal in dinghy racing. one roll per tack.

Thanks to Alan and all the sailors for the excellent videos. They provide lots of instruction and confidence for CS sailors. Great to see those boats popping up and crews popping back in. How does the fish float attach to the mast?

Mike and Chick, thanks.

I haven't rigged topping lifts, although I saw Chick's setup at the messabout and it is pretty slick for masts in tabernacles. But my masts are freestanding. That is, I pick 'em up and drop 'em in the hole. This is on a regular 17, not a 20 or a mark 3. A topping lift would be one more piece of string to untangle. So, I let the sprit ends fall into the cockpit when the sails come down, and it's not a big issue. I have used the halyards a couple of times to hold the sprit ends up and make room in the cockpit, as in the photo. One issue there was sprits swinging kind of wildly in a chop. How do the topping lift guys control that swinging?

Way to go, Amos. What fun!

Here we are hove-to for a minute just before heading through the breakwater gap out onto the open lake. I love the way the boat will just sit there with the mizzen tight and the tiller locked. It's a great tool. Walk about the boat and get things organized (well, sort of, in my case), do what needs to be done, then unlock the tiller, bring in the main, and we're off. It also allows two hands for pictures. day2.mp4

Sailing in Lake Michigan off Milwaukee yesterday in the 17. For those who like to note such things: 7.5 mph on a broad reach, 6.0 wing on wing DDW (above), 5.1 on a close reach. What a boat. If only I could learn to take better pix one handed.

Looks like a winner. I just saw you're in Duluth. Are you headed for the Apostles?

Wonderful, Amos. I can envision many happy hours afloat for you and yours. It won't be long.

2.5 horse Suzuki gets my CS 17 going at 6+ mph. 20170820_121653.mp4

The "three-legged thing" is quite stiff when mounted, yes. I tip my short-shaft Suzuki up. I did some fussing with the mounting location so that it would both reach the water and have room to tip up and lock. I'm thinking with the long shaft you could mount the bracket a little higher so have plenty of room to tip up. See foto.