Beating settings for Ericson 30+

[vernon kleist]

Hi Sailors,

We are new owners of a 1984 30+. We are starting to do some club racing (we are newbies) with the boat and I would like some tips for setting the jib sheet leads.

This boat has tracks on the rail and inners next to the house. At the start it seems that pointing is all important. On the few times I have sailed the boat I find that setting the lead on the outer rail gives me more speed and less heeling in any kind of a breeze. I started sailing it with the sheet lead inboard but soon moved it out after running into a lot of heel. It did seem to point higher though.

With our sail, a 135, high-cut sail on a furler, which position would likely be best for the windward leg? The jib and main are older cruising sails, pretty baggy so everything is a compromise. We just want to do as well as we can while learning the boat and saving our pennies for new sails.

Thanks,
Vern
ViaMar

 

[Frank Langer]

Vern,
We also have a 1984 Ericson 30+, with a good mainsail and 125% headsail on a roller furler. In our experience, and based on advice from this website (Seth, Loren, Guy and others are real experts!), these boats are initially a bit tender but do stiffen up nicely as they begin to heel in a breeze. I have found that full main and headsail works well on a close hauled sail, using the inner jib track, to about 15 knots wind; then it's best to begin to reduce headsail a bit and add a reef to the mainsail.

The inner track allows the boat to point higher than using the outside track. At about 22 knots wind I'll add the second reef. Throughout this time, I will have made the usual adjustments to halyard tension, outhaul, backstay, traveller, boom vang, etc.

In our experience, these boats tend to sail best at up to about 15 degrees heel, though they can also be fun to sail more heeled (rail in the water is great!), but you do sacrifice a bit of speed when heeled over more, as weather helm/rudder begin to become a factor.
Enjoy the boat!
Frank.

 

[Chris Miller]

Definitely inboard... then set the car positions by going upwind (close hauled) as close to the wind as you can. Then luff up just a little bit and watch the inside tell tales- if the tops break first, put the car fwd until almost even. If the bottoms break first, put the car back until almost even. In average conditions I like to have the tops break just a touch before everything else to I keep a little twist in the sail for driver comfort. All this assumes you are going to run a spinnaker downwind... if not, everything changes when you turn that corner!
Chris

ps. Outboard sheeting would be great for any distance reaches you might be doing, like on a distance race leg that is all one tack.

 

[bigtyme805]

Vern what equipment do you have? Do you have a spinnaker (what type) and is your boat setup for it? Do you have a pole?

I personally fly an assymetrical and I have a whisker pole for downwind sails. I set this up myself, my 30+ was not rigged for this.

Also, have you raced your new boat yet? And if you have how have you done?

In your post you never mentioned spinnaker so you may be in the non-spinnaker class. If this is true you will need a whisker pole for downwind legs if you are to be competitive. This is where you will use your outer tracks. I only use my outer tracks for this or my spinnaker sheets.

Look forward to hearing from you.

 

[Seth]

What Chris said

Except I think he misspoke in his comment that all this assumes you will use a spinnaker on the downwind legs..the advice for setting the jib leads is correct for optimizing upwind performance no matter what you do downwind.

To go farther, I think the problem you are having may well be that the car/lead position you are using for the inbpoard track is too far forward-which will make you heel too much and hurt performance. Use his procedure-and if you search the site, there are many posts going into a lot of detail about jib lead position.

The theory is the same when using the outboard track-as far as fore and aft car location goes. Note that you should go to the outboard lead if cracked off and sailing on a close/beam or broad reach for any period of time, and that once you are sailing with sheets eased, the ideal location for the car will be forward of the spot used for upwind sailing-regardless of which track you are on. The more the genoa is eased you have less relative sheet tension on the upper section of the headsail, so you must compensate by moving the leads forward to keep the upper and lower telltales breaking evenly.

Be sure and use enough halyard tension-especially with old sails-as the draft may have "migrated" aft of the intended location over the years, and adding halyard will pull it forward towards the ideal location-about 35% of the way back from the luff to the leech.

Enjoy,
S

 

[Chris Miller]

Except I think he misspoke in his comment that all this assumes you will use a spinnaker on the downwind legs..the advice for setting the jib leads is correct for optimizing upwind performance no matter what you do downwind.

S

My thought was that a non-spin run (wings or doubles) would switch it all around again unless you use a pole.
Chris