Racing a E32-200

Just entered a race (Cruising class) with our relatively new (for us) 32-200 and I must admit that I don't yet have a great feel for the 32's idiocyncracies... So, I'm looking for tips & tricks, along with some insights about what makes this boat fly... both upwind and down.

Thanks,
Tom

Similar rig to my boat. What size genny do you fly?

Upwind sailing:
Head sail trim will get you 80%, mainsail trim should be set to properly exhaust the headsail. Set it so it just luffs a little bit behind the mast about 2 ft. She should sail 30° apparent but will go a little faster at 35°. Head up a little in the puffs and sheet in the sail a little. Easing as the puff fades and bear off to 35° again.

Off the wind:
Again, the headsail is the driver, especially if it is a 150 or 155. Trim the main to not block the headsail.

In high winds always reef the main first.


Boat:
Get the weight away from the ends. I have heard this helps prevent teeter tottering but have not confirmed. Try not to move the rudder past 10° to reduce drag.

The rest you just have to learn by sailing. It took me a whole season to get my boat winning races. Then I changed out my sails and have to learn it all over again.

thanks for the good info... I have a 130 genoa (new and good)...

She seems to sail well and maintain VMG up to about 28 deg. Doesn't seem to like much heal though. Beyond 20 deg of heal the boat seems sluggish. We downsized from a Sabre that would sail well to weather at 25 deg of heal, so we're trying to unlearn our sailing habits from that boat, (also headsail driven).

The E32 seems easy to set up for a well balanced rig under most conditions. We've found that we can't overtrim the headsail as much as the sabre. Do these boats favor fuller sails?

Thanks,
Tom

Sail not the boat

The issue you are having with not being able to trim the sails as tight (and I think you mean you can't get the genoa as flat as with your old boat), has nothing to do with the boat. It is a function of how that specific genoa is built (too full, or too much roach in the leech up high, or both), or it is possible you have the leads too far fwd..Unless the boat is a racing design for which a lot of sail development has been done, sailmakers are not really shaping cruising genoas very scientifically.....My guess is the sail does not quite fit correctly and/or may have too much shape or luff curve..

If you have the leads in the right spot, and have experimented with moving them aft (as you should) in heavy air, then it should be fairly easy to have the sail re-cut to fit the boat better. The adjustment factors will be draft, luff curve, roach and clew height.

Have a sailmaker or other qualified person come look at the sail on the boat and it should be clear what needs to be done..

Good sailing!

Racing an E32-200

I'll second Seth. I've raced my 32-200 singlehanded with a new 150%. Did pretty well going up against full crews. Made lots of mistakes, like being late for the start because I was trying to put in a reef , or shake one out, 1/2 a mile from the start line going in the wrong direction. But the 150%. It was brand new from the P.O.. I killed it in 3 seasons, sailing it in winds over 20 knots. Now it's good for under 10, when you need a deeper shape to keep you moving. If you can't flatten the genny by pulling the car aft, then you need a smaller (or newer) genny. If you looked at your boat out of the water, then you saw those flatter sections aft of the keel. Keep the boat at 10-15 degrees of heel. Like lots of "newer" designs, sailing her flatter yields the best results on the race course. If, however, you want to go down river/harbour and the wind is knocking you past 25 degrees heel, but you can still go straight down the river/harbour doing 6.5 knots, drinking a frosty one, and the Mrs. isn't on board or is tucked into the front corner of the cockpit sleeping, and you've got on your favorite tunes, I'd say take the heel. You can pretend you're on an old CCA design. So, run-on sentences aside, upwind, keep her on her feet. Change car position, change down headsails. Reaching, let her fly, ease out the sheets. Downwind, meaning anything past 135 apparent, you're gonna go slow, unless you're putting up a chute. She's a great boat, will turn on a dime, moves well in light air, and properly reefed, will handle some nasty stuff. In late October/ early November I'm usually the only boat out in 30+. I always come in with a sh*t-eating grin on my face. Keep sailing, keep playing. She'll reward you.

Obviously not a biased opinion.
Clayton

32-3

I've got a 32-3, a very similar boat (same hull I believe). First - anything Seth says, second - I second the other comments.

I'll add what might already be obvious:
-Make use of the inner and outer tracks for sheeting, inner tracks are great up wind and tight sheeting angles.
-Reef earlier rather than later, it's faster.
-Traveler is very short (on my model anyway), a good mod is to lengthen the traveler to span the cabin top (can't remember if they did that on your boat)
-Invite Seth to sail with you.
-Make sure you have the rig tuned properly, there has been discussion on this and it my experience is that it does matter.

My $.02 - probably worth that or less.

Racing E32-200

Well.. We raced. The race we entered was a 67 mi offshore coastal race. For the first two hours of upwind light air work we were at the head of the pack. The E32 pointed better than the other boats and we were pretty competitive with even larger boats. Then we went downwind. The wind came up and it blew 17-25 all night.. and they (mostly PHRFs in the 100-130 range) left us, (PHRF 183) behind. We have a small genoa... (130) so that didn't help downwind. The majority of the race was close reaching, (about 50 mi) and we just didn't catch up, but didn't lose as much time as on the downwind leg. In the end we were able to catch one other boat with a similar PHRF, but it left me a little puzzled as to how the boat could sail so well upwind and so poorly down wind. Must have been the skipper...

Tom

Let's figure it out

The boat should be just as competitive downwind in this environment as it is upwind. By environment I mean a cruising class, which is main and jib only and in this rating band..

Of course, we need to verify that the boats who left you were also just flying main and genoa..If they had cruising spinnakers and you had a genoa, what you observed is exactly what you would expect-you cannot expect to go downwind with an upwind sail against boats who are flying downwind sails..

BUT, if all the other boats were flying genoas as well, and you had a 130% headsail in 17-25 knots of breeze, you should not have been at a major disadvanage-even against boats who flew 155% sails.

SO, I think it is a matter of technique. You say downwind, but this could be broad reaching (140-165 degrees TWA or 130-150 AWA ish), or running (deeper than 165 TWA/150 AWA-ish).

If it was a broad reach, you will have needed to move the genoa car well forward and out to the rail. The spot on the track which works well will not work at deeper angles. Once the wind comes aft from an upwind point of sail, the cars must progressively move forward and ideally outboard. The reason (in simple terms)is that as you ease the genoa sheets, you are losing much more leech tension than you are foot tension, so as you ease the top half of the sail becomes relatively less sheeted in than the bottom half. You correct for this by moving the car foward, which keeps the top half of the sail more aligned with the bottom. Basically, if you leave the car alone and sail with the sheets eased you will notice that if you set things up so the bottom telltales indicate proper trim and go look at the top half of the sail you will see that it is luffing. Move the leads forward until you can get the telltales to behave consistently along the luff of the sail-this is what you do when you set the leads for upwind sailing, and the same principle applies here, except you will need the cars much more forward to achieve the "even break" you are looking for in all sets of telltales. There are a number of more detailed posts here about car position and genoa trim-check them out.

The whole point here is that without adjusting car location you are not getting anything out of the top of the sail at deeper angles, and someone who does make the adjustment will go much faster.

Finally, as the sailing angle gets wider, so should the sheeting angle, which is why you move the cars progressivly forward AND outboard (the boats gets wider towards the max beam point, right?).... With a 130, if you consider the location on the inboard track you use for upwind, you may end up on the outboard rail 4 feet farther forward when you get to 140 degrees AWA (roughly). This gives you an idea of how much adjustment you might be looking for..

If sailing even deeper angles, you need to get the genoa out on a pole opposite the mainsail-so that you are projecting as much of the sails as possible-this is commonly known as "wing on wing or wing and wing", with the main on one side and the genoa on the other. If you have the boom to port (starboard tack), you can wing the genoa to starboard and sail anywhere from DDW to as high as 150 degrees AWA or sometimes a little higher. This will be exponentially faster than sailing with both sails on the same side at these angles-as the genoa will be stuck behind the mainsail and not doing much work.

So, give this some thought compared to what you did on the race and let me know, but assuming all the other guys were using the same sail configuration (no kites), it likely had to do with sail trim.

Let us know...
S-sailing :nerd:

Re; let's figure it out

Here's a synopsis of the race...

We lost most of the time against the other boats at two points... First, the wind came up moderately at 120-140 and we broad reached, (both sails on the same side) for about 4-5 miles. At the end of that period they were a 1-2+ miles ahead... Not good. Then the wind backed around and we poled out wing & wing and sorta kept up better. At that point the rest of the field was at the turning mark and were rounding it....

Second, at that point the wind got really light... bad luck... but the rest of the boats did not have a good line to the next mark and had to beatl well off-shore. At 1/2 mi from the mark the wind came up at 90 deg, giving us somewhat of a chance to make up some time because when we rounded the mark we could sail on a close reach directly to the next mark while the other boats had to sail a closer reach to the mark (35 mi away) when the wind got to them, (now 3+ mi offshore).

After that the wind blew 17-25 for the next 40+ miles (w/ one lull) and the low PHRF boats seemed to pull away some more. The next mark was a 160 deg turn so the other boats passed us after rounding. We figured the other boats were 2-5 mi ahead at that point but since most had to give us 45 min - 1:45 we figured that if we could sail at 6+ we'd do OK. So I figure that on this leg we kind of held our own. Then the wind got light locally for 1/2 hr and we lost lots of time rounding this mark but eventually got back into the 6-7kt speeds we needed to make the finish. The second lull lost us a lot of time though.

It's clear that Ericsons are more sensitive to reefing than we thought and I feel we lost lots of time by not reefing the main when we should have. I've added that to my list of Ericson lessons. But the downwind thing puzzled me because we thought we were doing all the right things at the time. We did not adjust the lead block as you described so that may be the biggest problem we had.

Thanks,
Tom

Nice report

Sounds like a fun race!

From what I can tell you did fairly well....
Considering the fact that when reaching you were either overpowered or did not have full use of the genoa in the lower end of the wind conditions (car position), PLUS the fact that during those periods of less than 10 knots of breeze you did not have ENOUGH sail area, you don't have a lot to worry about.

Again, without knowing what the other boats used for sails in the different conditions, it is a bit vague, but:

1). A boat with a fill sized genoa (150-155%) will be at a real advantage in winds under 10 or so knots

2). Ericsons (and any performance oriented cruiser) really lose a lot of performance potential when sailed in an overpowered condition..so while the term "reefing" has been used a lot in these posts-the main point in to have the right combo of sail area for the conditions. If you are trying to do everything with the 130, then yes, you should be reefing the mainsail when the boat is heeling consistently more than about 15-18 degrees. It is really important that before you start reefing or changing to a smaller headsail you use the tools you have to flatten the mainsail as the wind comes up-these would be outhaul, backstay, and cunningham (cunningham is more to pull the draft forward, or back to the normal position-the draft will move aft in the sail as it loads up and as you add backstay, so you add cunningham to correct this, and also if your main halyard stretches under load you can use it to replace lost luff tension). Ideally, I would start with a main and 155%. First thing would be to flatten the mainsail and drop the leads back (and add some halyard tension to the genoa) as the breeze gets above 10. Then I would change to a smaller headsail (about 130 ish), and as the breeze comes up more, do the same things with the leads..A board flat main and 130 with the leads back should get you to to the mid- high teens (also depends a LOT on how many folks you have out on the rail-this will extend your range 3-4 knots for a given sail combo).

Once you ae maxed out power-wise here, you should either reef or go to a #3 jib (about 100%). If the leg is upwind I would go to the smaller jib and full (but flat) main. If reaching I would consider a reef and leave the bigger jib up.

All this of course assumes you have these choices-but you get the idea.

Back to your living with a 130...A 130% genoa is not designed for light air.They are designed to begin effectiveness above 10 knots or so from a structural and shape persective. This means that trying to sail in light air with this sail is a struggle not only because it is smaller than the 150-155% sails, but it is flatter and heavier, too. Likewise, once you get into the high teens, it is too full and not strong enough (to hold shape) for those conditions, which is why the 100% jibs are better (flatter and heavier plus smaller). So if you are trying to live with the 130 past its' range you want to move the leads aft and increase halyard at the upper end of it's wind range (If you set the halyard tension for the normal range of any headsail, you will see the draft move back and the entry get too flat as the wind builds. Adding more halyard will pull the draft forward and correct the entry in much the same way as a cunningham helps this situation in the mainsail).

3). The low rated PHRF boats will really pull out on the reaches because of their longer waterlines. Waterline is the main indicator of speed potential-especially when reaching (except for light boats in surfing conditions), so expect the longer faster rated boats to pull away when reaching.

Food for thought-kids are calling, gotta go.

Cheers,
S

Thanks...

To Treilly, Mindscape, clayton, and especially Seth... Thanks for all the input. The season is winding down up here in Maine now, but I'll put all your advice to good use next racing season. We've got a nice fast boat in the 32-200... Just gotta figure out how to sail it fast.

Thanks again,
Tom