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racing an E 27 going to weather....

joelucido2

Junior Member
E 27 Resolution

What is thebest setup to go to weather..Boat screams downwind but going to weatherisa dog even in medium to heavy air with little chop.

I use a 180 genoa but reef it on the roller in heavy but everyone seems to go better to weather. I just bought a new dacron main -wont use it till spring any ideas out there? :esad::confused:

Love the boat I forgive her as sghe has forgiven me so many times
 
Hi,

There about a zillion things that you can do to make sure your boat will go to weather better. There are people better qualified on this forum than I, but I have had an E-27 and raced it successfully for 33 years. Maybe, in that huge amount of time, I finished off the podium a dozen times.

Okay, so here we go...

If you have a new main and an old main, then the new main is the one to go with. It will be flatter, better, and--trimmed correctly--should help you to go where you need to go. Sails are your engines. You may have a Briggs & Stratton in there now. What you want is a Ferrari V-12.

That said, I was helping a gal I know on a delivery in the fall down Florida's east coast. She'd just bought the boat and I had not seen it until we started the delivery. We hoisted the main and used it the entire first day. It also had a roller furler, about a 135. When we got to where we were going the first night we put the boat away and sacked out in a Marriott. The next morning we took the bagged-out, hopeless main off the boat and deposited in the nearest Dumpster. It was that bad. The boat had another main. It came off another boat and didn't go all the way to the top. But it was better than what we had discarded. Now, the boat has a purpose-built main and sails beautifully. Bad mains are bad news.

I don't know how much you know about sail trim. The main never goes above the centerline on a beat. ON the centerline is key, though. Some days it will need more draft, some days less. You can accomplish that with main sheet tension, outhaul tension, Cunningham tension and halyard tension. If you don't know about all this stuff, you have some work to do. But you have to know it all. If you are willing to learn and make the effort, there is no stopping you. Let me give you an example. About 18 months ago--it was my very last race, though I did not know it at the time--I had three of the sharpest crew I have ever assembled on my boat. I drove. The other guy in the cockpit was strategy and tactics and did the winches on the tacks. I had a gal for the foredeck and a guy with her who did the main. The race was a 12-miler in Sarasota Bay. As it was a reverse handicap race, all the boats got their handicaps at the start. Theoretically, then, all the boats in a given class should finish about the same time. We finished 6:24 (in real time) before the second place boat in our class finished. Sailed well, your boat is a killer.

If you want to reach me privately, my e-mail is mstine7611@earthlink.net. Phone number is 941-776-1237. It's Florida, west coast.

Morgan Stinemetz
 

Seth

Sustaining Partner
About that genoa

Of course the other important sail is the other sail! 180% genoas are not usually shaped for pointing, and tend to be full, and light weight. This is double trouble when trying to use a sail like this partailly furled. Once you are out of the range where the boat can benefit from a 180 goig upwind (which I think is never, but in any case no more than 5-6 kts TWS), and you try to partially furl it, you have a sail that is too full to begin with for the conditions, and made worse since it is by definition very lightweight and will stretch and become fuller once sailed outside it's range.

So, you are trying to go uphill in conditions where a flatter, beefier headsail is desired, and you have a partially furled, lightweight reaching sail..Not going to work to well.

The biggest sail on this boat which will be effective uphill is about 170%, and you are carrying a rating penalty to do it. I would probabaly go with a nice 155%, which will take you up to about 12-15 kts of breeze (depending on how the sail is built and how many bodies you have on the rail).

Morgan is right about mainsails-although I am often found with the boom a bit above centerline when going upwind in very light air-never the top batten, which I think is the more important point, but if it is light and you need height, having the boom a little above centerline seems to work fine for me as long as you keep the leech open and the top batten on or slightly below centerline....But ask 12 accomplished racing sailors how they do something and you may get 13 answers! There are many ways to skin a cat!

Like Morgan sez-start with good sails and see what happens!


Cheers,
 

Gary Peterson

Marine Guy
I have heard that it's very important on a 27 to have your crew weight forward and have the stern as light as possible.
 

Seth

Sustaining Partner
For the most part

Definitely you want to be sure not to drag the stern in light air.

In general keep all loose weight on top of the keel, and out of the ends. This means keep the sail lockers in the cockpit and forepeak empty. If it is a very heavy air day, it is OK to put some gear in the cockpit lockers, but generally keep the weight in the middle.

Upwind in light air, yes-sit forward in the cockpit and keep your crew between the forward lower shroud chainplates and the aft lower shroud chainplates. The idea is to keep the boat on it's lines without dragging the back end. When it is windy you can move everyone a body-width or 2 aft from these positions. Upwind in light air, try to make sure no crew members sit behind you (assuming you are driving).

The only exception is downwind and reaching in heavy air, and in these conditions you can have have more crew aft.

The 2 ways to tell if you have it right are to: a). Use a level guage for fore and aft trim. Shoot for level in most conditions or JUST SLIGHTLY bow down upwind in under 5-6 knots, and b). Use your ears. If you have too much weight aft you will hear a lot of water noise from the stern as it drags.

You will notice as you move the crew forward the stern will quiet down as it comes up out of the water. You want things as "quiet" as possible back there in the light stuff!

Happy holidays,
 
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