Chris, How high can you point a C27 with the 155 driving the boat and the mainsail dumped? What do you do to get them upwind with just a headsail? I've never tried sailing much that way in the C27, so I'm relatively clueless about the finer points of sailing that way. I can imagine choosing to sail on a reach or downwind underr headsail only, being a lazy sailor sometime, but not upwind. I've goofed around with sailing under headsail only on several boats, excluding the C27, but I wasn't favorably impressed with the way they performed under headsail only above a close reach.... I've done it on J24s, J80s and J105s - but only to practice in case something happens in the marina, like the motor quitting in side the marina, after the mainsail is already stowed and you need to get the boat under control ASAP... and it's blowing 25-30 kts inside Berkeley Marina on SF Bay. A headsail works fine to get you to a dock safely, but I've never tried sailing under headsail for any pleasure sailing. The J boats didn't point very well that way, good enough for getting the boat safely to a dock, but not good enough for "real" sailing, IMO. But the J boats are fractional rigs. I often dump the main to quiet a boat down when it's lumpy and bumpy... like when somebody has to use the head... or when somebody has to reef a headsail up at the mast.... but that's the extent of my experience with headsail only.
Fair winds, Judy B C27 Tall Rig, "Bijou" San Francisco Bay, CA ----- Original Message ---- From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 9:21:34 PM Subject: Re: catalina27-talk: Yesterdays sail -- 2 fingers on tiller I should probably just shut up as ALL of my experience is with a standard rig and in winds under 18 knots and also in a racing configuration we always sail with a 150-155 jib and full main. When the wind pipes up and we are unable to change out the headsails we just dump the main and let the jib power the boat. If we can change out the headsail the vast majority of the boats will change to a 135-140 and keep the full main in place. Again just dump the main and let the headsail power the boat. This is a Chesapeake Bay set up where we rarely experience more than 20 other than in storms and they are usually short lived. We were out tonight racing (a 4.6 mile course that was roughly w/l and non-spin class) and I was very aware of the "2 fingers" thing and with our 153 we had up and full main, I was easily able to control the boat on both upwind and down legs with just 2 fingers. I never once called for an ease on the main, but several times asked for trim. Granted the only other C27 and really our only competition in this PHRF series sailed the wrong course and sailed by the first windward mark so we were kind of taking it easy, but we still sail pretty hard so the competition wasn't as much a factor as making the boat go as fast as possible. In fact we overtook several boats in the PHRF class that started 5 minutes ahead of us and when I tallied the whole PHRF non spin boats we would have beat a bunch of much larger boats on handicap. And I haven't cleaned my bottom in over 4 weeks in the hot Chesapeake summer so the slime must be considerable. The bottom will be clean next week even though we are ahead by 7 points (3-10) in the class with 2 races to go. Chris D toy box eastport, md
