Glorious sunset by myself today
Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 12:41 am10 kts or so of steady breeze, 78 degrees, middle of December. No kids, no cares, just sailing into the sunset.
Beautiful! And I'm jeaulous... My local waters have just hit 49F temp, so my season's over. Where are you sailing?
And now for the inevitable "serpents in paradise" question, how's your headstay tension? From the photo, looks like the gap between your downhaul line and the forestay widens as you go up. Could just be the angle of the photo, but it should narrow as they meet at the jib head. My general rule of thumb is that you need to tighten your stays till you can strum a low note on them - twaaaang. There's better ways to tune your standing rigging, but that's a start. Anyway, except in very light winds, headsail sag is a speed-destroyer - the draft of your jib comes too far forward, and at extremes the entire luff will stall. My gut feeling, purely based on this wonderful photo, is give your side stay turnbuckles two more turns each.
But, as you wrote, beautiful day, no kids, no cares.... let the serpents in paradise go sun themselves!