GreenLake wrote:Yes, I did mean sailing technique. Because for occasional adjustments my current setup seems to be adequate, so I'm trying to figure out a bit more about how people "play" the vang - both in theory and in actual practice. Your setup seems geared for quick adjustments - but if I understand your last post, that's not something you actually do very much?
Correct, my intention was to have this boat rigged to accommodate that type of sailing. Then another boat that needed a lot of work adopted me, and money has been flowing that direction. So, when this boat is sailed it is kinda of stuck in "cruise mode"... for now... add hiking straps and a spinnaker and I would probably handicap race it against the Flying Scotts during the club's series races (basically beer cans).
Will try and give a little feedback based on my thistle experiences, the same kind of vang setup is there at the centerboard trunk. You have to be able to use it without moving "you" around too much, preferably already in your lap. I have been yelled at for reaching in to grab the vang sheet, and it is right there (because the boat responds to that little tiny movement). Boat balance is everything... Each person knows when it is their turn to hike and just how much hiking to do (crew of 3). As the breeze builds, the foredeck person begins to hike first, then the midshipman, and finally the skipper (front to back human ballast arrangement). In any decent breeze, everyone is hiking (boat is very tender)... again it just depends how much for each person based on the condition. If everyone is hiked out as far as they can go then we play the vang to get things where we can keep the boat flat. Fatigue can kick in as well which will shorten the distance you can hike and how much power you can squeeze out of the boat. When the puffs hit, you really only can ease the main (if very overpowered sometimes you reach for the vang too), you are already in full hiking mode (or going into it). So, you are really playing the mainsheet and the vang (or "luffing up" if all else fails). The idea is as the puffs and lulls hit, to keep the boat flat, I mean dead flat... which can be difficult to do even with all that rail ballast fully extended. You want to get to where you have smaller mainsheet adjustments using the least vang (max power), whilst keeping the boat flat, in ever changing conditions... else you might get to cool off quicker than you wanted to. Basically constant optimization for max power in the "dead flat" boat balancing game, at the sacrifice of how sore you want your lower back and thigh muscles to be the next couple of days
In short, we play the vang to keep us in the neighborhood we need to be in to stay in high gear during this convoluted balancing act. We don't want to have big adjustments on the mainsheet (big eases are slow) if we can help it (as you are going through several "hopefully small" ease/trim cycles during a puff), nor luff/pinch the boat if we are after VMG mode. Trying to find a good balance between using as much of the wind as possible while keeping the boat flat using small adjustments.
To be honest, this is probably overkill unless you are pushing the crew and the boat to the max. Outside of that, the location is convenient, and I do not feel like the cost associated with the placement were high. I will eventually make her more race ready
When cruising with beer in hand (that I would otherwise rather not spill), I get lazy often and just luff her up... and I still find a way to spill beer