Hi Sounds like a common problem You should go and buy a second hand One design wind surfer or old race board and happily be fully hooked up in 12 knots and if the wind dies you can still get back to the beach. Second hand should be about the same price as a sail for your BIC. you can even use your existing rig on an old race board 8.5 is plenty big enough.

Just my opinion I got sick of being caught out and having to swim back to the beach or winding up a mile down wind.

Cheers

Conventional wisdom is actually to keep downhaul and outhaul to a minimum, in those conditions.

You want maximum power, especially up top of the sail where there's a bit more wind!

I'm just under 80kgs and was able to plane in ~13 knots on a 110 litre freeride board, a 7.2 freerace sail with no cambers, and a 40cm fin. Just. 12 knots and I could keep planing, but net get planing. Obviously these numbers are a guess but around there - If a kiteboard could plane so could I.

In these conditions I'd have minimum downhaul and outhaul. I'd also move the rig as far back as possible.

From there it's technique; you want to be almost catapulting to get max power to get onto the plane. I found pumping didn't really help that much as you'd only fall off the plane once you stopped anyway. I used to instead lightly flutter the sail which does... something. Seems to loosen up the flow. You also want all your weight in the harness - mast foot pressure.

Good luck.

actually this happened yesterday .. I was about to launch in high winds nearing the water's edge I thought I need to downhaul the sail to it's maximum but was in a hurry(who isn't?)..luckily the wind lowered a bit by 3-5 kts and with a fuller sail helped me quite a bit and ended well .. sail couldn't rotate fast enough but instant power with lesser speed but still happy bout it

Francone I think what you are missing is - the difference between normal downhaul and a setting for light winds is about 1-2cm. I feel you are talking about using a lot less than that and it won't work.
You still need to downhaul in such a way that it may be difficult (takes some strength), the mast still bends, you may still need a winch. The same effort is required, just that it is downhauled about 1-2cm less

On most sails I find if downhaul is insufficient it will give you more power for sure, but won't go upwind well and feels funny in the gusts as it is just not set right. Often it is better to use recommended downhaul and then have to bear away a bit or pump to get on the plane. Then when planing you at least have a sail that is working properly.

Mark _australia said..

Francone I think what you are missing is - the difference between normal downhaul and a setting for light winds is about 1-2cm. I feel you are talking about using a lot less than that and it won't work.

Yes. When I mean minimum I mean within a range, of course. But that may need to be clarified to someone newish to the sport.

You still want a floppy leech or the sail won't work well at all. You just want to have it less floppy than usual. The general "rule of thumb" is to look at the crease that is formed in the 2nd (major) panel down from top of the sail. For a medium setting the crease about 1/3 to the middle. Max = 1/2 way.

In your case you want more power/less control so downhaul until the crease is about 1/4 of the way across the sail.

Ezzy sails have a guide printed on them. The three swooshes that look a bit like the Nike logo.
In the below example the sail is rigged at max downhaul, which gives the least power/most control.



You'd want to rig so that the crease only reaches the first indicator line. About 1/4 across the sail.

You still need to downhaul in such a way that it may be difficult (takes some strength), the mast still bends, you may still need a winch. The same effort is required, just that it is downhauled about 1-2cm less

Might be a bit more on a bigger sail, but yeah, still not much.

...I owned one of those North XT extensions once, with the winch. Honestly it taught me so much about trimming my rig. You can adjust downhaul easier than outhaul with one of those. Even while you're sailing! It allowed me to easily experiment and see how the sail reacts. It's pretty incredible the difference 2cm of downhaul can make.



http://www.north-windsurf.com/eng/nodes/display/product_ranges/extensions-bases

Expensive but I think worth it. I'm considering buying another.

On most sails I find if downhaul is insufficient it will give you more power for sure, but won't go upwind well and feels funny in the gusts as it is just not set right. Often it is better to use recommended downhaul and then have to bear away a bit or pump to get on the plane. Then when planing you at least have a sail that is working properly.

I find upwind is better with less downhaul, more outhaul? As long as it's within the designed range for the sail.

jp747 said..

. Mark is right cuz it really needed 2cm more downhaul to rotate with ease. On high winds it could need an extra cm at times. Outhaul didn't matter much as it has a rigid draft but I did leave 2cm just in case it needed to be flatter in case it got out of hand.

I assume when you say" 2 cm" (or whatever distance) , this is measured at the cleat-end, where the downhaul string comes out as you pull it through, but is there a visual reference for the absolute MINIMUM downhaul, in other words for the MINIMUM curve to give to the mast when you downhaul? For the past, I used to pull down as much as I could by hand ,( and even strain myself!) even in very light winds, and then, listening to that " conventional wisdom" I was referring to earlier, I even bought a winch to pull down even further. In other words, I had always taken for granted that the more the downhaul, the better it is . I was probably wrong and this is probably why I couldn't get my board moving in very light winds, even with a 8.5. Now I am facing the other extreme : what is the MINIMUM d/haul I should start with when the winds are really light ? Would a minimum downhaul be the one you get with an easy manual pull-down, without straining, let alone winching? Of course this is something I will have to experiment with in the water, but it is always nice to have some theory behind it. Regards

Francone

visual reference for me is the sail's overall look and from end of luff sleeve to the cleat or bottom of mastbase. Evil's pic was rigged for lighter wind or just for example. There's only 6 of us in this big island who sails. And on a weekend a max of 3-4 only show up. With no-one to really tell us which was the best limit to downhaul we thought it was right till we joined the races. And there we learned everyone was straining to max out the downhaul and loosen up their chosen sail 20mins. before the start depending on wind and sea state. Out of the 3 of us who usually get together most of the time one is really technical going back to the beach and keeps on fine tuning. I rig it the way it should be and never bother to come back. The last one really doesn't care as long as he can plane back and forth. One man's tire pressure guage will be always different from the other's. We just say it in cm's but actually don't measure it down the last mm. As we progressed we could feel the difference on a well set sail than not and it took ages to learn that after numerous outings with different sailors. It's not the end yet though there still is outhaul, fin size, board size..etc to figure out what's right and that made it a never ending learning curve. There's a video I saw once with Dave White and Peter Hart which shows the extremes of how Dave rigs his sail 'abnormally' and Peter does his the right way. I forgot what the title of it is. But if ever you come across it, it is very informational..regards

qldnacra said..

When they say 2 cm more or whatever it means the pulleys on the sail would be 2 cm closer to the pulleys on the extension not 2 cm more rope coming through the cleat. 2 cm of rope through the cleat won't give you anywhere near 2 cm of extra downhaul with race sails even more so because often they have an extra pulley on the sail and extension.

Thanks for correcting my blunder! I really thought this distance would be in terms of the rope pulled out of the cleat!

This brings me to another couple of related points:

1.Normally I am using an oldish 35% 460 cm mast. I am being offered now a good deal on a 2nd hand 490 cm 75% carbon mast. With the proper extension adjustment, I will be able to use this new mast with my 8.5 and 7.5 sails which have a luff of approximately 490 cm. The 6.5 sail , however, has a 466 cm luff, which means that I would have a 35 cm gap between the bottom of the sail and the extension pulley. I was wondering how will this affect my sailing.

2. Distance between the clew and the boom-end. I know that ideally this distance should be as small as possible. However, again, in the same package I would be getting a 100% carbon boom for about half price. The only problem is that it is a 220-280 competition boom and with the 7.5 sail I would have an 8 cm gap at the end of the boom. I am curious to know what should I expect from this gap, keeping in mind that I am not a performance buff and that I normally sail in light winds without being overly concerned about speed and planing. I'd love to have it because my current boom is an old aluminum one ( 8 years) which is kind of heavy and a bit unbalanced, I guess. Sure, it cannot stand the comparison with a state-of-the art 100% carbon boom !

Thanks for your comments

Francone