Blue Water Sailing — June-July 2017

(^16) BLUE WATER SAILING • June / July 2017
{ BILLBIEWENGA }
speed, wind angle, and the resultant
boat speed in order to develop accu-
rate light air polars. If you’re lacking
electronic instrumentation, you may
not be able to generate highly accurate
data for good quantitative analysis. But
the theory remains the same. Sail the
boat to achieve the greatest velocity
towards the mark or your intended
waypoint, keeping in mind that you
don’t need to make the boat go the
fastest in the fleet. You just need to get
to the mark first or better understand
how to get the most out of your boat
on a light air passage.
As the wind angle is opened up to
keep the boat moving the sheet lead will
need to be moved outboard and forward
in order to open the slot between the
genoa and main and keep sails at their
peak performance. If the sail cloth is
too heavy to allow good, consistent sail
shape in the Light Number 1 range, it
may become necessary to change to a
wind seeker or drifter in less than four
knots of breeze if you have that avail-
able. Keep the Light Number 1 in a posi-
tion to go back up quickly, especially if
there is a leftover sea that causes surge
loading in the sails as the boat pitches
off of a wave; the drifting sails can be
easily damaged. More sails or larger sails
do not necessarily result in more boat
speed in light air. Staysails seldom work
well in conjunction with larger headsails
in light air. However, having said that,
sometimes smaller sails with less fabric
weighing them down, have the ability to
fly when other larger sails merely droop
and only interfere with air flow across
something that is working.
KEEP IT QUIET
Throughout sail changing maneu-
vers, crew movement must be kept
to a minimum, and walking softly
is required. Jarring motions on deck
translate into wild gyrations at the
masthead, shaking wind out of sails
and slowing the boat down.
Just as tacking angles widen in
light air, jibing angles also widen. If
your destination or the mark is located
directly downwind, it gets progres-
sively more difficult to get there as
the wind gets lighter. On one hand, to
keep the boat moving, it is necessary
to get the apparent wind forward; on
the other hand, tactically, it is better
to maintain a deeper course. The
way to balance these two mutually
exclusive conditions is to bring the
wind forward of the beam, generate
boat speed and more apparent wind,
and bear away closer to the desired
course while keeping the spinnaker
up and pulling. Movements with the
pole need to be smooth in order to
keep from shaking the wind out of
the sail. In the lightest conditions,
sometimes keeping the outboard pole
end low will help to steady the luff
of the sail. Choking down the sheet
may also help to close off the leech
of the sail, keeping the sail inflated,
and it may help to hold the sail away
from the boat as additional heel is
induced. Under normal circumstances
it may not be the ideal way to trim the
chute, but light air sometimes requires
innovative solutions. Occasionally, in
the lightest conditions, the only way
to fly the spinnaker is to reef or drop