Light Wind Sail Settings

Hi all,

First sail of the season yesterday in pretty light winds, max 4 - 5 knots ish. I was new to sailing last year and the winter break seems to have erased alot from my memory!! I really struggled to match other lasers speed both up and down wind. Can anyone help with decent approximate settings for the downhaul, outhaul and kicker in these sorts of conditions? maybe up to about 8 knots. I had the outhaul so the foot of the sail was around 6 - 8 inches from the boom, the downhaul was completely off all the way round the course and the kicker was a bit less than block to block, around 3 - 4 inches. There was a bit of swell even though it was light so should I have less outhaul and kicker?

Any help much appreciated!!

Chris

As a beginner you are doing really well to match other sailors around the course even if it was as you say a struggle. It is always a struggle to beat an experienced laser sailor. Light air sailing takes a lot of skill and this is only gained by experience and knowledge. There are countless books and articles that will tell you how to sail well, but only by practice and continual self analysis can you improve. Slight changes to sail setup will not do it.

I was just about to exactly what StJulian has just posted above. Ignore the sail settings for the moment. You obvs hav nothing grossly wrong and making small tweeks is not the answer. Look at how the others rolltack and rollgybe, how they steer without using much rudder and how they read the faint shifts and gusts. Go and congratulate the winner, offer to by him/her a drink and ask how they go that fast...... then....practice practice practice.

fat-n-old said:

...they read the faint shifts and gusts. Go and congratulate the winner, offer to by him/her a drink and ask how they go that fast...

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concur 100%!

Light air sailing is all about feel and practice. Practice roll tacking and gybing until you can do it blindfolded and get every one spot on.

Where do you sail Chris?

a full sail for upwind is about a hand from the boom cleat, downwind or on a reach you can ease it a little more,

you can use a little cunningham just to pull out the large creases, this doesn't seem to effect performance much either way although technically you don't want any disturbed flow on the sail.

play the vang and find the fastest gear for the given condition, I find I usually have vang on in these conditions but, I change it up if I feel slow.

You need to use your weight to steer and you want to site forward in lighter air, try both heeling to leeward and keeping the boat flat, I feel flat is almost always fast in the laser

you don't want to move around too much because this can disturb the flow on the sail stalling the boat, you'll want to learn how to roll-tack and roll-gybe because you can conserve speed, the competition will gain up to 10 boat lengths a leg if you don't use this technique, if there are waves, catch as many waves as you can downwind even if it means going off course, its often faster to ride the waves and then reach in to the mark than to just sail towards the mark.