How to trim Mark-II sail in light wind, close-hauled?

[Toshinari Takayanagi]

I sail radial rig most of the time, but I also sail standard rig when the wind is very light. I recently bought Mark-II sail for this and used it this weekend, and I noticed that I do not have good sense of how to trim it when close-hauled, especially how to set the boom vang and the main sheet.

In radial rig, I usually set the boom vang block-to-block, even if the wind is light - This seems what most of the people do and I think this is due to the deep draft of the radial sail shape. But the same is perhaps not true for the standard Mark-II sail, as the sail looks much flatter and stiffer.

It would be great someone could share his/her setting and the reasons.

Thanks,
Toshi

 

[Andy B]

I have been using this sail for 18 months and this works for me:-

I have a tale tale in front of the top batten and in light winds I gently pull on the kicker so that the top tale tale starts streaming on both sides of the sail. All three tale tales (upper, middle and lower) are then streaming correctly. I have the boom over the rear quarter but not two blocked because two blocking flattens the head of the sail and takes the power out of it in light winds. As the wind rises and falls I can control the power with sheet tension. If the wind rises I gradually apply more kicker tension to limit the maximum power and put some tension in the rig because otherwise there is weather helm. I find the kicker setting is much more critical than on the MK1 Standard and the Radial.

At 70Kilos I used to sail the Radial a lot but I find with the MK2 I can cope with stronger winds and have only used the Radial sail for club racing once in the last 12 months.

 

[Toshinari Takayanagi]

Thank you very much for sharing your experience, Andy! I will also experiment the kicker to see how best I can shape the sail curve.
It is interesting that you mentioned you can bear with stronger winds in the Mark-2 sail. I have been hearing that Mark-2 sail is more difficult to de-power, as the cunningham does not work as it used to in the Mark-1 sail...