no not really flat... We had quite a bit of heel - not too experienced with the trapeze so could not get all the way out... balanced the heeling by letting the mainsheet out and/or steering upwind when we had gusts. Didn't know heel caused weather helm - thanks!!
Found your problem pretty fast! In light-to-medium winds you indeed head up a little in gusts, but when you have upwind planing conditions, you need to go the opposite way and let out plenty of mainsheet... and pull it all back in at the end of the gust to keep the crew out of the water
is a perfectly flat boat the fastest way of sailing? I don't gain speed by keeping the mainsheet in a bit and allowing some heel?
As I said, you aim for zero degrees. Heeling works in keelboats and even to some extent in boats like the Laser, where you go for a compromise because there's a practical speed limit upwind. An upwind-planing boat like the 470 on the other hand basically goes just faster and faster, and any heel will only slow it down.
One thing I don't really understand is the mast rake. How is that typically controlled? And how is it that different to controlling the mast bend? For the mast bend I believe it is controlled by the side shrouds and by tension of the jib.
I think of shroud position adjusting the rake, spreader angle adjusting the mast bend, and then to make it all happen you pull the jib halyard so that you have near-zero jib luff sag (and that's something like 150 kg on the jib luff wire). But those three don't work independently, so you have to measure several combinations of settings, and the tuning guides give you the numbers for those.
Var seglar du din båt? Och kan vi se bilder?
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