adjusting trim

squeakywaffle

New Member
Hi-

I'm a bit of a newbie here... I bought a laser for myself because the price was right and I've been trying to teach myself to sail with a decent degree of skill.

I'm getting to be comfortable with the boat in most conditions, but one thing that still evades me is sail trim. I know the theory and I can trim for conditions before I leave shore, but I have no idea how the hell you guys manage to reach those ropes while sailing, especially the vang and outhaul....? Anyone feel like giving me a pointer or two?:D
 
squeakywaffle said:
but I have no idea how you guys manage to reach those ropes while sailing, especially the vang and outhaul....? Anyone feel like giving me a pointer or two?:D

Do you have the old or new rigging?
 
My rigging is straight out of 1984, with the addition of a new traveler which doesn't help much.

It looks pretty old to me... it certainly isn't the "racing package" or whatever.
 
Here's the deal with the old rigging:

Outhaul:
Adjust on shore and forget.
Vang:
almost set and forget- to get it in, head into the wind, stand up and lean on the boom, take up the slack. to let it off, do the same thing.
 
Squeaky...One of trhe pleasures of the old rigging was that no matter how long everybody used it, anybody could go to any regatta and learn about some new beter way to "make the damn thing work without cheating."

The evoloution of the old rig almost stopped when the new special rigging was made legal but some of us still love to fiddle.

The old rig set up as I keep it on my loaner boat ( I can't aford fancy rigging for two boats) is on this page. The bad part is you really need to spend money on a bunch of feet of 100% Spectra lines. On the other hand, the same lines that I took off my race boat in 2002 are still working fine on the loaner boat.

http://schrothfiberglass.com/RiggingforLaser.htm
 
Thanks for the replies! Once again I'm impressed by the fact that despite the "internet" nature of this forum, nobody tells me to use the search bar or rants about how much i suck. :D

I feel like a simpleton after looking at that website... but I will definitely try that vang rig down at the bottom... maybe I can get a little more bang for my buck out of that old thing, although I probably don't need it... all I do is putter around the lake. I would also love to get some mechanical advantage on my cunningham, so maybe I'll look into a pulley system of some kind like that dude has.

I really ought to rig my boat properly and leave it, but I've been in the habit of de-rigging the whole thing (minus the mainsheet and traveler) when I put it away. I tend to "cheap out" when i rig it- I usually don't tie bowline handles, etc., which makes it even harder for me to make adjustments. I also need a new clew tie... mine is some random rope that came with the boat, must be about ten feet long and I just wrap it around the boom- does shockcord work as a clew tie? I have a more appropriate length of that lying around my room.

Also, is gelcoat repair easy?
 
I use the old rigging on my boat, and with a lot of fiddling and tweaking I think its as good as I can get without spending loads of dosh! the only exception is I still need to add one small high-load block in the kicker system.

Shock cord wont work for a clew tiedown, as the whole point is to keep the sail right at the boom. As you pull in the mainsheet, the shocky will just stretch and the sail will prettymuch stay where it is while the boom moves.

I'm racing this afternoon so I'll try to get some pics on how my boats set up.

I think you'll need to buy a few bits of string tho!
 
madyottie said:
Shock cord wont work for a clew tiedown, as the whole point is to keep the sail right at the boom. As you pull in the mainsheet, the shocky will just stretch and the sail will prettymuch stay where it is while the boom moves.

As I suspected... :D

Some pictures of your rig, if you could provide such things, would be awesome. I'm prepared to buy some string to make my baby sail better... but I don't have very deep pockets. (college student)
 

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