how many of you sunfish sailors are heavy and can't get low enough to easily duck the boom?Besides lowering your halyard on the upper boom are there any styles, that work well when tacking or jibing?Leaning back seems to work a little, but have trouble, with tiller and mainsheet cross over.
how high should the lower boom be off the deck at the mast, I ask because I see alot of pictures where it is say 12 inches or so from the deck, but at my club both of the sunfish have the lower boom about 24 inches above deck
That picture shows how some people rig the boat for recreational sailing, especially when you have a second person aboard. It is also used when teaching groups of kids on a Sunfish. But racers never ever have the rig that high.how high should the lower boom be off the deck at the mast, I ask because I see alot of pictures where it is say 12 inches or so from the deck, but at my club both of the sunfish have the lower boom about 24 inches above deck
they actually have the halyard lower. this pulls the sail up higher. if you want to rig the sail lower to the deck, you need to move the halyard attachment on the upper spar a little bit higher up the spar.so basically the person who rigged it has the halyard attaching too high on the upper spar??
I'm a newbie, so take everything with a HUGE grain of salt, but ... I've seen Craigslists, Google pics, and even a couple of club members with higher booms on their Sunfish. I'm small and short, but the tall guy in our Sunfish lessons ducked under his boom pretty well by sheeting tight and using a guiding hand ... at least that's what he said. I'm basically jockey sized, but I had problems with the boom on tacking, because I didn't sheet in tight enough as it passed over. Two lessons later, I was sheeting too tight and having steering problems coming after a tack .. go figure!
forgive the ignorance of the newbie questions, what does having the boom lower to the deck acomplish. I did read kyles guide, thanks for that very useful, but in it they really did not touch on the difference of running a high or low boom, only of gooseneck position which you also touched on. I am a big guy so a higher boom might make my life easier, but at the same time I want to understand the tradeoff, if it means I will lose speed in lower wind then I would not do it.