Mainsheet trim

Kevin Pierce

New Member
In "Successful Sunfish Racing" by Derrick Fries (also part of The Sunfish Bible), he describes proper upwind mainsheet trim this way:

LIGHT AIR
port [tack] -- over the corner of the transom; starboard -- 2-4" past corner

MEDIUM AND HEAVY AIR
port -- 2" inside corner of transom; starboard--over corner of transom

I'm trying to give my 13-year-old son some benchmarks for his entry into Sunfish racing. These seem to be good rules of thumb; are there equal or better?

Kevin
 
I've rarely raced, but having a electronics background, I'd be inclined to devise a device that would indicate the rate at which the water was flowing by me. This would probably not be allowed in a race, but after much practicing the device would likely become unnecessary. Maybe there's someone out there with experience here?
 
For now, if your son is just starting to race, I would just have him pull it into the middle of the boat untill he is comfoitable with raceing. He is going to have so much going on to think about where the sail should be upwind other then in close to him. Eventually he will get the feel of the boat and he will do that kind of thing without even thinking. Really you just have to feel the boat to know where the sail should be. But yeah, in lighter air you want it out more, and in really heavy air you want to really bring it in to get the sail a little flatter to depower the sail a little. And really you can pull the sail a little tighter on port tack because of how the rig is set up.
 
Kevin Pierce said:
In "Successful Sunfish Racing" by Derrick Fries (also part of The Sunfish Bible), he describes proper upwind mainsheet trim this way:

LIGHT AIR
port [tack] -- over the corner of the transom; starboard -- 2-4" past corner

MEDIUM AND HEAVY AIR
port -- 2" inside corner of transom; starboard--over corner of transom

I'm trying to give my 13-year-old son some benchmarks for his entry into Sunfish racing. These seem to be good rules of thumb; are there equal or better?

Kevin

Those are good recommendations. In addition, your son can study Cordero's write-up, which can be found under the FAQs on the Sunfish Class home page: http://www.sunfishclass.org/frequent/index.htm#Some general racing tip from Cordero

However, unless your son has considerable experience, the main thing is to support him when the outcome of his racing isn't quite what he had hoped for. We all struggled as beginners (and I still do:eek: ).
 

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