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LPW said:When sailing my laser, is it best to pull on more of the cunningham to get the boat perfectly flat, or would I go faster if I just sailed with a bit of a heel but with a fully powered rig.
You always want some leeward heel, no matter what. This gets one side of the boat out of the water, and thus less wetted surface.(this means that in really light wind, you need to create leeward heel if there isn't enough wind to do it by itself) However, if the leeward rail is in the water, you are heeled over too much.
As for the cunningham, that controls the draft of the sail. Generally, the farther forward the draft (the more cunningham) the flatter and more de-powered the sail is. Keep the cunningham just tight enough to take all of the wrinkles out of the sail until you are overpowered and having to dump the sail. then, take on more. Also, if you are overpowered, try taking in some outhaul as well until you only have a 3-4" gap between the sail and the boom, and take in enough vang so that when you block-to-block, the vang is tight. Once your vang and outhaul are set like that, then you should add pressure to the cunningham.
hope that helps!
182618 said:Hi everyone, just skipping back to the cunningham issue,
i recently did a days training with Jim Saltenstall the guy who trained Ben Ainsle for 11 yrs. he suggested that in the laser when sailing on flat water you should have a fair amount of cunningham pulling it down to the boom.
computeroman2 said:Originally Posted by LPW
You always want some leeward heel, no matter what. This gets one side of the boat out of the water, and thus less wetted surface.(this means that in really light wind, you need to create leeward heel if there isn't enough wind to do it by itself) However, if the leeward rail is in the water, you are heeled over too much.
As for the cunningham, that controls the draft of the sail. Generally, the farther forward the draft (the more cunningham) the flatter and more de-powered the sail is. Keep the cunningham just tight enough to take all of the wrinkles out of the sail until you are overpowered and having to dump the sail. then, take on more. Also, if you are overpowered, try taking in some outhaul as well until you only have a 3-4" gap between the sail and the boom, and take in enough vang so that when you block-to-block, the vang is tight. Once your vang and outhaul are set like that, then you should add pressure to the cunningham.
hope that helps!