tacking advice?

P

papayamon2

Member
Just finished half a day in 10-15 mph winds. Quite fun, but I expected my SF (which I just bought) to tack more easily than it did. I would build up a good head of steam but, when tacking, would often end up in irons. Finally figured out that the daggerboard being down more rather than less seems to help, but at one point I was in very shallow water and not able to put the daggerboard down very far. (And do you always have to life the bottom spar over the daggerboard by hand in such "shallow water" cases?)

I just owned an 18' catamaran and am familiar w/ hard-to-tack boats--is the SF one in that group, or am I missing a basic pointer to this style rig?

Thanks!
 
Were you already close hauled when you tried to tack - you should have been. If you are on a reach and try to tack, you are likely to get stuck in irons. Key is to be close hauled, then tack. The board definitely needs to be down. If you are in water so shallow you need to keep the board up, you need to get to deeper water! And yes, if the boat is race-rigged with the boom low and your board is up, you would need to lift the boom, but that is not normal - you need to get into deeper water.
 
another thing to do is try to roll tack it...I live in Corpus Christi Tx, and we have about 15 mph on a calm day. We have wind ALL THE TIME. You can either power through the tack by triming the main in, or you can depower a little and slowly roll through the tack staying on the old windward (soon to be leeward) side. This helps by whipping the stern around as lokg as you dont flip the boat.
 
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