Hi drjay44,
Here are a few of things that work for me:
1. As I start the tack, when the sail begins to luff, I release the main sheet a bit. I think I just hold onto the main sheet, and when I come inboard to cross the sheet just eases naturally. I then wait for the sail to fill, completing the tack. I am now "footing" and as the boat picks up speed I go back to close hauled with the sheet pulled in.
2. I try and find a flat spot. If I smack the boat into a wave in the middle of a tack, the boat slows down, and I may not make it through the tack.
3. I move the gooseneck on the lower boom so that more of the sail is forward which helps balance the boat. You can check this forum on what the distance is for heavy air. I usually have it around 17" back from the forward end of the boom, and move it back in high wind to around 20" - 22". There's not an exact science, there are other factors, but the general rule is move it back when it's windy.
4. Before starting the tack, I make sure the boat is moving well.
5. Others report pulling up the daggerboard in higher winds a few inches. You need to be sailing that way to begin with however, as there will be too much lateral force to pull the board up when you are close hauled.
If I do end up in irons, I pull the daggerboard up, grab the boom and pull it towards me, push the tiller away and let the boat rotate around the rudder as it moves backward. Sometime I do just the opposite, but it's more awkward as I then have to move across the boat, since I am on the wrong side when the boat gets going.
I hope that is helpful to you. Good luck.
If you mean the gooseneck, no.Is your sail set up properly for the expect wind conditions?
fwiw...I'd put the daggerboard in and forget about it at this point and concentrate on other aspects of sailing, .... judging from reading your posts. Unless you have shallow areas, I'd think best to put it in and forget about it.
Read up or spend an evening with YouTube and watch some basic tacking videos and learn JUST the basic stuff.... why a tack is different from a gybe, etc. Get some of the BASIC stuff out of the way...and it will go very quick... and you'll learning curve will go off the charts. But, you need to learn the "alphabet" of what you're doing first before you can "speak" sailing. It's easy...honest. 12 yr old kids scream around in Sunfish every summer day.
Well I believe I made a couple of mistakes firstly I did not pay attention to the waves this because I was just trying to sail and believe me they were lots of waves I know I smacked into quite a few because the water came over the bow secondly unlike the suggestion to not go past 45 degrees when I attempted to tack I pushed the tiller as far as I possibly could and I may have stalledSkipper looks for a flat spot, because as mentioned above, if you tack right into a the face of a wave the boat will stop. So look for a good spot, fall OFF a few degrees to speed up, then tack quickly. Don't push the rudder past 45 degrees or that will stall the boat as well. For our setup that means the leading end of the tiller will be close to the edge of the boat.
K&A
Finally I was able to get on a port tack by doing what I can only describe because I don't know if it has a proper terminology.
From my starboard tack i turned downwind and sort of made a big loop and came back on a tack on the port side. in other words I headed downwind to eventually go upwind on the opposite tack.
I appreciate the reply let me ask you a question when sailing downwind on say Broad reach it would seem to me that the boom can be oriented in one of two ways the back of the boom on the starboard side of the stern or the back of the boom on the port side of the stern in other words the boom is angled across the hullIn big ships I believe this is called 'wearing'. Square rigged ships are hard to tack in many conditions and so it is common to do a 270(ish) instead. Dingy sailors sometimes do the opposite to this and go all the way round through the wind to avoid a sketchy jibe. a "cowards jibe" if you will. My point being that although you are struggling with your tack you are at least getting plenty of jibes in, something that gives many beginners the fear.
This is getting really deep I have a lot to learn I better hit Youtube and Barnes and NobleErm. If you were dead downwind the boom can be on either side. If you were just slightly off dead downwind (a training run) it is still possible to have the boom either side, however the chances of an accidental jibe increase the further off downwind you go the more it makes sense for the boom to be on the leeward side of the boat. By the time you are on a broad reach there is only one side that it can be on. ....unless you are talking about sailing by the lee, which is a whole other kettle of fish and something I don't know much about. People were talking about it in a recent thread hear though.
Thanks, Charles. An owner's manual of sorts.