Fractional Sailing

[ForeSail]

My hunter 40.5 sports a fractional rig - I can't seemed to get more than about 7.5 - 8 knots our of her. I'm wondering if I'm using too much old jib sail trimming techniques and need to focus more on trimming the main. Any comments from anyone out there that knows will bve appreciated.

Happy Sailing in 2012
Fore Sail

[red_sky]

Hull speed seems to be 8 kts for that vessel

[ForeSail]

Sailed one of our dock mates yacht a couple of weeks ago - 22 kts winds - his franctional hunter is a 44 - we saw 10kts from her. Made me wonder if I was missing something.

[Jim Cate]

G'Day Foresail

After decades of typical IOR masthead rigs, we bought our present boat which is fractional. We've owned her for 8 years and 40,000 miles now... and I'm still not really sure how to get max drive from the mains'l! And yes, these are mains'l driven boats and getting it trimmed right does make a difference.

Things I have noticed:
The main needs to be much flatter than I expected, even in fairly light breeze.
It needs to be trimmed more inboard than I expected.
With swept-back spreaders, one can't get the main out as far as you might wish downwind, but it still seems to go pretty well wing/wing.
Controlling twist is important... airflow in the area above the jib is different than below. I use telltales on the leech of the main and try to get them all flying smoothly (especially hard on the wind).

I'm sure that there are CFers who are better versed in this than I am... hopefully they will offer some better advice.

Finally, one would think that reaching in twenty knots and flat water that you could exceed your theoretical hull speed when everything is done just right. We occasionally get sustained 10.5 +/- 0.5 with our 44 foot LWL and a typically overloaded cruising boat (hull speed =~8.8).

Good luck and have fun

Jim

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by ForeSail

My hunter 40.5 sports a fractional rig - I can't seemed to get more than about 7.5 - 8 knots our of her. I'm wondering if I'm using too much old jib sail trimming techniques and need to focus more on trimming the main. Any comments from anyone out there that knows will bve appreciated.

Happy Sailing in 2012
Fore Sail

How is speed being measured?

Also it is spurious to measure your 40.5 against a 44.

Speed log calibration, bottom fouling, main and jib trim, sail condition, boat weight, weight distribution... The list goes on.

Getting the last half knot is tough. Sailing a better course and hitting the shifts has a much higher payoff...

[ForeSail]

Thanks for all you responses. I'll try your ideas and see what happens. Happy Cruising!