Re: Self tacking jib on the sloop rig.
Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2011 1:08 pm
The huge advantage of the self-tending jib is, of course,... well,... self tending. “To tack, you turn the wheel” is the catch phrase in all of the promotional material and something of the ethos of Freedom boats. You give up some pointing ability and perhaps a tiny amount of speed but short tacking up a channel is fun and easy. (The way-over-used joke is for someone to spin a winch when we tack, just to make the clicking sound: At least it SOUNDS like we’re doing something!)
Everyone, secretly or not, is concerned with performance though. I have the original, permanent Camberspar jib and I also got a second, light air genoa for my cat/sloop Hoyt 32. My genoa is bagged, it’s not on a roller, it goes up hanked-on over the lowered Camberspar jib. In general, the boat seems indifferent to which sail I use. I’ve found the genoa in place of the Camberspar jib to be clearly worthwhile in only 2 circumstances, both in light air, both only when going to windward:
1) Getting a better few degrees of pointing: While the speed difference is negligible, the pointing gains aren’t quite “infinitesimal” but they are small, call it, say, “more than 1 and less than 4.” Still, the mathematics of just a little bit better pointing can pay big in getting to a windward mark. Even then I normally don’t bother putting it up, unless I have a long way to go.
2) It has better “punch” than the Camberspar. If the wind is light and the waves are sloppy and confused, the larger genoa seems to have “punching power”, the boat speed stays higher when you are constantly get stopped by banging into waves. This is a big deal to me. North Florida weather in the summertime, day after day after freakin’ day: a perfect sea breeze starts at noon, the 4:30 PM thunderstorm kills it and the sea is a mess afterwards. I use the genoa more often in this circumstance, often just to give up and go home, but it’s either that or the motor. The sailing still isn’t much fun.
In medium and heavier air both those differences minimize then disappear entirely and I always fly the smaller Camberspar instead of the genoa, especially to windward, with no real loss of performance.
Reaching, the gains of the genoa are infinitesimal. Freedom boats really shine off the wind and you’ll gain on everybody no matter what you have up. Also, once I’m at 60* apparent wind or greater I can put up the Gunmount spinnaker and the boat doesn’t just shine, if flat-out HONKS. Goodbye, everybody.
I don’t have numbers on this but I’d guess, in the real world, the Camberspar running wing and wing is actually far better than the genoa. The Camberspar keeps the sail vanged, winged out and it doesn’t collapse, the sail is contributing all the time. The tiny “actually-projected” additional sail area of the genoa would add very little to any real world speed while running and unless I set up a whisker pole (I don’t have one), the genoa is going to be collapsed much of the time anyway. The Camberspar is nearly perfect wing and wing and it’s also stable, no-brainer simple, well behaved, all automatic, all from the cockpit. And if I want to go faster, setting the Gunmount is not much more trouble than setting a whisker pole would be and that real world gain is dramatic.
My experience: Changing the Camberspar to a genoa doesn’t add much and I’m back to grinding winches.
Everyone, secretly or not, is concerned with performance though. I have the original, permanent Camberspar jib and I also got a second, light air genoa for my cat/sloop Hoyt 32. My genoa is bagged, it’s not on a roller, it goes up hanked-on over the lowered Camberspar jib. In general, the boat seems indifferent to which sail I use. I’ve found the genoa in place of the Camberspar jib to be clearly worthwhile in only 2 circumstances, both in light air, both only when going to windward:
1) Getting a better few degrees of pointing: While the speed difference is negligible, the pointing gains aren’t quite “infinitesimal” but they are small, call it, say, “more than 1 and less than 4.” Still, the mathematics of just a little bit better pointing can pay big in getting to a windward mark. Even then I normally don’t bother putting it up, unless I have a long way to go.
2) It has better “punch” than the Camberspar. If the wind is light and the waves are sloppy and confused, the larger genoa seems to have “punching power”, the boat speed stays higher when you are constantly get stopped by banging into waves. This is a big deal to me. North Florida weather in the summertime, day after day after freakin’ day: a perfect sea breeze starts at noon, the 4:30 PM thunderstorm kills it and the sea is a mess afterwards. I use the genoa more often in this circumstance, often just to give up and go home, but it’s either that or the motor. The sailing still isn’t much fun.
In medium and heavier air both those differences minimize then disappear entirely and I always fly the smaller Camberspar instead of the genoa, especially to windward, with no real loss of performance.
Reaching, the gains of the genoa are infinitesimal. Freedom boats really shine off the wind and you’ll gain on everybody no matter what you have up. Also, once I’m at 60* apparent wind or greater I can put up the Gunmount spinnaker and the boat doesn’t just shine, if flat-out HONKS. Goodbye, everybody.
I don’t have numbers on this but I’d guess, in the real world, the Camberspar running wing and wing is actually far better than the genoa. The Camberspar keeps the sail vanged, winged out and it doesn’t collapse, the sail is contributing all the time. The tiny “actually-projected” additional sail area of the genoa would add very little to any real world speed while running and unless I set up a whisker pole (I don’t have one), the genoa is going to be collapsed much of the time anyway. The Camberspar is nearly perfect wing and wing and it’s also stable, no-brainer simple, well behaved, all automatic, all from the cockpit. And if I want to go faster, setting the Gunmount is not much more trouble than setting a whisker pole would be and that real world gain is dramatic.
My experience: Changing the Camberspar to a genoa doesn’t add much and I’m back to grinding winches.