modifications for speed, cats

[grafozz]

not being a lottery winner yet means the order for a new 42ft outremer is "on hold " so.... more mods for more speed on the current cat ! she is a solaris sunstar 32 with a streeeetch aft of 3ft and fwd of 2 ft 6", giving 37ft 6" o/a.this has improved sea-keeping and performance , and looks very good. weight reduction is the next targe, some ideas from this site are being considered.a larger main went on this year ,bigger roach, stiffer battens, and the jib ,in mylar ,32% larger went on too. Any ideas on mast rake ? to make her better upwind there is about 3 degrees now .no weather helm is apparent at the moment .still thinking of bow bulbs but never liked the look of them particularly as she now has 100% vertical bows with very fine entry .look forward to any fresh ideas for improvements from members . i have just joined the forum its a treat to find so many multi nuts !

[Alan Wheeler]

Racing strip and wing mirrors with a fluffy dice hanging from the............Oh sorry, that only works on cars.:-)
Sorry I can't help with speed additives, but my suggestion on the bulbs would be, don't make them a bulb. Make them wave piercing. If you have a vertical entry, then wave piercing "bulbs" may work very well. I have no expert experiance with this though, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt.

[Tropic Cat]

Grafozz

Welcome to the forum. I would imagine that Greece is a great place for a Cat. Sounds like you've really juiced the sail plan. I've messed a bit with rake and found out the hard way that too much rake impacts down wind performance. Is the 3 degrees all rake or does that include prebend?

At the risk of stating the obvious, without a dagger/centerboard windward performance is a challenge. This is also a subject near and dear to me and I've been experimenting over the last year with disappointing results to date, but then I'm working with a baggy main.

I have a quick couple of questions:

Did you change the cut of the new sails?
Hank on jib or furler?
Did you realize an increase in pointing ability with the new sails?
How has messing with backstay tension affected windward performance?

Rick in Florida

[grafozz]

gday all lets hope the karma drops to a gentle force 2/3 today ! , in reply to your questions ,rick , the jib is on a furler, the rake is 3 degs no pre-bend probably due to no runners or backstays. rig comprises of ,forestay baby stay, capshrouds ,lower shrouds. now ,as i generally drop the main and fly the assymetric downwind the mast rake is not important for downwind sailing, so maybe more would help for the upwind legs?the cut of the main was supposed to have been flatter but it still looks a little deep. i have not seen any improvement in pointing ability since fitting the new main, even though it has a bigger area m, mostly in the roach. looking forward to some structured technical input ! ,thanks ,grafozz