Technique, Tactics and Boat Speed
Lawrie smith and his cowriters are hard to beat when it comes to several key texts they published in the late 80s early 90s. They can now be had for peanuts on amazon or at the odd boat jumble..
His book "Sailpower" was perhaps previously called just Sails.These editions discuss the physics of sails, basic through to advanced sail trim and cover the advent of big assymetrics. They also cover upto atleast the advent of kevlar and panel sails, but perhaps not tape drive, spectra and later carbon laminate sails.
Sails was the copy I had hold of for winter 93-94 on loan from a pal, and it used the Mumm 36 and I think the sigma 38 as examples of mast bend, rigging adjustement and trimming. These are ideal boats to consider because they teach you a lot about how sails function and how the whole rig's geometry is set up.
Rig tune is by no means a black art, nut certainly mid to back fleet sailors pay little attention to something which is absolutely as cruical to get right as say the last ten centimeters on the jib and mainsheet. Just half that small distance on the masthead can make a very big difference to pointing in many boats, even up to forty feet!
The Mumm 36 for traditional, symmetrical kites and Melges 24 tuning guides are on line now of course, and once you understand the principles from the many diagrams in the texts, the tuning guides will give you insight as to just how finely rigs really need to be tuned for conditions. Google them by sailmaker, north's or Ullman usually have the best for true one design sail sets and rigs.
I own a different book in fact which is a kind of predecessor I believe and I have misplaced it by Tim Hayes!!! Anyway that and a few different dinghy books are in the "Sail to Win " Series whose little olympic triangle logo is to be found poking out of many a good sailor's top book shelf.
Lawrie contributes from his small boat series with Dinghy Helming to Win in various editions.
My favourites are sails as above, Tuning to win by Pinnell and Davision and Tatics by Rodney Pattison and Tim Hore. Postage is more or less all it costs to get some of these as they are penny bucket buys on amazon.
A bible of skiff racers has been Frank Bethwaites seminal and slightly eccentric High Performance Sailing and if you didn't know a sequel was written by him and Julian which is called HighER Performance Sailing which I still have not read because the great man promised me a signed copy and then shuffled off this mortal wave! This book gives testament to the niner development programme and the development of their ultimate hull which saw light as the short lived but wonderful 59er.
On Youtube (neither very me, nor a cathode ray tube now) a very good series was made by a gang of young Solent sailors out in their Etchells, whcih is still quite probably the toughest fleet of any boat to win or even get in the top ten in the UK. The videos are particularly good because rig tune and things like chocks and hauling the rig forward on the spare halyard are discussed as part of boat handling, and so I think it kind of makes the point of how and why rig tune is important and what to do.
The Rodney Pattison book has whiskers on it, and why the hell not. Boats haven't changed that much, and wheras thirty years ago there were many boring tonne thingies with masthead telegraph poles, now there are carbon fibre fractionals which need some true attention to detail and sail more like dinghies in many respects. Rodney's book touches in two pages on tidal vectors, and that with COG , heading and 'course to steer' is my own winter reading to extend my knowledge for future battle strategy.
Light Distraction
The lightest of distraction is the film "Wind" which is technically quite correct, mixing a deal of fiction into the real events of regaining the "auld mug" for the USA from the presiding Aussies who stole the Americas Cup away from their very noses with clever keel design and great sailing.
A good read and a bit of a giggle when you think of the old boffin puffing on his pipe or turning up at the pub in Cowes in his international canoe, is " According to Uffa" by the late, great Uffa Fox of course. With lines like "when I invented the kicking strap' you know you are up with a true pioneer of modern light weight sailing, and it is a great shame that really only his flying fifteen desing remains his sole lasting testimony in modern sailing, because many say the larger Flying' desings rivalled the Etchells and Soling and were more fun to sail, being kind of scale-rule models of each other, with that nice planing aft deadrise area. The odd flying twelve still exists in beautiful wood, such as one which was moored up in Arisaig bay for many summers. A good read about innovation at least, and kind of a 'high performance sailing' for the 1950s tweed and wool jumper period.
Less light reading, much more exciting by all means, and of course tragic in its last chapter, a very good winter read is Alan Seftons Biography of Sir Peter Blake, the man behind making kiwis proud not only of their exploits on a hündred and two yards of grass trampled with a funny shaped ball in hand. It details the early and very hairy whitbread races he took part in as well as his Americas Cups. A couple of books I have not read buyt maybe will about the whitbread are by Jourdine and Skip Novak who was aboard Drum on its spin and bin tour. I must read that because Rhu was my home port as crew for a decade of my Scottish exploits before Pwhelli, then Oban and then Bergen of all places. One book I do own, in Norwegian, but is available in English is Knut Frostad's Whitbread - Responsible for the Irresponsible ,. which is a ripping set of adventures, with some nice technical stuff and computer graphics. Really the peak of the race, in the tight box design boats which looked much more elegant than today's swing keel upturned clothes irons of the 'new market penetration' tame race around the target sponsor nations.
If you get that far and the season approaches, then bother an old caudger in the club bar for some PBO' back editions and find stuff about GRP, boat prep, fairing keels, painting, two pack epoxy, dewinterising, blocks, winches and so on as the season approaches you may be able to tackle more small and even major jobs than you imagine.
I could not find my favourite texts on metereology, one of which may be just in Norwegian, but there was an enigmatic book about forecasting called 'instant forecasting for yacthsmen' or the like, which just had lots of rather iffy colour prints with the question 'what happens next'. Earlier editions printed on 'plates' are better as are later editions which had better qauility inks than the middle years it seems. Quite challenging, I only get about half right. Lies in my brothers' yacht all summer. Generally any good text which goes into both big scale and small scale wind movements and how weather is created and so on, is worth picking up in the Library while of course sailing specific texts will teach you then how general weather phenomenon are modifeid or commecne locally by sun, tide and landscape, such as solar modified gradient breeze and convergent near shore bands of breeze.
Enjoy your winter eves, Fred' out!!!
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