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I certainly don't have all the answers, but here is my current mental model.
The unstayed carbon mast is very flexible. You put fullness into the middle and upper part of the sail by using the kicker to bend the mast. Since the kicker is bending the mast by moving the boom, the leech of the sail becomes very tight.
The downhaul pulls along the mast, taking up some of the tension, which loosens the leech again. You will read posts suggesting more kicker and then more downhaul, which I think of as "bend the mast using the kicker, then fine tune the leech tension with the downhaul". The other effect of more downhaul is to move the deepest part of the sail towards the mast, the best advice I found on this is in the video by Marc Jacobi - try to put the deepest part of the sail at the 'e' in the Aero on your sail.
The square top of the sail leads to an interesting response. In strong winds (specifically when you are overpowered), if you pull the downhaul fully on, the square top of the sail goes very flat and flexible - effectively removing it from your drive/drag. It is then like sailing with a smaller sail that has a much lower centre of mass, I find this greatly increases the range conditions of Fully Powered. This also means that the outhaul doesn't necessarily need to be super tight in stronger winds.
I also spent some time looking at what looks bad. Too much kicker for the downhaul, there will be no give in the leech at all. Too much downhaul for the kicker, my sail gets a kind of corrugated vertical ripple.
Away from windward, the trim seems important. Initially I was sat midway along the boat - this was slow. I switched to moving all the way forward until I have hull speed or a little more, then move all the way back and try to plane. This made a big difference in marginal planing conditions, which for handicap racing is my best case. Similarly for the mainsheet, playing it a long way out and back to keep the boat really flat helps stay on the plane. Overtime I expect my technique will become more subtle and refined, but for now I'm finding too much is better than too little.
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02/09/2017 09:23:00
Posts: 0
I'm in the same boat (yuk yuk).
I've looked at multiple videos and they all say things like, "for heavy wind, pull in the kicker, but if its REALLY heavy, let some out". Whaaaat? : )
A little table for dummies, showing light/med/heavy winds vs kicker/cunningham tension in a very general sense would be helpful. I'm sure it can't be boiled down like that easily, but like I said, for dummies! Especially including reference to the theory of what these adjustments are doing to the sail.
Is it worth it looking at Laser tuning references to find out more about how kicker and cunningham affect sail tuning in that cat rig? There is lots of that out there, too much really. How applicable are those references to the Aero with the carbon mast and modern rig?
If someone could make a simple video for those new to cat rigged single handing showing how kicker and Cunningham simply affect sail tuning, then followed by some comments about what to use when, and about more advanced topics like race tuning, that would be super helpful. No offense to Peter Barton's extensive video but it seems more focused towards veteran Laser sailors and racers who are getting briefed on the Aero at a high level.
As more people get an Aero as a first singlehander, rather than coming from 20 years of Laser sailing, I bet these references would be more highly used all the time.
(of course now I just stumbled on this V1 tuning guide document, after I wrote the above. Thanks!! Any updates to it? I still think a simple concise video would be very popular.)
Also just saw this http://propercourse.blogspot.com/2015/07/how-you-can-learn-13-essential-rs-aero.html
More please and thanks in advance!
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01/09/2017 17:48:00
skinnydoc
Posts: 13
All,
Can you point me to a resource to help me learn how to properly tune the sail shape for single dinghy sails like the Aero? I've been reading lots... but I come from a keel boat background and am used to travellers, backstay, block placement etc. While I can get the tell tales to fly well close hauled, I can't figure out what 'good' looks like at any other point of sail. Besides having the leech tales flying straight out. Without another boat to race against, I can't tell what the optimal setup looks like.
-Jeff
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01/09/2017 16:49:00
Niteskye
Posts: 14
