29erX
Silja has been doing some more sailing in her last week in
Australia… I wonder what she got upto in the other two weeks
Julian has pulled the 29er big rig out of the container, with Tai
and Silja being test pilots during the week, and Silja and I
sailing it on Saturday.
In 20+ knots the boat becomes nice and tricky, taking away all the
easy parts of normal 29er sailing… good fun I would say. We did
go for a swim more than once, and Silja was very happy that I put
it in the piss on the first bear-away after taking over the helm. I
would argue that it was due to the sheets being normal 29er size…
ie you can’t let it out all the way and stay on the wire… but
then that’s just an excuse isn’t it.
The new boat rig needs a lot of work, perhaps I’ll just have to
drop down a bit more often and take it sailing 
Some photos on Tai’s site…
Update #1
Here’s an email I sen’t off to Julian with some feedback…
–
Julian,
Some feedback on sailing the 29erX both with Silja last week, and
today (as well as for a few months back in 2000).
Great fun, much more challenging that the usual, though maybe a
little too challenging for most.
There are a lot of little tweaks that can be made to the boat to
make the ride more user-friendly. It’s always annoying to have
things not working exactly how you’d like them to. The list of
things I would change:
- Make the standard sheets longer so the main and jib can be out
while the helm is still on trapeze.
- The tillers need to be longer so they can’t fall inside the
shrouds, or inside the helms harness.
- The bridle is too short.
- The trapeze lines are too long.
- V-cleats are absolutely useless.
- Footloops would be nice downhill.
A few comments on the new rig:
- The jib is hard to set up so that it looks right. I feel the foot
needs to be shorter and the width needs to be greater higher up. It
seems to set up too far away from the spreader/mast.
- The standard jib track is too short to give a good range of
adjustment. It felt better sheeting bottom clewboard and no pins
for the crew weights (and winds) I sailed in.
- The head of the mainsail seems to be too full. Uphill in strong
winds the head battens seems to almost set permanenly intervted.
When they do flick into and out of position there feels to be a
huge change in available power. It’s difficult to keep the boat
flat (and fast) when the power changes so much. In Moths we tended
to sail with much larger roaches, but have a flatter head. I
wouldn’t mind trying a larger, flatter head, the sail does what it
likes uphill but has plenty of area downhill. Probably a lower
centre of effort (less drive up there) would help too. You’re the
guru in that deparment though.
- The luff pocket is too long, and too wide. It’s hard to get
enough downhaul tension, and pulling the downhaul seems to pull too
much on the foot.
- It doesn’t feel as though the crew weight can be moved far enough
back going downwind. I haven’t sailed the boat in chop, though I
think it would make for a pretty scary ride. With two on the wire
its not possible to get the weight even as far aft as a standard
29er, and a 49er allows the weight to be moved further aft relative
to the rig. This is not something you can’t fix easily, and where
the cut-off transom becomes a bit of a liability. With you on the
helm there wouldn’t be a problem, but with a heavier crew and some
big waves - ouch.
- With the narrow width, it feels as though the helm is pulled
further forward by the trapeze. I can’t say I remember this on a
49er or the 18, which may be due to the wings. Again you’ve put
more thought into the geometry than I have. It feels as though, as
a helm, you can’t get your weight outboard with the aft body-angle
to counteract the trap.
- I hear you are looking at making the spinnaker smaller. It feels
a little narrow to me, so perhaps I would prefer bigger shoulders.
Again you’ve got more experience there than me, but would more area
up high give more lift? And less area down low make it easier to
hang on to?
- I don’t have all that much confidence that the standard 29er gear
will hold up with the increased loads. The racing life of the hulls
would almost certainly be reduced. It will also be interesting to
see how the rudders hold up. A standard 29er rudder tends to get
kinks where the blade exits the bottom of the box after sailing the
boat pretty hard. The new rig would put greater load on this point
again. I have also blown up various vang joints in my time (which
is probably a bit long!) the life of the joints on this rig might
be less.
I hope I haven’t been too negative. As I’ve said earlier, the boat
is great fun. I would love to continue to be involved in improving
it.
Cheers,
Scott
–
