high wind keel boat racing

[KasbeKZ]

i wonder if we might start a bit of a discussion on tactics for keeping speed up in high winds in a keel boat, where the wind is strong enough to essentially over power the boat. namely, the wind range of 15-22 knots.

what i know: pointing higher than normal, "pinching", can dump some wind, so long as it's not so high to allow luff. a trimmer on the main should be working constantly to keep the heel steady and make steering easy; avoiding weather helm.

what i'm wondering: what should be used more? steering or sail control? the idea that comes to my mind is that the skipper should be working on keeping the course steady, and playing the waves a bit, and a trimmer should be working to ease for the puffs and sheet for the lulls. also, should the main be the only sail adjusted in these situations? should a jib trimmer be playing that pretty steadily too? or is the leeward weight not worth that effect?

keep in mind we're racing, so we want as much sail as can be useful up, but on the puffs it's more than likely that we could broach.

what is your view on this? lessons learned?

[PaulK]

We had a 65 mile high-wind race in September. The fleet started in the lee of a point at 7PM, with the wind blowing about 25. Once we cleared the first mark (at the end of the point) it increased to about 35, with stronger puffs and some lulls to 25 for the entire windward leg. (About 33 miles) We would have done better to reduce sail more than we did, but I did not relish sending crew onto the foredeck when we were taking waves over the bow in the dark. A smaller jib would have given us the same or better speed with less feathering, and would have kept us more upright for better upwind performance. We did put one reef in the main, but I think a second reef in the main would have unbalanced the boat, giving us a lee helm -- not a good thing in those conditions. We ended up tearing the main at the second batten from luff to leech.
The lesson learned: reef a lot earlier, rather a little later. You can always shake out a reef pretty quickly.

[nathan3011]

Thats a good tip there PaulK Do you go out in high winds a lot??

Thanks for the info sounds like a good race you had!