Loose Footed Mains

Matt Knowles - Jeff's brother - and I have been talking about how to trim the loose footed mains. Here are bits of the conversation:

On the Class-Legal, 420 mains we go pretty tight with the outhaul pretty much all the time - not boned, but definitly tight enough so there is never any horizontal space between the foot and the boom. if it is nuking we'll max them, but since you're in vang sheeting mode by then it doesn't make much a of a difference. if i'm sailing in waves or chop i go a tiny bit looser to try to cary a bit more power, but really never that loose - it seems slow as soon as you've got a big horizontal gap at the foot spilling breeze.

we don't bother to let the outhaul off downwind, have done some speed testing and it doesn't seem to make any difference, better off just getting the vang set perfectly. one thing that does seem to help a lot is always running the cunningham over the slug rather than through the grommit (sp?) until it is so windy that you can't get it down far enough for that - this lets you get some luff tension without messing up the whole foot of the sail / making a deep pocket.

the other sail we use is the Vanguard/north "intercollegiate" cut main that is used on both FJs and 420s. we have it on our FJs, and BC has them on their 420s, so i've played with it on both. with this cut (which sucks, btw, they made a lot of compromises so it'll work on both boats) we go *max* outhaul all the time on the FJs except very light air when the wrinkles look nasty, in which case we ease a little bit. in 420s, i think the same holds, except probably want to trend a little looser since the AOA is different than an FJ. with this cut, the luff tends to be pretty short on 420s, so you actually need to have a bit of cunningham on even in light air so the foot doesn't get pulled up from the boom near the tack.

one other thing about the new Intercollegiate cut mains is that with the big stiff headboard it is pretty easy to put the main up too high in light air, in which vase you get the head twisted to windward in a funky way. in breeze it doesn't seem to matter.