windward ability

[Justin Haines]

Hi I am looking into the Tiki 30 and am keen to know how it performs to windward as measured by say the degrees covered in a tack and if there is much pounding into the platform if sailing into a big chop.

I look forward to some comments

[Marty Peters]

Hi Justin,

When i first had my tiki 30, Nok Talay, I had awful trouble pointing when on a beat as I just seemed to stall and go sideways without much headway. I was tacking around 120 degrees between tacks.The main hints I Learnt over the first year was that a traveller is essential as originally my mainsheet was just attached to the "traveller rope" with a single block, without a means to position the block to windward. Once I added the traveler control lines I was able to pull the block to windward so that the clew of the sail could be positioned along the centreline and I would then use the mainsheet to shape the sail. By fine tuning the traveller and the mainsheet I could gt a much better shape in the sail than mainsheet alone. This helped tremendously with pointing and I was now tacking around 95-100 degrees between tacks. However this isn't really the end answer as without boatspeed you can't point and just drift sideways.
After further experimentation and crewing on some racing yachts i learned that the tacking angle between tacks isn't the simple answer. What matters is how you gain ground upwind and this is very much related to boatspeed. Once I realised this my gameplan when tacking is to overcook the tack and bear away on the new tack by 10-15 degrees until boatspeed builds up and then gradually start climbing up to windward trying to maintain max speed and min leeway. It's a fine line but with practice and plenty of mior adjustments I found that I could climb to windward quite well and through plotting my tack points on a chart and sailing each leg as long as I could I would get an aggregated tack to tack angle of 90 degrees. On short tacks you obviously loose ground during the tack and the bear away but the longer you can sail without tacking you slowly claw back what you lose.
So in essence I would say that on short tacks I was getting say 95-100 degree tacking angles and on long tacks was as near as damit on 90 degrees. These angles would be based on position to position and not on the swing angle of the compass if that makes sense.
I would also add that I usually kept the whole sail shape "soft" and didn't overtighten everything especially the mainsheet unless the wind was getting heavy.
I hope this helps, I know it's not a short and sweet answer but I find that wharrams rarely conform to the standards, which is actually why I love them!

Cheers

Marty

[kim whitmyre]

Marty tells it true! :~)  Long ago, on the Wooden Boat Forum, a fellow named Ian, who sailed catboats and schooners of the single hull style, described the "arc" to weather. Marty describes it above as "climbing to windward." That's how sailors do it! ;~)

 

The foresail can contribute mightily to the windward progression; if there are adjustable sheet leads in place to trim or ease the foresail in harmony with the mainsail, the boat will move faster! You have to know how your sails are using the wind, and the ability to change their shape if they are not. If there are telltales on both the main and foresail, and you use them, the boat will move faster! The wind is invisible to the lubberly kind, but not to a sailor!

[jim nichols]

Under "forum" please see the entry

"Sailing Technique: Excellent Story"

Perhaps this doesn't apply to this discussion since that was about a mono-hull and we"re talking about multihulls here but that discussion was very enlightening. At some lever a boat's  a boat.

[kim whitmyre]

Jim, I posted that story. . .It applies in spades!