San Juan 21 Class Association

Sorry I have not been in touch much but I have been at the lake pretty much all summer. She sails! Sometimes there was hardly any wind as you see above but then came hurricane Florence which brought us whitecaps all weekend. We definitely got her heeled over well all that weekend for the first time.
We finally made up the Tennessee river several miles to our favorite marina All this leads me to a question for everyone. Sometimes I'm getting a little weather helm which is what I want but then some other weekends I get a little leeward helm. I've got my inner shrouds a little tighter than the outer ones and they don't get adjusted that much unless I know there are wind speeds over 12mph. When I step the mast do I tighten the backstay or front stay first? I try to get the 6"-8" of mast rake right by measuring off the main halyard in respect to the mast but I don't know if I'm getting right every time. Could this be why I get weather helm sometimes? Thanks everybody!

Bear in mind that weather helm is greater as the boat heels more. It can be that you have lee helm when the boat is flat, but weather helm once you hit whatever degree of heel.

If you're sailing with a jib you'll probably go best with about 20" of rake. Most guys measure from the bow tang to the top of the jib hoist. I instead put a tape measure on my main shackle, hoist it all the way, and measure to the transom. My rake is set at 28'2", which is adjusted by loosening or tightening the forestay.

Steve

Yeah I was getting slight lee helm when I was heeled over all weekend. So this thing can I have a 20 inch mast rake? I know I have not been over 10 inches and in the heavy winds that we had last week I definitely figured that I did not have enough but wow I didn't know you could rake this mask back that much. So when I step the mast of course I have to put the front turnbuckle on first but which one do I tighten down first?

Start with forestay length of 28 ft 4 in pin-to-pin for a generally good mast rake, adjust as needed to neutralized the helm, improve pointing etc.
Once you've found the sweet spot you can go to measuring the distance from masthead (tape attached to main halyard) to transom which is easier with the mast up than trying to measure the forestay length. I have no idea of how much rake this actually provides, that number is meaningless, performance is what matters and a way to get back to a point that you know works.

Cool thank you very much I will definitely try that this year!

cguthrie wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 14, 2019 5:55 pm

Start with forestay length of 28 ft 4 in pin-to-pin for a generally good mast rake, adjust as needed to neutralized the helm, improve pointing etc.

28'4"? is that an east coast thing or typo? Us west coasters have always talked about 24'4", 28'4" sounds really, really long! 4' longer than our conventional wisdom states... My stock stay wouldn't have even come close to that.

http://www.sj21fleet1.org/tips-and-tricks/mast-rake

Later
C