Bingo.
and Pete, carbon is brittle. Brittle = stiff. Stiff = fast(er)
Retrieval isn't so bad. For me its the hoist. There's a lot more going on that you have to cool the boat down for. Especially if its moderate conditions where you can barely be on the trapeze. I can release the gross adjuster for the rotation on the wire, the downhaul, and the pull the tack, but you still have to slow it down, and come in off the wire hoist. Two up the skipper can stay on the wire all the way around the top mark and the offset.
Yeahbut...at the C mark, I want it all done now, (boards down, rotate mast back to upwind, downhaul on, outhaul out, traveler up, oh...and snuff the spin with one hand, while driving with the ohter) so I can round clean and close, trim in the main and get out on the wire, asap.
At A mark, I just ease the traveler out, then get the kite up fast, and do all that other stuff (rotator, cunningham, outhaul, boards) once it's up and going....if I can...without swimming!
I don't touch the boards. If I need them up, I've found I need them up all the way around the course. I'm sure some adjustment would be beneficial, but too much grip upwind, tends to be too much down wind. Same with outhaul, I don't touch it hardly at all. I pretty much set it on the beach unless something drastic changes. Outhaul doesn't seem to have much effect on these boats.
I also use a couple of set of boards depending on the conditions. I pull mast rotation back on, downhaul on a bit while the spinnaker is still up. Usually at this point I've cooled the boat down a bit, and I'm just about to douse anyways. All depends on the conditions, heavier air I'm cooling down sooner for the gate. If you get the sheeting right, and the traveller set right, the boat will actually round the mark while you are dousing. If you're too slow, or something goes wrong though, then it'll be on its way to going head to wind, and that's not fast either.
One thing I don't think we'll ever see, is a single hander flying a hull the entire time during a douse or hoist like the extremely good two up sailors can. I can't do it even with crew. That **** takes some practice! More time than I've got anyways. lol
Well...I just spent 5 hours in Sarasota Bay getting my butt handed to me buy a bunch of kids. I was sailing Uni, the only Uni there, all the rest were sloops. Two little girls on a new Falcon drove over me going upwind!
BUT...those two together didn't weigh what I way alone (about 200 all up), and they had their jib on, which I would have LOVED to have had out there, in the light air and slop, with occaisional puffs of medium wind (0-8, mostly 5, at most), but LOTS of big motor boat chop.
There is nothing worse than sitting in a hole going upwind getting tossed about by the many cris-crossing motorboat wakes, like being in a washing machine. And without a jib, very little 'drive' to get over the big chop, or get moving agian when you get stopped by the big ones, even when there was a little breeze.
SO...now my
Optimum Uni
would have a Jib of some sort. Wether you cut down the main, to add a jib, or just allow the standard jib to be used when Uni, I don't care which. But having a jib to help drive you over the humps that the motorboats throw at you would be very nice!
Oh, also, I kept count, I did lose at least two boats at every C gate, when there were groups of us there, due to not having enough hands to both drive and snuff at the same time... Several times I went in first in the group, and came out behind the others, as they were able to keep their speed up through the rounding while I was not.
When I was able to fly a hull downwind, and go lower, at the same speed the sloops were going (higher) I caught several boats on the runs, as I could sail a shorter course going deeper on one hull, than they could on two. If there had been a little more wind, I think I would have been more equal with them both upwind and down, but that miserable motorboat chop going upwind in light air, will stop a light, Mainsail only. boat very quickly.
I've always liked the idea of limiting sail area for the two configurations, not liming it to where it goes.
On the flip side, you don't see much for jibs in the a-class.
A lot of people keep quoting this little nugget. We have a very large jib out front called a spinnaker for downwind, the A's only have 14sqm of all up sail ( yes they can run a jib if they want ) and if say 3.5m of that as a jib is being obscured by the main in downwind mode then its best to just have 1 large Main. Randy Smythe revisited the A main / jib recently but found the upwind gains were more than lost downwind.
Another class would be the old F18HT which started life as a main only, most have now been converted to a main / jib setup for the very reasons we are talking about.
but did the F18HTs sacrifice main area to add the jib or increase their total sail area?