Mast rake problem

what's your problem? weather helm? if so i would rake forward a bit.

Be sure not to confuse 'weather helm' with 'rudder helm'

To see if you're really balanced wrong in the sails, look at your tiller crossbar when going to windward, with your boards down. If it's centered over your traveler cleat, or even better, slightly (1/4 ") pulled to weather, you have ideal mast rake. If the stick pulls hard in your hands anyway, you've got badly adjusted rudders. Hook 'em under for less pull.

A little "rudder track" where you pull the stick slightly to weather of center is good, 'cause you get lift to windward coming off your rudders. A lot of rudder track makes more drag, canceling out the benefit of the lift.

Ed Norris

I don't have to much weather helm, but enough to make my hand seize up after an hour on a tack.

Guess I'll have to go get the forestay chopped some more.

Hi,

Before you chop your forestay, try the test I mentioned - look at your tiller crossbar while going to windward. Ideally, your attachment point for the hiking stick should be slightly to windward of the jamcleat for the traveler - - regardless of how hard the stick pulls in your hand!!! If those parts allign correctly, your mast is almost certainly raked correctly, unless some really odd problems, like malfuncitoning boards, crooked hulls, rudders not parallel, etc. are to blame.

If your hand is getting tired, the pull may be from improperly tilted rudders, or from too much aft rake on your mast. Raking the mast may seem to fix this, but if your rudders are **** wrong, and you use mast rake to hide it, you're performance goes into the tank.

Ed

well the reason that I ask is because I recently added the furling hardware to the forestay setup that of course, added length to the setup. When I went to have the forestay shortened, I told the guy to shorten "about 4 inches." I will refrain from making lude jokes, but his idea of 4 inches is a bit, well, short. He pretty much just chopped off the eye, and re-nico'd it.

VERY unscientific. I REALLY wish that there was just some angle at which I knew to rake the mast.

If you didn't have the helm problem before the roller furling was added...I think you have found your problem.

I only sailed it once in light air before I added the furler. I do have heavy helm. Before I chop off my stay, I'm going to replace my very worn cams, see if that does anything to the rudder pitch.

Yeah, Jake, It sure does...

Anybody know the factory set length of a H17 forestay?

Maugan17 could measure his new forestay, "pigtail", swivel and drum, and compare the two... leaving out the adjuster, since it's a wash... then he'd know exatly how much to chop.

Incidentally, after much adding and subtracting, I finally took my original forestay down to the ugy with the swaging stuff and said, "Measure this thing. Then cut me a new shorter one out of it, [specifying a length equal to the jib luff plus 6 inches.] Use the extra to make a little 'pigtail' such that the sum of the pigtail, swivel, forestay and drum equals the original thing. ( brought the parts with me.)

Also, a tip from Randy Smyth: put the adjuster up top, so you can get the jib shackled right down on top of the drum. I tried it and it works great.

Tip from me: Does the Jib sag down the forestay? Mine did. I was running the halyard over a block and back down inside the luff of the jib, tying off to the shackle at the bottom. No matter how hard I tightened it, the darn thing kept sagging. So I tied on another block to the head of the jib, creating 2:1 purchase at the top and so reducing forestay compression. End of problem.

In retrospect, the cause is obvious. With only one block, I had created an upside down "U" starting and ending at the bottom shackle. One leg was the jib's luff, one leg was the halyard. sheeting hard pulled down on the jib, stretching the halyard up, and turned the whole "U" into a 2:1 force multiplier to compress the forestay, creating the slack to let the jib sag. Putting in the 2:1 right above the head of the jib put all those forces on the weak end of the multiiplier. I'd seen a P19, for example, wioth this setup, but hadn't appreciated why they do it.

I do now.

Ed Norris

If you're gonna start replacing parts, before you replace or chop anything, start with the basics.

Just look down while you're going upwind, and see how far to weather you've pulled the crossbar to go straight

Assuming no other problems exist, rudder angle is a good measure of mast rake. Rudder angle meaning how far you turn them to go straight, not how hard you have to pull to do it. A quarter inch or so is supposed to be about right. When you know your mast rake is right, then you can tune your rudder rake for 'power steering.

Ed

Thanks for all the info, that jib setup you mentioned will work great with the H16 jib that came with this thing

This might help

http://www.nahca.org/hobies/hobie17_linelengths.htm

or

http://www.nahca.org/hobies/hobie17sport_linelengths.htm

chris

Yeah, those sources don't have shroud lengths though. Those resouces have been valuable as I replace the regular line, but when it comes to the steel stuff, I'm SOL.