Trimming high aspect ratio mainsails

At Elba we had a lecture on sail design by North Sails. Did anybody pick up any tips on how to trim our main sails given the high aspect main sails. My 411 has a ratio of 3.7 which is pretty high by todays designs.

John   

At Elba we had a lecture on sail design by North Sails. Did anybody pick up any tips on how to trim our main sails given the high aspect main sails. My 411 has a ratio of 3.7 which is pretty high by todays designs.

John -

For whatever it is worth - I recently bought the Sail & Rig Tuning book by Ivan Dedekem, which I believe was recommended on this forum. I got it specifically for rig tuning suggestions, but find it is fantastic and very detailed when it comes to the subject of sail trim and interaction between sails (headsail and main, e.g.). In any event, it talks in some detail about main trim, coming at it from 4 basic angles - twist, depth, draft, and balance (helm). In total, it talks in a lot more detail about specific adjustments for what you want to do vs point of sail, vs what other sails are up, etc, but the point I am trying to make is this - the trim operations are not broken out into high aspect vs non, which is consistent with at least my not-so-long history of study. I cannot remember anybody making any particular recommendations to me, nor do I recall reading about special considerations for our types of mains.

All that notwithstanding non-trim related things like: high aspect sails may point up a little better, high aspect sails might require more ballast, all other things being equal, which might make a slower boat (but these things are so interwoven with the hull shape and the rest of the basic boat design, and unless you are going to make radical changes, fixed for us, so back to the subject of trim, I will be watching to see what else gets posted, but will be surprised if there is anything much on trim - .

Fair winds,

Geoff
Corazon
411 #41