Hoo's for the Hoo Freezer? Sunday 28th Feb, Hoo, Kent

[peter_barton]

Ahhh, the dark art of setting uppers.

My understanding is;

Pull them tight to depower by prebending. (some people also do this to flatten sails in a drifter).

Let them off to depower by giving less support and more gust response. Pulling the cunny very tight will flatten the sail adequately and will hacve a combined effect of serving to slacken (take load off) the uppers by bending the mast.
Ideally you will let the cunny off downwind to allow the uppers load up again and support the spinaker.
Side effect of slacker uppers is you lose the ability to point, not necessarily a detriment to VMG but you just loose that high mode.
[I once forgot to pull them on at a gusty RS800 open. We couldnt point high upwind and got lee-bowed a couple of times but managed to win the race by still being able to sail a fast low mode with good gust response. Fortunately the mast did stay up downwind  ]

Somewhere in the middle were you are providing sideways support but without to much aft bend is max power.
12L on the latest type spring loos gauge is my lucky number generally. (Need to measure without main on - any cunny tension makes them slacker.)

[ross_burkin]

I want Flat Stanley

[Banshee Ambulance]

I know. I am missing him already.

[JimC]

Peter, how did this strange thing of the practice race retroactively turning into the points race after the finish feel to you on the ground as the person probably most affected? I can imagine skipping a practice race if conditions are marginal, so having it then turn into the points for the event, and perhaps even more so the Sailjuice prize must have been distinctly odd. I can imagine Americas Cup sailors getting into all sorts of redress hearings and law suits in such a suituation!

[phil_kirk]

I was thinking the same thing,

It will be for the sail juice series organisers to determine weather the Hoo freezer practice race should be counted. If they are switched on they may make the judgement that not all competitors intending to race the Hoo Freezer would have sailed the saturday 'practice race'.  If all entries were given due notice of the change of race day that would be fair for all.  if the decision was made on the saturday morning and only those present were told that is unfair.

From the Hoo freezer's organisers point of view only,  they made the right decision for the punters who turned upon the saturday and were able to award the trophy.

[JimC]

if the decision was made on the saturday morning and only those present were told that is unfair.

Its a weird situation: it seems the SIs clearly state that should the Sunday race be cancelled or abandoned then the Saturday results will be used, so on that basis everyone has been told and its fair. But I've never heard of another event where the decision on whether a race counts or not is made after the race is completed. Its not power I would want to give to an SNG race committee!!

[simon_jones]

As far as I'm aware Hoo have used this system for some time now, I also beleive that it is stated in the si's although not 100% sure on that.

[peter_barton]

It is clear in the Hoo NOR (and SIs) that the Saturday practice race would form the results if there was no race on Sunday. This was posted online in advance so no suprise and no issue.

Re Jim's worry over 'SNG' style tactics, those nice people at Hoo would never stoop to that, they want their big annual race to go ahead. In practice this is not really different to a PRO canning the last race or day of a series, or shortening a course, where that has an impact on the results.

I understand this situ has been so for years and guess it is not an issue as a stand alone event, however the uncertainty over which race counts with an advance bad forecast is a bigger issue now it is part of a series. It was difficult for me to get there Saturday also.

The Sailjuice NOR states the date of Sunday 28th only. However it also states if conflict with event NOR, then event NOR prevails. So Saturday also counts for the sailjuice results.

They did give us free Hoo Ness YC pens for our 5hr round trip in torential rain!

[JimC]

In practice this is not really different to a PRO canning the last race or day of a series, or shortening a course, where that has an impact on the results.

I suppose, but the situation where the competitor doesn't know whether the race will count or not that seems odd to me.

The question, I guess, is whether in practice this affected your decision not to sail.

[peter_barton]

The question, I guess, is whether in practice this affected your decision not to sail.

I knew in advance there was a risk in not racing on Saturday. Fair enough. It is their event and their NOR (which was online well in advance). Competitors can then decide if they want to play. It is really not a big deal.