I'm certainly no expert, but I thought I'd pass on a few recent realizations regarding getting a cruising cat upwind.
Over the years, I had come to the conclusion that upwind sailing generally isn't worth it... adopting kind of a "gentlemen don't sail to weather" attitude.
Recently, I had guests on board that were small boat sailors and interested in learning, so we had a sail tacking upwind from Norman Island to Cooper Island.
I had a guest at the helm while I handled the sails and gave instructions. I was really surprised how much I learned in the process, here are some of my conclusions - dissent welcome. This is obviously somewhat specific to the type of boat we were on ( Leopard 42 ) and the conditions ( 16-18 kts with occasional gusts into the low 20s ).
* Close-hauled courses need to be hand steered. These cats don't point well and just don't have the performance margin for a compass course. All opportunities to gain height must be exploited.
* If the telltales are flying, you are probably not pointing high enough. The headsail has to be on the verge of shiver.
* Trim the genoa fairly close, but not overly flat. Then sail by SOG. Every wind increase must be turned into height, not speed. Settle on a SOG ( like 6 kts. ) and try to keep the boat there. If you're accelerating, you missed an opportunity to come up. Puffs must be watched for and anticipated. Fall off in lulls just enough to preserve boat speed.
I'm pleased that the L42 has much better helm feel, less weather helm and overall seems to be a better sailing boat than the outgoing L40.
LIO KAI is now listed on the Moorings brokerage site, MANTA was just offloaded in Tortola and is at the Moorings dock awaiting comissioning and paperwork. We are very excited for the next 5 years.
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