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Perhaps the only time you want your leech to really stand up is on the down hill runs, running before the wind if your leech falls of to far on the mainsail you will loose drive and speed. This is where the skill of the sailmaker can come into play, just how do you get the leech to fall of, or twist away on the windward beats and still have it stand up on the runs, well there are two ways to do it and one is to have a mainsail made correctly in the first place and to be fair to me I'm not going to tell you how I do that, just buy one of my sails. The other way is a trick I learnt by accident when experimenting with mast bends and luff curves in sails. You need to be able to bend your mast for this to work, if your rig is to stiff and won't bend much, or your sail has very little shape or curve in the luff you're out of luck here! By bending your mast aft you are in effect flatting the sail and reducing the distance from the head board of your sail to the clew, in a straight line. It's not quite that simple but you get the idea. As your sail is eased out all the way for a down hill run the distance from head-board to clew is once again back to normal as your mast cannot turn with the sail as it goes out. This then tightens the leech and makes the sail more powerfull, the only thing to watch here is it can stop the mainsail from going all the way out freely in light weather, but then you should not have to worry so much in the lighter breezes as the leech will not fall off so easly as in the higher wind pressures anyway. So what am I saying, if you boat seems to lack down hill speed it could well be your leech is falling away to far, usually in the upper sections of your mainsail, how you fix it is up to you and the setup of your boat, but at least now you possibly know the reason for it. Perhaps you just have too much twist alround, take a little out and see how you go. To much can almost be as bad as not enough! |
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