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My Tiger steers to port
http://www.hobie.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=11715		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  pdavies [ Tue Feb 03, 2009 10:50 pm ]
Post subject:  My Tiger steers to port
I bought a brand new Tiger seven months ago with all the most recent upgrades including the new rudders. Ever since her first outing she's had a slight tendency to steer to port when going downwind. Not a dramatic one, but it does make it that much harder to hold a line downwind as you can't relax your grip on the extension without the boat going left. She runs straight when going up wind.

I can't get to the bottom of this and I'm appealing to some of you smart people out there to give me some ideas.

Some facts;

I assembled it myself from the box - this is the 3rd Tiger I've framed up 100% from the box and the 5th I've completed from at least a partial frame up. All of the others ran straight. While I'm not a pro, I do have a track record....

It's not related to the daggers - she still goes left with both daggers right up.

The factory supplied rudders have exactly the same rake - I've measured this carefully. They are both locked solidly forward and there's no play. I presume Hobie drilled the holes in the right place?!

The leftward tendency happens just the same whether the rudders have a bit of toe out or are set completely parallel.

I wondered if the hulls are aligned correctly in a vertical plane. After lowering both rudders I found the bottoms are 7mm closer together than at the top. ie the gudgeon axes are canted in towards each other. On the other hand the top of the bows are ~5mm closer than the bottoms - ie they are canted out. There could be a twist along the hulls (although I've yet to measure the dagger wells).

My next idea is to re-bolt the rear crossbeam with some packing and filler so that there is no longer any vertical cant in the rudders.

Before I start to do this, has anyone else got any advice, clever ideas or had a similar issue?
Author:  Dan DeLave [ Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:16 am ]
Post subject: 
You know that is a weird thing...

My boat seemed to be a bit one sided as well. I went through the boat and could not find a thing out of line. I finally started messing the the rudder rake. One of them had to be a bit further under or back, I do not remember, but I finally was able to make it stop. Try raking one rudder at a time and see if you can make it worse or better. I have not got a clue as to why this is the case but work with it a bit.

Later,
Dan
Author:  flumpmaster [ Thu Apr 16, 2009 8:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
I had a charter boat that did this - so bad that I could not get out on the wire on port tack because she wanted to auto gybe so bad. This boat did not have the new rudders - it had the 2nd gen all carbon ones. We messed around with the rake and this seemed to cure most of the bad habits - but as I recall it still wanted to go left.
Author:  RCS [ Sun Apr 19, 2009 3:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
The gooseneck base on my 2006 Tiger is mounted with a gap on the one side only, such that the pin for the boom is not centered. The boat sails a bit differently to windward on port vs. starboard, so I wonder whether the off-center boom connection contributes to that.
Author:  Dan DeLave [ Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
My gooseneck fitting is centered and still had the same issue.

Did you ever get the boat figured out? Did you play with the rudders at all?

Dan
Author:  mmiller [ Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
You are not going to notice a difference from the boom pin being a fraction off center.

Look at diamonds, daggers, rudders, sail adjustments and sea conditions. Let alone a difference in (left / right arm) strength, crew position etc while sailing.
Author:  Sail Revolution [ Fri May 01, 2009 12:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
The boat that I was racing at the 40th was doing something like that. We would get a good start, smoke upwind on stbd with similar, maybe a bit faster than average, boat speed , then tack and the boat would freaking stop and get more weather helm. Everyone would pass us, and I chalked it up to me never sailing the Tiger and just kind of sucking. I pulled every line on the boat to try and figure it out, and got nothing but frustrated. Turns out that the stbd spreader was bent upward about 3 inches from trailering, it had slid on the diamond wire. We fixed it and the boat goes fine now.
Author:  pdavies [ Mon Aug 10, 2009 4:12 am ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
Guys,

thanks for the replies. After more than a month of nobody contributing, I had given up hope of receiving any enlightenment! Anyhow, I returned today to a pleasant surprise :)

I have not made any more adjustments - I've just gotten on and ignored it. It's only really an issue downwind when you have to be super careful holding a course with a hull up. It does mean I can pull off some fast gybes around the bottom mark when I come in on the starboard lay line!

Some good inputs and some "interesting" ones to say the least. I will take a closer look at the spreaders in case this is the fault. I did try once to play with the rudder rake (this was what I assumed the problem was at first). Raking further back didn't seem to have any effect at all. Does anyone have a cunning method to increase the forward rake, given that the cams are all solid etc etc? To be honest, I'd have expected that factory tuned rudders (new version) should be set up perfectly straight out of the box. Hence the reason my thoughts turned to twists in the hulls.

I'd appreciate it if someone from Hobie (or anyone else for that matter who has time and a tape) could measure a Tiger like I did at the bows and the rudders and tell me if my cant in / cant out measurements are within tolerance.

Cheers,
Peter
Author:  mmiller [ Wed Aug 12, 2009 1:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
We don't have a rigged Tiger here at the moment, so hopefully a boat owner can help.
Author:  flumpmaster [ Wed Aug 12, 2009 3:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
pdavies wrote:
I'd appreciate it if someone from Hobie (or anyone else for that matter who has time and a tape) could measure a Tiger like I did at the bows and the rudders and tell me if my cant in / cant out measurements are within tolerance.


I'll getting mine up on some saw horses for some work this week and will make some measurements. I took a look at the alignment of my dagger boards vs. rudders vs. vertical plane of the hull and was suprised to find the starboard dagger board was canted in just a fraction - like the well was not place perfectly vertical. The boat steers straight and seems to go OK - so I haven't worried too much about it - but I am going to take some more measurements on this issue as well.

Chris.
Author:  pdavies [ Wed Aug 12, 2009 10:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
Thanks Chris for the offer. I look forward to reading about your findings.

Peter
Author:  RushMan [ Fri Aug 14, 2009 4:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
Not having ever sailed or tuned a Tiger, my thoughts on this are..

1 Shrouds the same length ? (Port may be longer allowing the mast to sit further forward when heading downwind)

2 Mast Rake ? (What is preferred... a neutral helm upwind or neutral helm downwind)

Just my 2 cents
Author:  gthomas [ Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
On one of our Tigers we had a similar issue but I can't remember which tack it was happening on. We ended up taking the neoprene pads out of the bottom rudder casting where the rudder rests against the casting so that the rudders would be raked underneath the boat more and that seemed to solve our problems.
Author:  flumpmaster [ Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
pdavies wrote:
Thanks Chris for the offer. I look forward to reading about your findings.

Peter


Well I forgot to measure it before we took the cross beams off for some hull repair work, but afterwards as we were bedding the beams to the hull sockets with epoxy we took measurements.

To begin with we were toed in 13/16" with everything snugged and no manipulation. After pushing the bows apart and using a main sheet to apply inward pressure at the sterns we got this down to 1/8" toe in with the bolts snugged tight. Ideally I would want to be toed out a bit on the platform without the stick so with moderate rig tension and light sheet pressure the hulls would be dead square for light wind conditions. If you are flying a hull in bigger air it does not matter too much if a hull toes in or out (to my way of thinking).

We sighted the front and rear cross beams and they appeared parallel when viewed from the front. When measuring cant on the hulls we found the hulls canted in 1/8" at the bottoms vs. the top when measuring across the bows and transoms.

When I had an 18SX I went through this rigmarole of lining up the hull and bedding the beams - it seemed to help the boat go good in the light stuff. My first tiger measured very square out the box.

Greg's advice about the neoprene in the rudder casting is good. That is what we had to do on that charter boat. On my boat we took out the neoprene and bedded the rudders into the castings with epoxy, and made sure the rake was the same on each rudder.

Chris.
Author:  redsunlee [ Tue Sep 01, 2009 2:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: My Tiger steers to port
Thanks for the suggestion, I wish it had worked.


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