Hi all!
The man who sold me our Tiger has adjusted the jib self tacker traveller car with a line to limit the elongation of the traveller car. He said this is to adjust the slot in order to achieve a better pointing angle when sailing close to the wind. The line is attached to the jib traveller car and to the center fitting of the traveller track.
I recently made a sailing course on a Laser Stratos dinghy and there you can adjust the slot, so this idea sounded logically to me. I think on the H16 you can also adjust the slot by travelling the jib cleat in or out.
As far as I can say with my limited sailing experience, the pointing angle of my Tiger seems to be really better compared to the state without that adjustment (we loosened and attached the thing and made some experiments). However I feel that the performance on a beam reach or broad reach is worse with the limitation. The guy that sold us the boat used the spin reaching even in heavy wind so he did not have this experience. He sails like hell, but I'm still learning and need also good jib performance when reaching.
Here my questions:
1) Does anybody else have an adjustment like this? What is your experience?
2) If so, how do you trim this limiter? What is the length of that line? Is there a theory how to do it? Sorry for that question, but I am an engineer...
3) Has anybody a good idea how I can attach a light weight cleat or something like that to the Tiger to make this construction adjustable? I mean to have the full jib traveller elongation on a beam or broad reach and have a smaller slot close to the wind?
4) Would this be in compliance with the Tiger racing rules?
I would appreciate your comments.
Ralf