Veloce is now on the hard. With a very productive month on the water, we now have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t. We also made up our mind on how the J/80’s new shorthanded sail inventory should look like.
Some of the input to the process:
- No need to stick with the class rules
- One of the reason to acquire a J/80 was its simplicity. Keep it simple
- Leverage on light air hull performance, but be able to de-power effectively
- No sails with very small ranges
We sailed her a few half days in conditions from light conditions to planing with only main and jib. As usual, the process includes long dialogues with our sailmaker (Albatross Segel) and a few hours of sleep loss. In the end we settled on a inventory made up of:
- Mainsail
- Medium jib
- Heavy Jib
- Medium asymmetrical spinnaker
- Light asymmetrical spinnaker
Firstly, no furler. Why? Primarily “shape”. Check out my previous post (bye bye roller furling…back to jib hanks). Piston hanks had a tendency to “bite” the spinnaker and damage it. We’ll try soft hanks on the medium jib.
MAINSAIL
The new mainsail (21.94m2) is a lot bigger than the class mainsail (20.91m2). A 5% increase. This is thanks to a more modern design, with a bigger roach. The theory is that induced drag at the top is reduced, efficiency of the wing increased, more area off the wind and more twist on the wind. You’ll have to wait a season for empirical evidence!
Two full + two partial battens.
We opted for one single reef point. Cringles and patches add weight that contribute to deterioration of the sail and when it is time to reef, one is often not enough anyway. Our only reef is a lot deeper than a standard 1st reef. This, in combination with a reefed jib, should perform very effectively. If there is still too much canvas up, the main might as well come done entirely and possibly a tri-sail complement in offshore quests.
MEDIUM JIB
The new medium jib is bigger (15.75m2) than the standard one (13.9m2). It is reefable, which allows effective upwind area reduction as well as a wider slot, when it is needed. Downwind, in winds over what a kite would be safe to fly, the reef can be shaken off providing a balanced wing-on wing option.
The boat loves light air. Upwind she slips away in just a breath. We don’t feel the need for a complementary headsail and cannot motivate the additional money, weight, space, headsail changes, rating penalty.
Both mainsail and medium jib will be built with Dimension Polyant PXB sailcloth. With J/80’s relatively low righting moment we believe that the additional shape stability given by a stiffer cloth is not worth the additional cost and unforgiveness. Perhaps once we can sail the both blindly? Still probably not worth it in distance racing under handicap rating.
HEAVY WEATHER JIB
We loved the heavy weather jib on the Sun Fast 32i and we expect the same on the J/80. Firstly, it doesn’t affect rating as its area is 13.5% of the height of the foretriangle (IG) squared. World Sailing Special Regulation max area for a heavy weather sail. Secondly, with its durable Dacron construction, it makes for a comfortable ride day-sailing or transporting. Finally, if we expect a race to start and finish in heavy weather, we might spare our reefed medium jib a considerable beating. For the sake of toughness, we opted for traditional piston hanks.
MEDIUM ASYMMETRIC SPINNAKER
Downwind, the J/80 is pure joy. We want to have the kite up as much as possible and therefore we went for a medium gennaker (0.9oz) a bit smaller (56.7m2) than the class (65m2), with a shape slightly flatter. It is designed to be more all-round, with a wide range of angles, up to 55AWA in the light stuff. This virtually removes the need for a so called “jib-top”, very popular among J/80s under handicap rating. The reduction in area impact the leech, which deep downwind is almost blanketed by the main and at tighter angles flow doesn’t really stick. The mainsail roach compensates partly for the area reduction downwind.
LIGHT ASYMMETRIC SPINNAKER
To be able to sail as deep as possible in very light air and VMG mode, we ordered a light gennaker (0.5oz). We wanted to have a weapon to get the boat moving at the slightest breath of air. Many summer evening or night races play out in the light stuff.
We might have a hole in light air (see the white gap below), close reaching between 35 and 55 AWA. The dilemma of a jib zero kept me awake at night. In the end, advised by the sailmaker we decided to live without it and stick with our original principles (keep it simple; no sails with small ranges). Mainly because the J/80 has little wetted surface, is very slippy and would only marginally benefit from it. She has also very little RM, which means that on a reach, a lot of the power would go into heeling, rather than shooting forward.
Compromises, compromises…
I expect the sail chart to be something like this
Once the design process starts, we will try to refine an indicative sail chart similar to the one we built for the Sun Fast 32i (here), starting from the draft above. During the next season we will then build polars, identify crossovers and gaps. Loving the process to get up to speed with a new boat!