Having difficulty getting/maintaining decent upwind speed out of my Merlin with deck stepped rig and Hyde sails. Have tuned according to the Batt guide but to no avail. Any suggestions form those with older boats, especially rig tensions and spreader deflections?

Many thanks

Andy

Are you keeping it really flat all the time?  Is your kicker correct - i.e. top tell tale streaming nicely all the time?

If you go to a training event (Rutland ideal but a long time away) you'll be amazed at how much more power is gained from your rig when somebody like Mike Calvert jumps in and pulls a couple of strings.

Start off with getting one of your mates to follow you in a rib with a video camera and pay particular attention to whether you're fully hiked before you ease the main and what the top of the leach looks like.

On my old Superspar carbon mast / Alverbank sails rig we used to set up the spreaders so that there was an inch of prebend at spreader level. Assuming your mast is a Superspar M1 this will not be a million miles away fom what you're using, though you may need slightly more aft deflection on the spreaders to acheive it.

Lowers are the key control with a deck stepped rig (Assuming of course you have them as the boat must have been converted - if not get some fitted!), becoming more critical as you get more flexible! The first thing i check if not pointing are the lowers. Usually it's because there isn't enough on these days, but back then it was almost always too much lowers that caused a problem. This obviously affects your kicker too, tightening it as you pull them on.

Rig tension:

This also ties in with what i said about 1 inch prebend. The school of thought is that you should sail to windward with the leeward shroud just tight. Obviously you can't measure your prebend while sailing to windward so what i did was guess! If you can acheive your prebend without using enormous amounts of rig tension you are OK. You just have to guess at a realistic tension for beating in medium winds, i would have thought about 300 - 350lbs but i truly don't know we've never measured it.

Hi Chris

Thanks for the input! I know all boat tuning is a case of writing doen the numbers on the good days however every other clas I've sailed I've been able to find sets of numbers that one can use as a starting point but these seem difficult to come by for the Merlin.

Was really hoping that someone who sails a boat of a similar vintage might help. As for going along to Rutland...I wish! Unfortunately i live at the other end of the country!

Wanted - more training events - preferably at the West end of the country.

West Country???? What about the far, frozen, northern reaches of Scotland!

Andy,
bring the boat to the Holy Loch and we will have a look at the set up for you. takes a bit of practice to make a merlin really go but i didnt think the boat speed was that far off the mark at Chanonry.

There was an artical in the merlin mag. some time - ago. I think it was by the then chairman ggg.It gave full details on setting the mast up.
I will dig it out.

Hamish - Andy wasn't at Chanonry - you must be thinking of someone else or had you drink taken perchance?

And here was me thinking that my boat had been sneaking off behind my back and cheating on me....was about to serve the divorce papers!!

Fully intend being at Holy Loch....but to my shame it'll be in my Blaze.It's a Blaze open and a few of us Aberdeen Blazers were intending to race there.

Give us a Scottish training at Easter and we'd make an effort to get there! Dalgety was a good event, wished there'd been another this year as we didn't have an excuse to take a boat up.

Scottish Training Event - now there's a good idea!

GGGGGs (and others) mast setup/tuning articles here...