Thank you for this post, it has been very informative. We will be moving our jib car all the way back tomorrow night. I think our upper slot is closing on us.

I believe you or Bobby was referring to our 6.0 from last Tuesday. Tyler was driving and had the a-cats commenting to him after the race about how well he was pointing upwind.

A very accomplished big boat sailor friend and I were talking about mast prebend. He felt that the right amount of mast prebend was critical to going up wind effectively.

We asked Jim Boyer, before the Ice Breaker Race, how to determine the right amount of prebend. If I understood him correctly, he said to set it then go sailing on a closehauled course for your boat. As you apply mainsheet, look up at the leach, the leach should stand-up just when the draft looks right and the telltales are flowing. We left our spreader rake where it was from last season, then set our outer diamonds to Rick Bliss's numbers of #38 to #39 (450#s - 500#s) and the inner diamonds to #20. These numbers appear to be working for us, based on Jim Boyer's suggestions, our pointing and speed comparison with other boats. We have not adjusted it from these numbers. Our crew weight varies between 380#'s to 400#'s.

Two months ago we, Alec and I compared our rig tensioning devices. We found that Alec's, the professional model, read a little over half of what ours, the standard model, reads. Is there a conversion I am missing?

Regarding Mary's zipper suggestion, our jib is bigger than an NA jib and it has a leach line installed. We do adjust this line for the wind conditions. However, whenever it is about double trap conditions, the line always comes out of its plastic cleat causing our leach to flog. It is incredible annoying, destracting, and is probably quickly destroying our sail, but it may be helping us point upwind.

Alec, if we get there early enough tomorrow night, we can measure spreader rake and rig tensions.