I always try to remember that sailing cats is about boat speed. The caveat to that statement is being familiar enough with your boat to feel the differnece in speed at differnt headings. If you trap out and have to vary your course 5 degrees (which is not much) to power up you give up around 30 boat lengths in distance traveled. Therfore you had better have a pretty significant increase in boat speed to make up for it. Solo the point of gain will be in much less wind as you have to provide some power to the sail. But remeber that in course racing not fully powering up as long as you are heading the right way is less on a negative than in a distance style event where dead downding runs are rare.

Gina and I sal pretty light, but at 12 knots (Where the white caps are just filling in) we are positioned with her still on the lee hull and myself just inside the weather hull. Using the Area D as an example against Olli and Kelly on thier Cap as my yard stick. ON day 1 we played it conservative and did not trap. It was gusty with lulls being around 16 and gusts in the upper 20's. We lost ground down wind here not trapping. On Sunday it lightened up a little and we stayed pretty even downwind not trapping while the the Cap continued to trap. The last races with the wind around the 16-18 we were even making up ground at the point where they continued to trap and I had moved to the middle of the tramp and Gina kept on the weather hull. They were still going fast but at this point our VMG was getting better.

Learn to feel the boat and sail where you are comfortable. As Robi pointed out, if you can not transition smoothly to trapping downwind any added speed is wasted anyway, especially on a short course.

M