What's the best way to adjust mast rotation, mechanically and subjectively?

How do you go about "changing gears"? At Tradewinds, the wind was strong for a while and then dropped off. Some crews had difficulty adjusting their boats and their skill sets.

from my limited observation, it looked like the boatspeed on most N20 fleet was very close upwind, and not too different downwind. The big position changes were due to:

Finding wind on the course (especially when it went waaaay right on the last race)

Getting a clean air start

Fluidity of tacks/gybes/mark roundings

Those that proved most consistent in those areas ended up on the podium. I think we were on the tail end of the front pack, and with a few tactics improvements and a bit better transitions (spin sets/douse) we'd be much closer to the pointy end of the fleet.

As for your rotation setting with your wing mast, can't you put a little telltale about 6" off the bolt rope of the main, and adjust it until it's flying on the leeward side? That will at least ensure a smooth flow across the backside... right?

For us tear-droppers, I think the general consensus is rotator off or minimal until full downhaul is needed, in which case you want to minimize drag by reducing luff curve by pulling in the rotator a bit...

setting the mast rotation for a-cat like wingmasts:
http://www.landenberger-sailing.com/spip.php?article21
link
Important point is to accept not to have a smooth lee ward surface in some cases.

For non-wingmasts I agree with the rule "using downhaul first, then rotation".

Wingmasts are rotated some 30...40° more to the centreline than conventional masts in general.

Cheers,

Klaus

Thanks again Klaus! This will take a while to absorb.

Holy crap was I frustrated on Saturday. We had max rake setup for the heavy stuff and bam...light and fluky in the middle. I was surprised that our boat speed wasn't too bad off considering - but it we definitely had a slight disadvantage upwind. . We stood the rig way up on Sunday and felt like we had really good speed.

This was also the very first time Frank and I sailed anything but a distance race together and our timing / execution in the bigger air on Sunday was a little ruff around the edges...it didn't help that I ran over a finish line mark and had to do a turn and refinish. Frank's a rockstar and if we polish up a little of our communication and execution we'll be in really good shape around the cans.

Changing gears was the tough part...for me coming from 5 days of a-cat sailing to the 20 was really interesting. The helm on the 20 felt stupid twitchy (I sail an older a-cat though) and the boat really felt numb. I feel like it did give me a little more intuition upwind though. Changing gears related more to angles downwind and a couple of minor sail tweaks. I had to really watch the upper tales on the main cause I kept finding myself oversheeting.

Jake, you put the rubber tiller ext. connector on the general yet?

I felt the difference in steering as soon as I put that on.

I can't be doing with too many telltales on the boat. i just have a pair on the jib and one on the mainsail leech.
Point the spanner at the shroud untill you are hitting the max on the downhaul from time to time, then bring it in to point at the end of the rear beam.
Changing gears is sooooooooooo important and it is easy to get into a mind set of the pattern of the wind and assume what the next change in set-up is going to be.
try to approach each leg/lap of the race as if it is the 1st of the day. mentally erase all your settings at the leeward mark, look at the conditions and set every part of the boat up accordingly.