Well i finally got my n5.2 on the water this weekend. Just happend to have wind 25 gusting to 30 but i was determined and opted to leave behind the jib. Few questions:

1. One of my rudder castings is squeezing the rudder so i have to get in the water and force it all the way down. Is all the way down the correct position for the tiller? One of my castings has a plastic adjuster screw and the other one doesn't. I had quit abit of tiller tug but i think it's from not having the jib.

2. I am using my 6:1 low pro sheet setup from my h16 and i feel like i had to have both hands to sheet in. Should i be using a larger ratio?

3. Finally, how far down do i put the daggerboards?

Boat sails great!! Far better than my h16!! Thanks to everyone who helped me with all my rigging and other questions!!!

Reid Rechel
n5.2
Lake superior

1) You can loosen the rudder in the casting simply by loosening the through bolt that secures the rudder (the same bolt that it pivots on).

2) Class legal purchase on the main sheet is 7:1. I have 7:1 on my 6.0 and need more (class legal on the 6.0 is 8:1).

3) Boards go all the way down (to the stopper rope) while sailing upwind. Bring them about half way up for sailing downwind. You may find it usefull to use a permenant marker and put lines on the daggerboards to reflect these positions.

Wrinkledpants,I think this one is easy.

1. All the way down is the correct position for the rudders, although you may want to rake them forward for a more sensitive tiller or backward for a stiffer feel. I had to remove my rudder blades and sand them silightly at the bolts because the person I bought the boat from had painted them and the paint was causing them to stick. If the rudders are not all the way down you will have more of a struggle with the tiller, especially in that type of wind. And the lack of a jib would tend the boat to point into the wind, so you would be fighting this also. When I'm sailing out in shallow water, and I have the rudders partially up the difference in the ammount of pull is HUGE. To the point that in heavier wind I have litteraly had to grab the cross bar with both hands, dig a heel into the tramp lacing and pull like hell.

2. It seems obvious that a higher ratio is what you need but there may be a technical or class legal reason why you can't.

3. The daggerboards go all the way down (unless you are in shallow water). And of course there will be many who'll tell you that the windward daggerboard goes up so as to reduce drag. Sailing solo I rarely have time to think about this!

Anyway, Gotta go work. Have a good one

I'm new to my 5.2 also, and am curious how well it handles without using the jib. Did you get a hull up in those winds with no jib on it? Do you have any adjustment on the jib blocks for when you do use it? I'm a life long monohull racer just switching to the Nacra 5.2 and just need some insight on how to get it to go fast - I'll be racing it every weekend against excellent monohull guys, using PHRF, and need all the tricks I can get. Thanks for any help!

If you're racing PHRF (as in, not Portsmouth) against 30 footers, then heres the best tip:

Don't try and race them unless its blowin at least 15.

Yep I'm racing Portmouth. It's inland lake sailing, against three of the top 5 Catalina 22 Gold Fleet National Champion group, and most weekends are under 15. Failing to go means staying home and cutting the lawn and other like onerous tasks, so I go and try to compete. How critical is jib car setting? Will adjusting it actually improve speed, or is it just a put it in the middle of the track and ignore kind of thing?

In those winds it wasn't hard to get a hull up with one person (~150 lbs) trapped out. To try and tac is almost impossible. Had to jybe in most cases. A furling jib would have been nice as i was nearly killed trying to raise it. I was also wondering what i should do with the jib controls. I'm not racing but still like to have a fair amount of control over the jib. My boat came with two pieces of pvc pipe on the jib cables giving me a gap of about 12 inches to work with. I can't remember where on the line the gap is, but i know i have one pvc piece that is probably 6-12 inches longer than the other. So should i have farther back or closer to the front? To me this seems like the absolute worst system for controling the jib since to have full control you need bare cable exposed and, as i found out this weekend, can take some skin off. Has anyone experimented with putting a track right next to the tramp on the hull instead? I've also seen several pics of people putting them under the tramp which sounds like a good idea, but at the cost of adjustability.

Reid Rechel
n5.2
Lake Superior

My jib "tracks" are braided cable run under the tramp from stern cross brace to front cross brace, and they come up thru two holes cut in the tramp, for a length of about a foot. The jib cars then sit on top of the tramp in that open area. On each jib block, I've run a piece of 1/4" line from the bottom of the jib block under the tramp, to the back cross beam, to a turning block and then across the top of the tramp to a jam cleat mounted on the front side of the back cross beam. Thus when sitting to windward I can adjust the leward jib block up and down it's track until satisfied and then just jam it in the cleat. My only question really is, does the changing of it's position really improve boat speed or is it just something to do that has little impact?

Hi Maugan,
The RC30 races PHRF here is S Florida once in a while and the handicapp value is -100. We haven't lost a race yet against those monohulls.
Bill
What size monohull has a PHRF of -100? What is an America's Cup boat rating?

Bill:

Racing an RC30 PHRF and racing a N5.2 PHRF are two completely different scenarios.

Racing PN is fine. I usually get beat pretty bad racing PN against the local lake guys here because the courses are so short. They tack once and they're on the layline. Doesn't give you enough time to put enough distance on them for the dw leg where they get to fly chutes and I have to gybe.

Properly adjusting the fore and aft position of the jib blocks ensures that your jib draft is steady from the top to the bottom which ensures that your jib is at full power. The best position can change depending on wind strength and the shape/condition of the jib. In order to determine the best fore/aft position of these blocks you should have both an upper and lower set of tell tales properly installed on the jib. While under sail, gradually round your boat down onto a deep reach and watch to see when the outer tell tales stall in relation to each other. If the upper is stalling before the lower, it means the top of the sail is flatter than the bottom and you need to move your jib blocks back slightly in order to get more sheeting pressure toward the bottom of the sail. If the bottom stalls before the upper, it means that the bottom of the sail is flatter in relation to the top and you need to move the blocks more forward in order to get more sheeting pressure toward the top of the sail. You can also check your adjustment by luffing the boat up into the wind to ensure the inside tell tales also react in the same even manner.

On boats with limited fore and aft adjustment of the jib blocks (like ones with the blocks attached to the front beam), it's possible to make the same kind of sheeting angle adjustment by raising or lowering the position of the jib on the forestay.