CONTENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
PART 1 GETTING READY
Assembling The Gear
What Each Control Does
PART 2 TUNING
Preparing Your Boat
The Initial Set-Up
Refining The Set-Up
Offwind Settings
Spinnakers
Two Boat Tuning
Troubleshooting
PART 3 SKILLS
Equipment Needed
Attaching Fittings To The Hull
Ropework
Boat & Foil Repairs
Rigging
Sail Care & Repairs
END NOTE
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-909911-48-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-909911-81-9 (eBook)
ISBN 978-1-909911-82-6 (eBook)
All photographs © Fernhurst Books Limited or Pinnell & Bax, except:
p15 (right) © Selden; p19 (right) © Mark Dunkley; p53, 62, 67 © Lee Whitehead; p60, 64, 66, 68, 73 © Tim Olin; p76, 77 (left) © Alistair Mackay; p79 © Tom Gruitt
Front cover photograph © Christophe Favreau
Designed by Rachel Atkins
Illustrated by Maggie Nelson
FOREWORD
Whether you race an Optimist, Laser, Finn, Star or America’s Cup foiling catamaran (or anything in between) there are two things that will determine your results: the skill of the sailors and the way your boat is set up. The former is determined by latent talent and training, the latter is more complex. Tuning a boat to give you maximum boatspeed is not easy. There are so many variables to consider – it is multidimensional.
In my sailing career I have been lucky enough to work with the best. Pre-eminent among them is, of course, Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson. As Bob Fisher stated in his obituary in The Guardian:
“All sailors have their specialities: Simpson’s extended from his search for speed into the nuts and bolts of how it might be obtained. His meticulous boat preparation was second to none... Simpson spent many hours working on their Star and was rewarded with unsurpassed boat performance”.
It is only fitting that this new book in the Sail to Win series, about boat tuning, is supporting the Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation.
Ian Pinnell, who has won more championships than most of us can dream of, explains with clear text, photographs and diagrams how to tune your dinghy for maximum boatspeed. Once you have that, you can concentrate on your own performance.
Good luck!
Iain Percy
2 x Olympic gold medallist, 1 x Olympic silver medallist, 3 x World Champion, 3 x America’s Cup challenger
TUNING
TO
WIN
IAN PINNELL
MULTIPLE CHAMPION, SAILMAKER & CHANDLER
Ian Pinnell first learnt to sail at Dorman Long Sailing Club on Teeside aged 10 in 1971. He progressed to Tees Sailing Club, began winning races and became a sailmaker at Storrar & Bax. This business started off in Newcastle and then moved to Northampton and was renamed Pinnell & Bax.
The business has moved from initially being a sailmaker to now having five departments: manufacturing & sailmaking, shop & mail order, repair, rigging and new boats.
Ian has been winning championships since the early 1980s and is continuing to do so over 30 years later. He has over 40 World, European or National Championship titles to his name in classes as diverse as the Enterprise, 505 and Mumm 30.
World Championships
505
Enterprise (x 4)
Fireball (x 2)
European Championships
505 (x 3)
Fireball (x 5)
National Championships
505 (x 11)
Enterprise (x 2)
Fireball (x 8)
Miracle (x 2)
Mumm 30 (Tactician) (x 2)
National 12 (x 2)
Ian was co-author of Helming to Win with Lawrie Smith in the original Sail to Win series. He is the only sailor to have written a book in both the original and new series, confirming his longevity at the top of dinghy sailing.
INTRODUCTION
Boatspeed is a vital ingredient in winning, but many races are won by only a few boat lengths or seconds. Given that most dinghy races last somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour, you are talking about tiny difference in boatspeed. A 30-second lead in a 30-minute race only equates to the winner going less than 2% faster than the other boat!
We are talking about fine margins here and small changes to your boat’s tuning can easily make that sort of difference to your boatspeed.
This book will help you understand how the rig and foils generate boatspeed. It will show you how to alter the controls to power up or down, depending on wind strength, and how to alter the rig for upwind and downwind sailing. In short, it aims to give you blinding speed and get you pointing so high that you never need to sail on port tack!
The book is organised into three parts:
Part 1: Getting Ready
Focussing on what needs to be done or known before you start tuning, this section begins with how to assemble a hull, foils and gear so that you have compatible kit to tune. Every bit of standard rigging (the things you set up ashore) is then explained, moving onto the effects of the control lines (the ropes you tweak as you sail round the course).
Not every type of boat will have all the equipment and controls described here, but that doesn’t matter, you can just learn how to use the ones that you do have!
Part 2: Tuning
The second part of the book covers boat tuning itself, beginning with the initial set up (which is always for light wind beating), and going on to modifying this set up for beating in medium and strong winds, along with information on reaching and running.
A section on two boat tuning details how you can refine your settings even further, and a dedicated troubleshooting section will help pull you back from the brink when it’s all gone horribly wrong.
Part 3: Skills
The last section of the book covers all the skills you need to make the boat work, be it splicing control lines, replacing a slot gasket or threading a new halyard through the mast.
Armed with this knowledge you will have the confidence to get in the groove right from the start, be able to concentrate on all the other things that need your attention in a race, and work your way up the leaderboard!
END NOTE
In this book we have covered the three key areas involved in increasing your boatspeed:
Part 1: Assembling the gear and understanding what each control does.
Part 2: How to set up your boat for light wind beating, and then how to adjust this for different wind strengths and points of sail.
Part 3: The skills you need to work on your boat to make sure it is optimally fitted out.
Like anything in life, the more time you spend tuning, the faster you will go. How much effort you put in will depend on your aspirations:
• If you want to win an Olympic medal you will need the time to prepare the boat on a daily basis, and log every setting. Then if something breaks you can get a spare up and running fast, even between races.
• If you want to win a championship, you will want to work on the boat weekly, rather than daily, but you will need to really understand how to tune your boat to the optimum.
• Many of you will simply be looking to improve your performance and perhaps win the occasional race. For you, any better understanding and implementation of tuning will reap dividends.
Remember, just 2% more boatspeed is likely to see you leaping up the fleet!
Ian Pinnell
2016
PART 1
GETTING READY
Assembling The Gear
Your first decision is whether to buy new or second-hand. Provided you buy from an expert builder, a new boat should have systems that work, are calibrated and are less likely to fail. The sails are new and the boat should be fast right out of the box. If not, the builder will give you advice and support. Of course, this all comes at a cost – it is very time consuming to fit out a new boat. (For example, it takes our team at P&B 55 hours to set up a 505, and an amateur would probably take twice as long.)
A second-hand boat will be cheaper, and may be fast if you buy a proven boat or can re-tune an unsuccessful one. If you aren’t in a hurry then a cheap boat will give you an introduction to the class and a better idea of what you want when you do move on to a new boat.
Buying A New Boat
Unless the manufacturer supplies a complete boat, you will need to buy the hull, foils, spars and sails.
The Hull
You must buy the hull from someone who is an expert in the class, particularly if you want them to fit it out. Look for:
• Championship results
• Build quality
• Quality of finish
• Under weight
Foils
The rudder wants to be as small as you can handle, to give less drag. It must be stiff.
The centreboard should be stiff in light / medium winds but have enough flex to depower in a gust. How much it needs to flex depends on your crew weight – the lighter you are the more it should flex. Check this by clamping the board, hanging a 15 kg weight on the tip and comparing it with others (right). The spec of the laminate alters the board’s stiffness. If yours turns out to be the wrong stiffness for your weight, you may need a new board.
Think long and hard about the slot gasket, which is vital for speed. It must be in good condition and tensioned properly (which also improves the seal around the board).
Checking centreboard stiffness
The slot gasket is vital for speed
Aluminium (top) and carbon (bottom) cross sections
Mast
The first decision is carbon or aluminium. If the class rules allow, go for carbon every time. These masts have a smaller section, are lighter and recover from big loadings (e.g. hitting the bottom in a capsize) better than their metal counterparts.
Unfortunately, carbon spars cost 2-3 times more and don’t like having holes drilled in them.
Next choose your mast manufacturer, if necessary in conjunction with your sailmaker. There may be a number of sections to choose from: go for the one that best suits your crew weight by asking the mast supplier.