J105 Sailing

I recently managed to get some sailing in on the weekend with Rob and Sandy on their J105 boat for the Port Credit Yacht Club regatta this past weekend. Manuel, the webmaster for the J105 Fleet 4 managed to put the word out for me and Sandy got a hold of Friday.

It was great to be out there on the water again. The J105 boat itself is pretty big compared to the Kirby25s that I started on. It also uses a small jib compared to the 150% genoa usually on Kirbys as well as an asymmetrical spinnaker. The setup makes tacking and jibing fairly simple. You don't have to jibe the spinnaker pole on downwind jibes and it's easier to manage the small jib on upwind tacks. Nevertheless, like any boat, it takes a bit of skill to sail fast and beat the fleet consistently. Our boat handling wasn't much of an issue, rather our trimming and courses put us in the middle to rear of the pack.

I got confused about sail trim rules during some of the discussions on the boat. Being out of practice and trying to recollect what I'd learnt the previous 3 years, I got mixed up as to what kind of sail shape you need for different wind speeds and water conditions. In any case, I found some resourceful links after I got home.

The performance sailing articles on Sailing San Francisco site is a good resource: Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
The Vega sailing manual is a good one as well.

I learned a few new things about sailing a boat over the weekend and hopefully I can put them to good use fairly soon.

In any case, here are some pics from the weekend:

















Incidentally, the ontario crew bank is a good place to sign up if you're looking to get on a boat somewhere or if you have a boat and are looking for crew.