The worst mistake I made on my first few tacks was thinking that I could tack
through the same tight angle as I do with my lapper. We had to tack through a
wider angle, and curve it more gently to give us time to trim the sheets and
still keep the boat speed up. You can't spin her on a dime like you can with
the lapper or storm jib.
After tacking in a slower, wider curve like that, I could slowly bring her up
higher into the wind as the boat speed picked up. By sloooowly trimming the
genny and the main flatter and tighter, we could point almost as high as we
can with our lapper, maybe just 2 or 3 degrees lower.
Our boat doesn't have spreaders, so I could really trim that genny in tight
and flat! She pointed much higher than I expected. I just had to be very
careful to read the windshifts so I didn't stall her. If I misread the
windshifts, we'd lose boat speed, and have to fall off, loosen the genny
sheets and have to start fine-trimming all over again.
I also learned that I had to tighten my backstay a bit more than with the
smaller headsails to really get her to point. It was important to keep the
headstay and the luff of the genny straight if we wanted to point high with
that big headsail.
By the end of the upwind leg, we had it down pretty smooth. We could point
nearly as high as Jerry B could with his lapper, and we were really flying. I
wasn't kidding when I said we passed the same boats 3 or 4 times. In spite of
our antics with the genny, we were 5th around the upwind mark. Not bad, eh?
Now if we could have just figured out how to make the whisker pole work
properly on the downwind leg... anyway, it was great fun all the way to the
finish, even during the upwind leg to the finish. That's when I blew the
final tack 50 yards before the finish line and let two boats sneak in ahead
of us. We finished right in the middle of the fleet.
PS, the 150% genny is only 100 square feet on a CDI. In 5-8 knots of wind, my
195 pound hubby could trim it without winches. But I couldn't. I'll have to
get those winches on this month!
Fair winds, Judy B