Dave
The way I learned about sail adjutment was by volunteering to crew on a boat in a local Saturday afternoon club race. Check around in your local C36 association or boat/yacht club and you have a good chance of a finding a skipper looking for crew members. I learned more about sail adjustment in a few races then tying for years to learn on my own.

The basic concept is to get the jib's luff telltales streaming equally, based on, as you noted, the different points of sail and wind speeds. Those really into sail tuning will purchase the Garhauer adjustable cars.

Upwind, you are looking to get the foot of the sail tight and flat, which on our boats means it will press on the shrouds fairly hard, the mid-leech about 6-8" off the spreader tips, and the telltales breaking either evenly or with the top windward telltale breaking just slightly before the lower ones. This will give you good pointing and a wider groove.

If the lower telltale breaks first, or you can't achieve good telltale behaviour while getting the foot adequately flat, bring the lead aft. The older your sail is, generally the more you will be bringing the lead back and sheeting on harder to stretch the foot while maintaining that 6-8" at the spreader.

Reaching you will be rewarded by sliding the car forward, and ultimately out onto the toe rail track.

Number one problem I see on cruising boats with typical higher-clewed cruising genoas is that they carry their genoa cars 2' too far forward.

David,
I wrote a pamphlet for use in our club's sail training that covers this topic. I would be happy to send it to you if you send me your email address.

[QUOTE=Nimue;14730]

Reaching you will be rewarded by sliding the car forward, and ultimately out onto the toe rail track.

Number one problem I see on cruising boats with typical higher-clewed cruising genoas is that they carry their genoa cars 2' too far forward.[/QUOTE]

I have a question about the toe rail track. I've never tried resheeting my genoa to the toe rail blocks off the wind, but I thought about after reading comments similar to yours recently.

However, when I looked at my boat my toe rail track essentially starts where the deck track ends and extends aft. Even if I moved the block to the very front of the track (which would mean moving the track mounted cleat I have there now) it would be several feet aft of where I'd have the inboard car for offwind sailing. The blocks work fine for my asymetrical sheets but moving the genoa lead that far aft, even if its outboard doesn't seem likely to improve off wind performance to me. Am I missing something or do some folks have toe rail track further forward?

Mark 1 boats have the toe rail track extending foward to roughly the point of max beam, which is also roughly the same forward point as the inboard track on my boat.

I rerigged the 155 to that outside track. So far only one sail in moderate winds, but both up and down the 155 seemed a lot happier. The sail shape appeared much better, telltails flying much more evenly. This also allowed me to open the slot between the genoa and the main more, just had a sense of better air flow.

We'll see how this plays out over time.

Dan

S/V Tao, C36 M1 #114