Let's figure it out
The boat should be just as competitive downwind in this environment as it is upwind. By environment I mean a cruising class, which is main and jib only and in this rating band..
Of course, we need to verify that the boats who left you were also just flying main and genoa..If they had cruising spinnakers and you had a genoa, what you observed is exactly what you would expect-you cannot expect to go downwind with an upwind sail against boats who are flying downwind sails..
BUT, if all the other boats were flying genoas as well, and you had a 130% headsail in 17-25 knots of breeze, you should not have been at a major disadvanage-even against boats who flew 155% sails.
SO, I think it is a matter of technique. You say downwind, but this could be broad reaching (140-165 degrees TWA or 130-150 AWA ish), or running (deeper than 165 TWA/150 AWA-ish).
If it was a broad reach, you will have needed to move the genoa car well forward and out to the rail. The spot on the track which works well will not work at deeper angles. Once the wind comes aft from an upwind point of sail, the cars must progressively move forward and ideally outboard. The reason (in simple terms)is that as you ease the genoa sheets, you are losing much more leech tension than you are foot tension, so as you ease the top half of the sail becomes relatively less sheeted in than the bottom half. You correct for this by moving the car foward, which keeps the top half of the sail more aligned with the bottom. Basically, if you leave the car alone and sail with the sheets eased you will notice that if you set things up so the bottom telltales indicate proper trim and go look at the top half of the sail you will see that it is luffing. Move the leads forward until you can get the telltales to behave consistently along the luff of the sail-this is what you do when you set the leads for upwind sailing, and the same principle applies here, except you will need the cars much more forward to achieve the "even break" you are looking for in all sets of telltales. There are a number of more detailed posts here about car position and genoa trim-check them out.
The whole point here is that without adjusting car location you are not getting anything out of the top of the sail at deeper angles, and someone who does make the adjustment will go much faster.
Finally, as the sailing angle gets wider, so should the sheeting angle, which is why you move the cars progressivly forward AND outboard (the boats gets wider towards the max beam point, right?).... With a 130, if you consider the location on the inboard track you use for upwind, you may end up on the outboard rail 4 feet farther forward when you get to 140 degrees AWA (roughly). This gives you an idea of how much adjustment you might be looking for..
If sailing even deeper angles, you need to get the genoa out on a pole opposite the mainsail-so that you are projecting as much of the sails as possible-this is commonly known as "wing on wing or wing and wing", with the main on one side and the genoa on the other. If you have the boom to port (starboard tack), you can wing the genoa to starboard and sail anywhere from DDW to as high as 150 degrees AWA or sometimes a little higher. This will be exponentially faster than sailing with both sails on the same side at these angles-as the genoa will be stuck behind the mainsail and not doing much work.
So, give this some thought compared to what you did on the race and let me know, but assuming all the other guys were using the same sail configuration (no kites), it likely had to do with sail trim.
Let us know...
S-sailing :nerd:
