North Sails at the Sydney-Pittwater Couta Boat weekend

by Sam Haines on 30 May 2016 On Saturday morning we kicked off with a talk at the lovely traditional Royal Prince Edward Yacht Club on Sydney Harbour.

In the talks we covered Rig tune, marking halyards and sheets so we can reproduce settings, Mainsail controls and set up and Jib controls.

Michael Coxon covered the technical aspects of radian cloth, North Sails and some very good tips on tide etc. The same theme was followed up at RPAYC on Sunday.

It was great to see the enthusiasm behind the Couta Boats with a keen group attending each day.

After the morning session on Saturday we headed out on the Harbour but the wind didn’t play the game. However, this wasn’t a waste of time as I was able to get on each boat to mark the boats up, including putting marks on the rig, halyards and sheets so as to allow for settings to be replicated day to day and allow for incremental changes.

Once we called off the sailing it was back to the Edwards for lunch on the balcony which made for a good day.

On Sunday the Pittwater fleet was sailing as part of the one design regatta out of RPAYC. After an hour in the classroom we went out on the water, again there was little wind, so we spent time taking photos of the boat's side on to see where the Sailing rake on the boats were. On a whole the rigs were slightly forward of plumb in the boats so a little bit of work to be done here.

Then we got a soft breeze of around five to six knots and we got to have a look at the sail set ups. We found on most of the boats that the luff tension had to be let off on the headsails to allow the luff to relax when the forestay tension is correct. The Jib cars needed to get taken aft to get the jib’s to twist a little more to match the large amount of twist on the Gaff mainsail.

Then there were three races back to back with very close racing, with the fleet finishing the regatta with in six points from first to sixth, with the Emily boys winning on count back to Larry’s team on Sylvia and three point behind was Terry and the team on Southerly.

It was very refreshing to see the amount of enthusiasm in both fleets and great to see the Couta boats fleet growing as the 2017 Pittwater Nationals get closer.

I invite you all to contact Cocko, Pete Antill or myself if you have any questions regarding Couta Boats and anything sailing.

Looking forward to coming out for a sail next time I am in town.

A special Thank you to Chris Gosselin and Larry Eastwood for all your help in making this weekend a great success for both fleets. I am sure the Couta Boats are in good hands and look forward to watching and helping the fleets grow.