Getting caught with the rig too tight as breeze drops. What do you do?

[Jeff Grange]

When the wind drops during a race and you can't point/feel underpowered with a tight rig, what do you do?  Since you can't change the shrouds during the race, does anyone pull out mast-chocks mid race?  We eased jib halyard/cunningham, moved leads forward, eased main out haul and cunningham, moved crew weight forward, but still needed power and a looser head stay.  Any other tricks people use? Thanks!

[Peter Beardsley]

Yes, some people pull out chocks mid race.  Otherwise, there's not much you can do other than not setting up too tight initially.  The saving grace if you're racing one design is that hopefully everyone else is set up tight too if it was windy and the breeze shuts off. 

[Eddy Parker]

Is there any chance of changing the rules so that tuning during a race is allowed?  This happened to us at SBRW and it was miserable.  I really wanted to change the rig and it would be easy enough to do under way. 

[Peter Beardsley]

There was a time period for submitting rule proposals that lapsed on June 4 -- http://forum.viper640.org/index.php?topic=1743.0 -- you can save it for 2015 and bring it up then...

I personally think the rule allowing chock adjustments midrace should be deleted, but I did not submit a proposal about that this year (mostly because I forgot).  It's not all that easy to adjust chocks midrace (esp. if you want to add chocks), and both rig and chock adjustments are situations where The Rich Get Richer, where the good teams who are excellent at tuning make constant adjustments on the fly and the gap between first and last gets even larger.  But anything is up for a proposal and vote if you go through the protocol to make a proposal with the Technical Committee. 

[Peter Beardsley]

I'm also not aware of any one design classes that allow adjustment of standing rigging while racing, other than those classes like a 505 where the shrouds are led to a rope purchase.  Maybe there are a couple out there that allow this to happen, but they're not in the majority.

[Tac Boston]

Melges 20's and 24's allow you to adjust the side stays while racing. The 20 does not allow the outers or the lowers to be eased but they have the ramps for that, you can adjust the diamonds at any time.

[David Furna]

I've seen several Vipers set up to adjust the mast without using chocks.
I'm all for allowing rig adjusting while racing. Miami was a perfect example this year.
Let's put it back to a vote

Dave

[Garrett Johns]

As Peter mentioned, if you are racing one design, everyone is in the same boat. If you are not racing one design, and in some sort of handicap fleet, you are not bound by Class rules and I believe you can then adjust anything you want.
As far as initial set up on the Viper, we always error on the side of more powered up before we blow off the dock. It is less painful to be overpowered than the other way around. You can also adjust in between races so it is important to be able to change gears as the day goes and worst case you are only badly tuned for one race.

[Drew Harper]

You can set the rig a big under and just use Cunningham and vang for Backstay if the wind builds. I've done that when sailing at 600 lbs...leave the rig powered and just wind on cunny at the top mark....acts like a backstay of sorts.

I think it's a bad idea to allow rigs to get tuning, mid-race. The M20's did this because they had too...rigs kept breaking. M24's did it because they could....lotsa pros.

The only thing to do when the rig is wound on is drop the chocks, bag the sails, set your crew placement for lighter breeze...and pray for wind :-)))