I was out two days ago and had the kids+wife out for the first time this year. As it was hot I also had the bimini up for the first time this season. To keep the jib sheets from fouling the bimini I moved the jib cars to the front of the track and the 110 jib up with a reef in the main. Wind was between 12-19 knots(apparent).
Trying to go to wind was difficult. I was being badly outpointed and falling off a little to pick up speed resulted in being so far off the wind my VMG was terrible. Beating back and forth was resulting in almost no progress forward. As my wife is nervous crew I just ended up reaching most of the day.
Went out today and the first thing I changed was the position of the jib cars, about halfway back. Wind was 12-15 knots (apparent). Now we were pointing well. Very close to 45 degrees off the wind and we were doing 5 knots close hauled like that. Ended up spending most of the time beating to wind and making good progress.
I don't recall my old blown out main being as sensitive to the jib car position. It was probably so bad it didn't make much of a difference as we couldn't point as well as we can with the new main. It was a real eye opener.
Heading back in we tried out the whisker pole for a little wing on wing. Works well but I think I need to use the spinnaker halyard as a topping lift to keep the weight of the pole off the sheet.
Shawn
I know what your'e saying as I like to point high as human/com-pactly possible so I put the jib sheet way inside of all
shrouds or stays, then thru the fairlead on cabintop, then to the winch , 2 wraps,
and to my swivel -deck mount camcleat . I trim hard - so splitting the load thru all that stuff makes it
easier on the trimmer. Also - lots of boomvang, and variable outhaul , as well as some down haul trim
adjustments help me to point quite well in hot stiff ( 15-20's ) headers from the north /northwest ;
all with my old, cheap ,lesser known made mainsail.
The line from the jib car, it is said, ought to point right to the center of the head sail regardless of % size.
I can't say where I had read that years ago.
skip.