AFTER Largs the editor approached me to see whether I would set down some of the thoughts that have been in my mind during the season. He insisted that there were a number of points which 505 tuners would want to know more about and I have tried to explain these.

This has been the first year when I have adopted a short strop for the jib up-haul instead of the more conventional jib halyard. For some time I have felt that the forces in the normal system of halyards attached to Highfield levers or muscle boxes was a disadvantage in a modern rig. I refer particularly to the problem of having the halyard pass over a sheave in a taught rig system. Most of my weekend's racing involves the stepping of the mast and the absence of a halyard has been of minimal disadvantage. For my present arrangement I would claim the advantage of the remoteness of the possibility of strop failure although this has meant the acquisition of a special hook attached to the top spinner.

There was a day at Largs when I used a bad looking sail which went very well. It's a disconcerting conclusion but I have found that what some pundits have regarded as rubbish have worked very well on occasion, but there is an unanswerable case for a good sail in moderate to heavy winds. Most of these sails I have bought off the shelf and then only modified them as I have found necessary. Mostly this involved flattening the main.

I was interested to learn that one of the UK universities had used a computer when evaluating mainsail design. One of the more significant results was the confirmation that the optimum fullness of the sail on the boom was about 1/10 the length of the foot. While it is pleasant to find my own preferences echoed by mathematical research it is puzzling to find that a "fullness" ratio as high as 1/5 or 1/7 on some sails which otherwise seem as good as the flatter mains.
The French this year have shown substantial downwind advantage from freeing off the kicker in light weather. I know we have tended to do this in the UK. I think that there is a weakness in the fashion for multi-purchase kicking straps in that they the rope systems especially - tend to have a good deal of friction and are not sufficiently freed off downwind. I would emphasise that this is a light weather technique.

It looks as though the last of the Parker wooden seat tank hulls may have been built or, at least, ordered on the ground that wooden tanks are stiffer than GRP. The evolution of the boat seems to be concentrated in the field of hull stiffness and, if anything, have moved to concentrating on panel stiffness, i.e. reducing the indentation effect of waves on the outside of the boat and to improving the monocoque efficiency by stiffening seat tanks. This has been achieved by using both carbon fibre and honeycomb sections so much that, expense disregarded, the wooden tanks have no particular advantage. It would not surprise me to see the composite hull become a rarity in face of the substantial improvement in all glass construction.

Some sceptical friends who have examined the strengthening device which links the deck to the shroud plates and the hog on Granny Smith will wonder what it is all for in view of the previous paragraph. Perhaps it is a counsel of perfection but I believed that there was a real need to minimise the springing of the hull across its width at the mast gate point. This occurred particularly on my F.D. and I was fed up with seeing the mast black band disappear "into" the deck. This would occur as the rigging was tightened and the mast driven down as an arrow would be in a drawn bow. The mechanical forces in this plain and at this point in a 505 resemble more closely a double bow without the bracing effect of the string. My "device" is intended as a bracing. The equipment is perhaps more elaborate than I now know is necessary, and anyway it has moved the centre of gravity forward 1 1/2 in. If I could join the deck to the keel band with a steel rod and the shroud plates to each other I should be satisfied.

This season I have installed a dual position jib sheeting system (see photo) to exploit the claimed advantage of a close sheeted but full jib. I set up the jib leech to match the mainsail and was interested to find that the French were exploiting the advantages of a similar system.