So having recovered some of the performance at Emsworth yesterday, the last critical piece for me was to get the bulb a little forward so the bow is nearly in the water when the boat is stationary on flat water. I have 3 fin inserts which allow the fin to be angled. Just because I could, I fitted the insert that gave me the least rake which turned out to be one degree to see what would happen. My expectation was that the weather helm would return that I had with the old fin.
Imaging my surprise when I put the boat on the water to find that there was no weather helm. This maybe due to the fact that the Craig Smith fin had an extra 5mm width at the bottom of the fin.
So now I have a boat with the fin close to verticle and the bulb 2 degrees up from the waterline, the bow breaks the waterline just over10mm back from the bow bumper and the boat tracks perfectly upwind. All I have to do now is to add 16gm of weight to the bulb to bring it up to weight.
Now the basics are done I can get on with practice, 2 boat tuning and racing and the odd minor tweaking.
Its been a rocky road so far with the new boat but I hope the efforts will bring its rewards.
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