Tales of a Weekend Wood-Butcher: Sailing Naughty Note

The eldest son and I have been out for a sail on Naughty Note this weekend, only her second time on the water! The occasion was a meeting on the UK HBBR (Home Built Boat Rally), numbers attending were a little low as you may expect for a boating rally in January but there were four boats on the water at Dell Quay, Chichester and it was very nice to meet a few of the friendly members.

Initially when setting off on NN I thought I had forgotten how to sail as we crabbed sidewise almost as fast as we were going forward, the daggerboard was down but the leeway was shocking. After a few tacks it started coming back to me and a bit more breeze helped. I found that if you over sheet the sail the boat just seems to stall and slow, I found that keeping the end of the boom just over the corners of the transom gave a good compromise between speed and pointing. A couple of times she struggled to tack until I released the mainsheet, if felt like the CoE was a little too far forward although this was less of a problem when travelling at speed.

I have not changed the setup at all since NN's first sail some time ago and the boat really needs a kicker to control the twist of the sail as when reaching and running the boom goes far to high and a lot of power is lost due to too much twist.

While I was initially disappointed with her performance once I had tuned myself into the boat she was actually good fun and will be a nice stable platform for the boys to learn in. I’m quite keen to try her out in a bit more wind at some point but need step the mast in the front garden and rig a kicker before any more trips out.