Moose Droppings

Moose McClintock has been trying to stop sailing J/24s for longer than many of us have been sailing them. He first tried when longtime skipper Ken Read (he of the six world titles) got out of the class in the mid-90s. But then he got sucked back in to sail with Vince Brun in 1997 (first) and 1998 (second to Terry Hutchinson). He was back again in 2002 (with Brad Read, first) and 2005 (with Max Skelley, 8th with two DNFs). And in 2009, he was back again, this time with Chris Larson. To no one’s surprise, they had a strong regatta, finishing second to Brazil’s Mauricio Santa Cruz. All told, according to Moose, that’s five wins and three seconds over 15 world championship regattas. So I asked Moose to offer up a few gems on sailing these beloved boats. I considered keeping this all to myself—there’s some good stuff here—but figured that wouldn’t be fair.

Of course, if you don’t know, Moose works for Dimension-Polyant Sailcloth. They produced the genoa used by Mauricio Santa Cruz (to Santa Cruz’s design) and the cloth used for the genoa that Larson sailed to second (a North design).

Find out more about D-P here,

Before I get into the interview, some kudos for the management team which correctly canceled racing last week. I was a little upset to see Day 1 get blown off so early, but the breeze only picked up after noon and by 6 p.m., it was perfectly miserable, and dangerous. So we all live to fight this week, which is looking quite sweet, as long as the fog holds off.

Tell us a little bit about your team, led by former world champ Chris Larson
The crew we had, nobody regularly sailed J/24s. One of the guys Steve Frazier, works up at North, he does some night racing. And Curtis Florence, the bow guy, does bow on Farr 40s, but he hasn’t done J/24 stuff. Dave Hughes who’s a super, super crew, he sailed with Mikee Anderson-Mitterling in the 470, he’s fantastic, but he’d sailed like one J/24 regatta.
What I did with each guy is I went over their area and how to do the mechanics of it and once we got the mechanics down, then it was fine.

So for the jib trimmer, for example, what sort of things did you review?
For [Dave] it was more the mechanics of how to physically do the tack. He said, “I’m not a big guy.” Size has nothing to do with it. It’s all technique and hand speed. So we did a bunch of tacks and I showed him the easiest way to do everything from zero to 20 [knots]. At one point he tried to do something different and totally screwed up. I said, “What happened there?” He said, “I tried to do it my own way and that’s not working.”
It never got real up range so it was easy for him to keep in control and get the mechanics down for when the breeze did come up. I flew the kite downwind so he didn’t have to worry about that.

The J/24 carries a small kite by today’s standards. So what’s the key, especially in light air?
Just like every sail on a J/24—the genoa has to go zero to 20, the kite has to go zero to 30—you don’t have specialized shapes. What we do, and if you look at pictures you’ll probably notice, we always have the pole much lower than anybody else. In light and wavy conditions, having the pole low gives you a little bit rounder front end and you don’t have to sheet quite as hard, so you make the sail a little bit more asymmetric. So when you’re doing VMG sailing you have a little bit rounder leading edge to be able to sail off of and you don’t have to sheet quite as hard. If the pole goes up, the top of the sail rotates around and you have to oversheet into the boat and it backwinds into the main.
So that was one thing, we always had the pole a little bit lower and we always had it a little bit further forward too. Having it further forward makes the sail a little bit rounder for the chop and gets it further away from the boat so you get a little bit less disturbed air going through it.

Did you have any tactical thoughts that are specific to the J/24 or even to the big fleet where lanes are at a premium?
The one thing I tell everybody, if you get a bad start it’s very easy to whip the boat around, but don't do it. It's like in an Etchells, if you get a bad start the big thing is not to tack right away. Because if you tack and start reaching behind people you go backwards in a hurry.
We had a couple of really bad starts and we were able to pop out. The big thing is don’t do many tacks. You have to put the bow down so far to get the boat moving again after you tack that you’re just sailing backwards.
Our goal, for the most part, was to come off the line and sail for as long as we could. When you tack, make sure you’re tacking and not having to do big dips. Wait until you’ve dropped back a little bit so you’re doing close dips behind people and you’re not giving up a lot of leeway.
If you have to bear off, the boat just rolls over on its side and you start skidding, you’re going to leeward like there’s no tomorrow. That’s where you start losing lanes. That’s one thing that’s kind of quirky about the J/24. You look at people sailing them upwind and in every kind of breeze the boat is sitting bolt upright. The keel's not real efficient, and to get it work you’ve got to get it sitting straight up and down, and just get the keel down in the water. The boat heels and the keel doesn’t do jack. Those were the biggest things, don’t tack much and just keep the boat as flat as possible.

Looking around at the fleet did you notice any consistent mistakes being made by other teams?
Everybody sails with big scallops in the luff of the headsail. People have to realize when you get these big scallops, you’re making the entry [of the jib] really fine. And they’d be sailing along and sticking it [up] and sticking it [up] and then they’d reach the point of stall and all of the sudden they’d just stop. And they wouldn’t put the bow back down. A round leading edge gives…an Etchells jib is perfect example of this, it’s very round forward and when you put the bow down you get attached flow going again very quickly. When you have these big scallops and a very fine front end [of the jib] you’ve really got to put the bow down and ease. I saw a lot of people that would get into this mode of sticking it up, sticking it up, sticking it up and all of the sudden they’d just stop.

You mean just feathering the boat up constantly?
You sail really pinchy, J/24s don’t go a lot faster if you put the bow down, so everybody sails really high and you go about the same speed. Which is fine until you stall. Once you stall you’ve got to put the bow down and get the thing going again. We probably sail with a tighter luff than anybody. Overall we were pointing a little bit lower, but we didn’t have the issues of hitting the brakes every now and then.

How much did you play the jib Cunningham.
When Curtis was on deck and there was good breeze, we played it a lot. As puffs would come through he’d crank on it pretty good. When the breeze comes up, you’ve got more waves, and the boat’s bouncing around and shaking and if you’ve got to put the bow down to get the boat going again after hitting a wave, you needed that round front edge. So we’d use it for that. Big puffs coming through, he’d wail on it and open up the mid-leech and that’s a big part too, when the breeze is on you’ve got to keep the mid-leech on the genoa open so you can drop the traveler down and keep the boat speed. The guys that go really slow are the guys that don’t keep the boat on its feet. The main starts flogging, so they keep it too centerline or something and they heel too much. That’s where the big problem is.

Any other last-minute secrets for Fleet 50?
One thing that was good about our guys is we generally had one guy who never came on deck half the regatta. And Dave would be down below a lot of times. In fact in the lighter stuff, I’d tack the genoa and just hand him the tail after the tack and he and Steve rolled from down below. Often we ended up with Curtis down below. We had three guys below and I’d just sit on the cockpit sole and stayed low and Chris would be the only one on deck. It’s really fast to do that because the boat’s so bouncy that the higher you get the weight up on deck, the worse it is. So we kept the weight really low. A lot of the best guys do that, you don’t see anyone on deck. You could see the guys that had people on deck [suffer], not so much in the flat stuff, but as soon as it got bouncy, it was huge.
Downwind, because there’s so much traffic in Annapolis, when you saw waves coming everybody got very low. If it was windy enough where I could see the kite, I’d just sit on the step and we’d have two guys down below and Curtis would just flatten himself up forward. We’d just lay there and we’d get through it. Once you start the bouncing, you get a little bit of a harmonic motion and the kite gets really unstable. We had an absolute minimum weight kite and we were able to get through that stuff pretty good. We were really fast downwind.