Make sure your forestay is MAX. See page 8 of the class rules. It is very important to be full length. It is so fast they made a rule to limit it. One problem to be careful of is if your forestay is short and you lengthen it to max you could run out of backstay.

Make sure the mast is in the center of the boat. Don’t just use the halyard to check this. Take a good tape measure and measure back from the bow and mark the rail at a common point somewhere aft of the shrouds on each side. You do this because with a T-10 stays and such might not be in the same spot side to side. If you have an LS-10 the shrouds are even and you can just raise the tape on the halyard and check it from side to side.

Make sure your prop is marked so you can center it before the start. Rubberband it if your crew is willing.

I would strongly recommend a companionway bag to launch the spinnaker. Launching from the rail or the forward hatch just isn’t that good.

Mount a pole holder on your boom. It is much faster than putting it on the deck.

If you have a track on the front of your mast I would suggest getting it off. I don’t have time to do that on Jing Bang, but you don’t want the track on the mast, it restricts low bend and hurts you in heavy air.

We will be sailing class national rules 1275 so you are allowed more weight than normal 1100 LBS. There is always an advantage in a T-10 to have weight which is why we have rule restricting it. I have won 4 NA’s on “Wine Squall” before the weight limit rule with 1320 pounds and most of those regattas were sailed in light air. You can move weight in light air and still be fast but if you are short on weight in heavy air you have a hard time.

Your jib is the most important sail. Mains can be changed with adjustments and can be re-cut, however a jib can be ruined in a matter of minutes in a storm or heavy winds. You are allowed to carry 2 jibs on board. You can’t change during a race but you can between races. If the wind is really going to blow you may want to use an old jib to save your good sail. In the big regattas you might choose to use the good one up. We used to re-cut old jibs (take material out of the luff to flatten them at the sail loft) then they are actually faster than the normal jib.

This should not a mystery. It’s also not something that you read in a manual and just set, although that is a good starting point. What you are doing with the uppers is controlling the head stay sag. The Main sheet and the back stay also control sag but the side stays are the constant tension and the base for the race. So in light air you let them off and tighten in heavy. What you are looking for is how much headstay you are seeing from the helmsman seat. You will notice you can’t see the top of the stay because it is on the other side of the mast but you probably can see the first hank. When the wind goes up you won’t see the hank anymore and you have to tighten the side stays. So in terms of actual tension, (it has been a long time since I have done this) 26 on the LOOS guage I think is about right in light air. We used to put so much tension on “Dora” (the T-10 that was the plug for the LS-10 1999 NA Champ) in heavy air that we had to loosen the stays before we came in. Otherwise the boat would have dimples in the side when it was at the dock.

You should go up wind before the race get the backstay right and trim everything in. Go look up the groove of the mast. You want to get the mast straight for that setting. But just bring it to straight. The biggest mistake people do in heavy winds is put the lowers on too hard. They act as check stays restricting the bend down low. This sends more bend up high and you lose the top of your sail to quickly. It is always surprising to see how loose the lowers are when correct. The idea is with no back stay or main sheet the mast is straight and will sag to leeward as you bend the mast the lowers tighten and the mast naturally moves into column. So if it is really blowing you may actually let the lowers off to let the mast bend more low. In light air you will want the mast to actually sag to leeward a bit.