Building intuition for sail trim
I’ve been sailing in San Francisco since August. Catalina 320. I’ve taken ASA 101, 103, and will be taking 104 soon. I’ve chartered boats a few times, and am feeling pretty comfortable and competent generally operating a sailboat and doing so safely.
However, every time I get out under sail, I really have very little intuition for what to do about my sail trim. I’ll trim or ease the main and jib based on my point of sail, but if you were to ask me, for a given point of sail, am I over or under trimmed, I would have no idea.
Was sailing the other day and the telltales on my mainsail weren’t flying at all, and I couldn’t tell you why.
I think I’m generally a fast learner but the complexity of sail trim is pretty overwhelming. Luff tension, leech tension, boom vang, traveler, outhaul, jib cars, don’t even get me started on twist..
How do you begin to tackle the problem of building an intuition for this? Is it just a matter of time on the water and experimentation? I’ve read the theory but it doesn’t really stick very well, at least not in an intuitive way that I can easily apply on the water.
Are there any good resources for this? Has anyone ever taken a dedicated sail trim class?