Heel Gauge. ?

[Mercator]

So the trim advisor says reef the sails, but is there really any need to. I'm not on it and really all it does is cut the speed from what I see. Any comments. ?

[Green Death]

I'm convinced the Trim advisor bases that on wind speed rather than how much the boat is heeling, though I could be wrong. Since there isn't any speed penalty or damage risk from sails hitting the water you can ignore reefing until muuch higher wind speed than tips suggests. At least that has been my experience so far.

[Mercator]

I can see this as a further devlopement as vessel stress. Some type of stress indicator could be used before a sail tear or guyed break would happen. Otherwise its just arcade.

[Nomad]

On one hand, I agree that the trim advisor is not boat specific and is sometimes a little off however, the model does take into consideration heel (as a function of wind speed and point of sail). Acid is correct tho that you can ignore it at the low end of the spectrum but after that u will lose speed dramatically. Even in the Long race on the weekend, I ended up reefing up and down with the wind oscillations at times because the difference was a few knots. There have been a few short races in which I didn't balance my boat enough and paid the price. The model also doesn't really show weather helm very much. Well nothing like I am used to IRL.

As for capsizing - there was a thread on that a few weeks ago, but essentially these sized boats with the Keels they have should not really be capsizing imho. In smaller dinghy's ect it is possible. The problem I have tho is in rough seas, the boat a wave can hit parallel and have no effect. No knock down's, no capsizing. This is where these boat would capsize IRL. But this brings me to another issue of being able to hold course in any seas. Yes waves do effect speed in this sim, but not course. Maybe the dev, thought it would be too much to hold the tiller all day tho.

[Mercator]

One other issue is the sail changing window of a degree or two above beam or close haul the auto trim always drops the sails and switches out, I think a larger window could be used. I know you can switch it off for off line use in autosail.