1 Attachment(s)
tiller balancing - solo sailing
Since you're interested in solo sailing..... If you're close to the wind, say from 45 degrees back to 60 or so, it's pretty easy to balance C-295 by adjusting sail trim and traveler position. But, you'll have to hold off the weather helm to varying degrees depending on wind velocity.
In this pic, note (if you can) the tiller control lines...like your boy scout tent line tensioners...that will give you infinite positioning of the tiller. They also disappear when not in use, and you don't have an ugly piece of plastic screwed into your nice mahogany tiller.
Note that the transom ladder is down...and my wife and her girlfriend are wet..proof that the ladder works on nice, flat, days on a swim call. It was chilly that day so they were wearing suits. (I always smile a lot when they swim.)
Screwing around with fouled lazy jacks...standing on the cockpit seat, I fell overboard to leeward single handing in gusty 12 knot breeze. My harness was tethered to the cockpit lifeline and I got back aboard ..up the ladder...with a little effort, it seemed...maybe it was the adrenaline, though. The boat was sailing along with the tiller held by these lines, pretty close to the wind.
I didn't notice much pitching of the boat when I went up the ladder..perhaps because the boat, sailing an easy heading to windward, was quartering the wave pattern and doing pretty good on her own at smoothing things out.
Motoring into a headsea, her action would have been quite different...but that's bad form when you pick someone up anyway. You should approach the surprised swimmer quartering the seas and shoot for stopping the boat with the swimmer 10 or 15 feet off the leeward quarter of the boat. If you approach directly upwind, you have an increased risk of bashing their melon with the bow or stern overhangs.