top batten problems

[Flew]

Hi,
I have recently purchaced a crusader 2 to club race with my 7 year old daughter. Luckily she is fearless, so we sail whatever the wind. Not carrying a lot of weight between us [about 15 stone] we struggle a bit upwind in 20 Knts plus. In these conditions we set the boat up thus: mast raked back, jib leads back, mast ram off, kicker on full, cunnignham on full and feather our way through the gusts to survive and limit our loss untill we can fly off down wind again and do some catching up. This works quite well but the top batten spends half the time inverted which may be slow and certainly doesnt look good. what can we do to rectify this?
 
Cheers in anticipation

[sam293]

less cuningham and kicker, bit of mast ram/less rake to get more leach tension. you may also find your over sheeting the jib which if your setting your angles to that could mean your to close to the wind for the main.

well this is all from a crews perspective and things id change if this were happpening.

lets see if anyone else can give you some more info to

[Antony (Guest)]

Flew,
Don't worry about it, in those conditions you do not have to look up the sail so often anyway (the kicker is on and the streamer is still streming from the top batten) and there are rarely photographers around.  I should think that all of us have a wind strength at which this starts to occur,  yours might be slightly lower that is all.  It simply proves that you have depowered the bit of the sail  you want to depower most (the top bit that knocks you over).
I think that the hardest thing about sailing with a small crew in a strong wind is that the crew is less able to ease the jib into the biggest gusts, and indeed may need to cleat it.
Antony
3514 (for sale), 3292 (for sale), 3448 (definitely keeping)

[Flew]

Thanks,
The leach taletales are streaming nicely and the crew does have the jib cleated as crew is not big enough to hold it. Crew may be fearless but 10 mins after the start loses interest in hiking hard in favour of sitting on the side deck and talking [constantly].
 
Flew