Today when sailing my NP Excess 5.4 (06ish) I ended up extending my boom 50 mm past the usual setting I use for that sail and really flattening it out, should have changed down but after a recent session on my 6.4 Excess and doing the same which worked well I thought I would give it a go on the smaller one. I found though that it was really unforgiving in the gusts.
Is it possible to overdo outhaul and if so what are the tell tale signs?
It is definitely possible to overdo outhaul with a lot of sails. It does make them less powerful but often they can also become twitchy, unstable with a severe on-off switch feel.
I was reading the rigging info that comes with NP sails. One section described what the sail looked like with wrong downhaul settings and then went on to describe how the sail will perform on the water. I suspect that the same info is somewhere on their website. The booklet tai was reading was for a 2012 sail.
Select to expand quotesailquik said..
It is definitely possible to overdo outhaul with a lot of sails. It does make them less powerful but often they can also become twitchy, unstable with a severe on-off switch feel.
problem solvered, should have changed down, Doh !
I've found the sail to go very on/off and lacked drive. You had weight on the boom but it seemed to be all sideways and not much forward thrust.
20-25 knots i use negative to neutral on my 5.5 race sail.
25-30 knots i use neutral to a little positive.
Anything above 30 knots I start going with serious positive!
In the 33-37 range I go max outhaul.
In this wind my 3.3 Tushingham Rock would be much more fun.
tried maxing out as well mine last in unusually heavy wind .. a bit twitchy, kept on adjusting the sail harness backwards and a bit draggy when in downwind reaches.. It was forgiving but I felt the wind didn't slip out the sail well enough to feel going faster..at least I felt my forearms gained some poundage 
Yes, in hindsight you should have changed down, but good on you for doing a bit of tuning (or detuning as it turns out) to try to get more range out of the sail. I know I can get a bigger wind range out of a sail by changing fins instead ( and doing a bit of sail tuning too).
You know know how crap an over outhauled sail feels, so put that down as a valuable learning experience.
If it's a wave sail with no cams and the wind gust up for a while, I usually just put on heaps of downhaul and outhaul, sometimes more than is recommended.
It's probably not the best thing to do but it's much quicker than de-rigging and then rigging up a smaller sail, and it works pretty well.
On the few occasions I have bothered to go in and rig up a smaller sail, the wind drops off just as I'm going out again. 
This reinforces my habit of just heaving on more outhaul the next time it happens. 
Thanks for the feedback, I new it felt crap and was pretty sure I had overdone it for those conditions. I think I got away with it with the 6.5 because the only thing I had to deal with was being overpowered (flat water speed spot) but with the 5.4 it was a combination of overpowered, gusts and extremely choppy/swell water state that would have seen me better off on smaller sail.
I had already changed down boards from 90 to 82, only the second session on that board and really liking it, meanwhile my mate 20kgs lighter than me and with his 100+ board spent more time watching and ended up packing up because it was all to hard.
Hey pirrad,
Did you try giving it a bit more downhaul instead of more outhaul? By giving it more loose leech you are effectively taking away sail surface and lowering the sails pressure point which makes it less catapult prone.
De-rigging due to the wind increasing involves the possibility of the wind dropping again and you are left having to change the sail again, sometimes even before hitting the water with the smaller sail.
Arne
