Chris 249 forum posts in last 60 days

Heavy dacron stickyback, which is very different to spinnaker tape, sticks like the proverbial and if done correctly, can fix major tears in yacht sails, which come under much heavier load than a windsurfer sail. Sailmakers have it.

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Quixotic said..
Fair to say that increased sag in the headsail by loosening tension in forestay less of a thing when the headsail luff is in a furler foil on the forestay?

IMHO the presence of a furler mainly affects three things;

1 - the effect of the extra weight may cause more sag, but that's probably very minor;
2 - most sails on furlers are probably more cruise-oriented and therefore will stretch more than laminate race-style sails and therefore may need more variation in luff sag;
3 - whether the furler gives a rounder and more forgiving entry to the sail, or whether it obstructs the flow over the luff and makes it less forgiving, makes my head hurt.
4- How important it is depends on the overlap of the sail. A bigger overlap sail is less responsive to forestay sag and it's also more likely you'll be changing to a smaller sail or reefing. A modern short-overlap rig can give a much wider range with one sail unrolled to maximum extent, so it's important to be able to optimise the depth since you don't change the area.

I've got a black cruise laminate No. 1 on a furler and find that stay tension is still very important. Only by tightening the rig to create a tighter forestay when under max. backstay could I flatten the sail to get the required depth. If I ease the backstay in a breeze it looks horribly deep and goes slow.

PS - this information comes from conversations and sailing with top sailmakers years ago but it still seems to be OK.

To widen the groove, the standard moves are;

1- More twist in the main and jib;
2- Move jib draft forward with extra halyard tension;
3- Ease runners or topmast backstay to increase headsail sag, increasing depth and moving it forward (but ensure that both jib and main are still twisting enough as this will tend to close the head on both sails);
4- Ease jib sheet to induce depth and twist, and (if you have an athwartships control) consider moving it out to sail low and fast with better flow over the keel. You may lose height theoretically, but maintain it because the boat isn't stopping when it's out of the groove;
5- Less mainsheet to induce twist and to work with the eased jib;
7- sometimes increase heel to give more feel if the boat really needs it, but flatter is normally better.

if you've got a swept-back spreader fractional rig without runners, tuning the stay and forestay tension to allow the forestay to sag and give the headsail extra forward draft in light winds can be critical.

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Quixotic said..
Also known as a bayonet fitting I think. I've some old cannon bell fittings which, like my ronstan track, are no longer available. Not currently
in need of replacement, but likely impossible to source if ever needed. I don't fly my spinnaker as the two poles I have are more than 5m long and 100mm diameter, and so weigh quite a bit. Wrestling them on the foredeck in any kind of swell when single handing would not be sensible. The mast track is not long enough to store one vertically up the mast, not to mention putting all that weight up the mast.

I hope your new fitting serves you well.

What do you use to set a foresail downwind?

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Toph said..

MorningBird said..

Yes extreme circumstances can overwhelm the best prepared sailor, but the vast majority of SARs are for people who should not be out there.

I have several friends who have been flight crew for Aerorescue over the years and they claim that the majority of their sea searches are from people that just want to get off (fatigued) acknowledging that that on itself may be part of either not being prepared or should not have been out there.

That's very interesting, and seems to underline the importance of the physical side of offshore sailing. If you're fit and strong and can move around the boat well enough you become a lot less fatigued.

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EastCoastSail said..

One thing that I think hasn't been recognised is there will be more long range ship rescues around Australia in the future. In the past there was Seaking and Seahawks which had the ability to hold multiple passengers winched up. Typically the destroyer or frigate steamed towards the rescue and when in range launched the helo to pick the people up. The Seaking is gone. The new Seahawk is far more focused on warfighting and can only carry one passenger. So the helo must now transfer one passenger at a time back to the ship. The rescues will now take a lot longer as effectively the helo will have a shorter range for the ferry runs.

Hopefully an amphibious ship is in the vicinity of the yacht with a Black Hawk, fitted with external jugs, Black Hawks still hold the world record for the longest rotary wing rescue and can winch up many.

Wow, that's very interesting and distinctly scary information. Many thanks for that.

Kankama has years of anchoring experience in cats of that size.

As others have said, Danforths are not reliable when you get a windshift, which is very common in spring/summer NSW coastal conditions when the seabreeze turns into a westerly in the morning.

I'm NOT an anchoring expert and we've only used our new anchors around the Port Stephens area, but having lived on a boat anchored to a CQR for a couple of years and having had Danforth and Bruce anchors, I'd definitely go with a more modern anchor. Check out Panope's excellent practical experiments on Youtube. I've ditched the old anchors (Bruce and an old Danforth that broke a weld and lead to a horrible experience) in favour of a Scarpa Excel as the main anchor, backed up by a Fortress. In our experience they are dramatically better. Our latest purchase was a Mantus dinghy anchor for the RIB which we used last weekend at the Broughtons and once again, it was enormously better than the crappy pretend Danforths we used to have, whether on sand or reef. The holding at Coalshaft at the Broughtons is good sand but I've still been astonished at the holding power of the Mantus and Fortress when just dropping them off the side of the boat (sitting to the excellent Excel) and feeling them hold with very short scope, up to 45 degrees on the line. The Excel is also excellent IMHO; it's just that it's our main anchor so I can't play with it as i play with the others. One point we love is that the Excel repeatedly comes up much cleaner than the Bruce regularly did in the same muddy cove, which is a bonus.

Practical Sailor's dinghy anchor test noted that their choice, the 1.2kg-ish Mantus, was so good they even uaed it with success on a cat about your size, and from one weekend's experience I can understand that. I'll try using ours as a lunch hook for our 5000kg 36' low windage mono, although the lightweight Fortress is almost as easy to use.

After using these three different modern anchors, I'm a complete convert to them compared to older styles. We are currently waiting to buy another one, a Mantus M1 that will sit dis-assembled as a sheet/storm anchor. It's not that we are not very happy with what we have but we want different picks for different conditions, and an anchor that comes apart as a sheet anchor. I'm dubious about many "advances" in design but the tests by Panope and Practical Sailor back up our (limited) experience that the best modern anchors are a big step forward

Your anchor and chain sound very, very light for a 10m Crowther.

Excellent expert info guys, many thanks.

So what are you planning?

As for ageing, look up books on, for example, masters bicycle racing. If you get stuck into it in your 60s you can be fitter than most people half or two thirds your age, but it does take hard work. On the other hand, if you're in you're only as fit as the average 60+ person then I'd be scared to go offshore. We seem to be seeing an epidemic of rescues and a disproportionate amount of them seem, from what I can see, to be of people who are ageing but not physically fit enough to be out there.

I'm embarking on some re-wiring and want to get good quality crimp connectors with soft plastic, not the nasty cheap Narva type. Can anyone recommend a good brand and supplier?

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LarryR said..
I've always dropped the main and sailed under furled headsail downwind in strong conditions. Heavy displacement mono no expert. Are there advantages to furling the headsail and sailing under reefed main alone? Advantages worth having to deal with a preventer and gybing etc etc?

If the wind drops and you want to get more sail on, it's normally easier take a reef out of a reefed main than pull up one that has been dropped. If there's a windshift or course change and you need to get upwind in heavy stuff a furled jib's usual very inefficient shape is a problem whereas a good mainsail will retain an efficient, flat shape in all conditions.

But mainly to me the question is, could you get back to a MOB or carry out other complicated moves with only a jib up, assuming the engine is not going? Many boats don't handle well under jib alone. Ropes often go around props in MOB situations so you can't rely on motoring.

In a good breeze offshore and day cruising we granny around, doing a 270, rather than gybe. Our boat's a fractional rig so handles well under main alone and we quite often furl the jib and leave full main up downwind offshore in a breeze, although that's normally only the short run (16 miles???) from Broughton Islands to the mooring. We don't use a preventer but the mainsail stays out when a jib would be lolloping due to the lack of a pole. Accidental gybes aren't an issue because the natural tendency is to round up, not down, and although our boat likes to wander around she doesn't broach or crash gybe.

Hopping down the NSW coast should be OK. The longer legs through Bass Strait could be problematic, to say the least, if you get the weather wrong. Given the reliability of current forecasts you may end up waiting a long time for the right weather system in the right place for the Eden-Wilsons leg and the Portland-Robe (?) leg, but that's a hell of a lot better than getting it wrong.

Furling headsails do not perform properly when reefed, and having done Bass Strait a few times I would not enter it without a No. 4 headsail, storm jib, and either a very well tried system of deep reefing, or a storm trysail that you have used in anger. I knew two guys who singlehanded across the Strait without good storm sails. One put out a Mayday and was towed in as a direct result of lacking storm sails, the other radioed that he had suffered major sail damage and was never heard of again. Finally, I'd say that offshore sailing in those areas is a fairly serious sport, in that it's not something to do if you are unfit and not physically able to move well around all parts of the boat in a true heavy breeze, which is different from the Youtube "40 knot gales" where the boat is happily sitting with a reef and a No. 3.

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AoetearoaSailor said..
I've had second big 'off' in a month while gybing - both at the same large lake sailing location in waist deep water, with (occasionally very evil) steeply stacked close-period freshwater chop/lake swell, up to ~50-80cm in size.

The first crash temporarily dislocated my jaw when the nose of the board submarined into some steep chop at high speed during a very committed very powered up gybe resulting in a catapult that gave me concussion for two weeks, and I fear yesterday evening's crash, when the board went total yard-sale as it launched off chop mid-gybe very powered up at high speed, may now have resulted in a broken foot (waiting on x-ray!).

Clearly I must be doing something wrong - relative to the conditions.

I've done 1000s of successful gybes at this particular location, but in the last few months I've been working on a semi-laydown style gybe - straight front arm, sheet in, 'see' the nose of the board, carve, foot change, rig flip, exit. This kind of gybe is brilliant at maintaining mast foot pressure and driving the board through this nasty chop and maintaining speed BUT I suspect the power factor combined with the conditions, means that when it does go wrong, it goes massively wrong with a big bang. I actually thought the problem with the first crash was that I wasn't committing to the gybe enough, but I think I've nixed that idea now.

Previously I used a more 'open sail' gybe technique here, keeping the rig in front of me and bouncing over the evil chop, but was told sheeting in and laying it down was better It certainly looks cooler, haha...

Any tips or advice, or should I just lay off the committed semi-laydowns at this particular location. Boards are Tabou Rocket Plus 113 with GA Cosmic 8.3 in ~16-18 kts wind (foot damage) and Tabou 3s 107 with GA Hybrid 6.4 in ~22-25 kts wind (concussion).

If you're crashing that heavily in waist-deep water I'd quit before you stuck your head into the sand and broke your neck. As others say, the lay down may simply not be the right choice for such conditions.

If you're doing it for racing then that's maybe that's the sort of conditions where the emphasis should be on just getting around fairly quickly even if it involves sheeting out, while maintaining mast foot pressure byt bringing the inside foot forward and sort of leading the upper body with the front shoulder. But I haven't done slalom racing ih a million years so take this all with a few pinches of salt.

If at normal retirement age and fitness I'd be dubious about a 45'er, because the forces on a boat that size are very large for an older couple. I've sailed big boats and it's all great until something goes wrong, but if a furler broke down in a gale (for instance) I'd want to be in a 33-38ish or smallish 38-42 footer. The most experienced cruisers I've sailed with were happy with a smallish 40 footer, and they would cast off from their NZ home to sail to Alaska for an easy holiday in much the same way as others go from Sydney to Pittwater.

Oh, and we have two reefs inserted all the time, but our boats have lived for years at Batemans Bay and Port Stephens which both get all the wind going and a fair bit extra on top of that. With the full Harken roller bearing luff car system, reefing singlehanded takes less than a minute.

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garymalmgren said..
RE: Reefing Downwind
I don't like reefing downwind.
With the sails pressed against the shrouds or spreaders there is too much resistance to dropping the sail to the reef points.
You would have to go to the mast and physically pull the main down.

I usually point up or heave to as a matter of safety and ease on the rigging.
Some boats can't be reefed downwind.
gary

Nope, I don't have to go to the mast when reefing downwind - the reefing lines pull the sail down.

I'm not sure it's safer to point up since that means the main is normally flogging when reefing. The sail is dragged over the rigging while reefing downwind, but I can't see that as being worse than usual chafe over a longer term.