Posted by Grant Headifen on June 29, 2010 under Bareboat Charter, Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper | 
I once sailed with an ex-submarine captain who would turn the boat through a tack extremely slowly. When asked why, he had several good reasons.
(1) Look behind you as you come about. If you are leaving swirling water eddies behind the rudder, these are a sum of kinetic energy that was previously in your sailboat but has now been released to the water. What does that mean? If you jam the tiller over during a tack you will loose momentum – slowing down your sailboat more than you need to. If you execute an easy steady turn leaving the kinetic energy in the boat, you’ll maintain kinetic energy in the boat.. Thus when you come out on the other side your boat still has speed. Still not convinced? You’ll remember from docking that the boat carries a lot of momentum. Put the throttle in neutral and the speed bleeds off very slowly. Ever been skiing? Execute a few cutting turns and you’ll see how fast your speed drops. Same concepts when tacking.
(2) A slower turn also allows your crew a few extra seconds to get the jib sheet in tight before the real heel and tension comes on. This is really important because once you’re heeling over on the new tack it is more difficult and slower for the crew to tension up the jib sheet to it’s appropriate trim. It’s pretty frustrating as helms person when you’re perfectly on the new tack and you’re watching the crew floundering around cranking slowly on the winch and the jib is still only half in. You’re probably yelling “get it in get it in” and watching others pull past. What I’m doing here is putting a little responsibility back on you. With a slower turn, the crew can get the jib sheet almost all the way in by hand before the tension comes on.
(3) The swirling water eddies left a signature in the water that could be picked up by submarine hunting satellites. Not that this is relevant to sailing really but it was just his well formed habit.
The point is – when you’re the helms person, maintaining speed through the tacking maneuver is a balance between your boat’s momentum profile and your crew’s efficiency in getting that sheet in. It’s not about jamming the wheel over to the other side as fast as possible.
Just goes to show you that slow is faster. Ask the tortoise!
Posted by admin on June 22, 2010 under Bareboat Charter, Coastal Navigation, Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper |
Leeway is just one of those things that is a law of the universe that we have to put up with. It’s just like gravity. Still with gravity – the advantage is that it’s highly predictable. And so then is leeway.
Leeway is the sideways slip motion of our sailboat down wind from the pressure of wind against our boat and sails. It results in a course that is less than desirable.
Leeway Slips Your Boat Side Ways Down Wind
Airplanes suffer from the same issue. When flying in a cross wind, the plane crabs (slide slips) downwind. The course becomes different from the heading.
Not accounting for leeway will have you sailing (or flying) in a fairly unnoticeable arc to get to the mark. To represent an example with a mark to the north and a westerly crosswind, here’s what happens; you aim for the mark at 000, your boat slips sideways to the west. Now your mark is at 359 but you don’t really notice it. After a few minutes your mark is at 358 still in noticed. Minutes later your heading is 355 then 350 etc. All because you keep aiming at the mark but you’re being pushed to the east by the wind. Your course over ground becomes an arc and is the long way around.
The prudent sailor will account for the leeway and sail a constant heading depending on their known leeway of say 350 for the example above. The sideways slip motion will deliver them to the mark in a straight and shortest line.
Now that we’re in the electronic age, navigators will plug in the destination to the gps. The autopilot which is cross talking to the gps takes care of the rest. The gps analyses the cross track (the boat’s distance away from a straight line to the mark) and feeds back to the autopilot the proper heading to minimize this in real time. Thus resulting in a straight course to the mark.
I’m doubt that during the Wednesday/Friday night beer can race such electronic methods are utilized. So I’m suggesting that to take line honors and win the bottle of rum at your club race by taking account of leeway.
Leeway is particularly more prevalent when you are sailing on a close haul or close reach and can be as much as 20 degrees depending on the wind conditions, water conditions, your sailboat design, your apparent angle with the wind and how your sails are set.
However, other than buying a new boat, the only thing that you have control over is the trim of your boat and sails.
Here’s a couple of general rules to follow:
- Over sheeted sails cause more sideways force and thus sideways slip (leeway). Fly the telltales diligently.
- Aim for a position to windward of the mark you’re trying to go around. The more you are sailing on an upwind course, the more the degrees upwind you should aim.
- The higher the wind speed, the higher above the mark you should aim.
- In general, on a close haul, allow 10-15 degrees. Adjust this less if the wind is light, more if the wind is strong. Reduce this amount linearly as you bare away from the wind.
When doing serious navigation we absolutely must account for leeway and an excellent understanding of how your boat performs leeway wise is essential and how to solve for it once you know it. NauticEd developed an educational navigation video solving a leeway and current exercise at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LQcFOGSJQs
Using a gps and a nice steady windy day, you can do a simple determination of your sailboat’s typical leeway.
(1) Begin sailing on an angle slightly off a close haul direction and with a recognizable land marker dead ahead.
(2) Measure your speed
(3) Douse the sails and begin motoring at the same speed in exactly the same direction.
(4) Take note of your gps course.
(5) Deploy the sails and turn off the engine.
(6) Continue to aim for the same point on land.
(7) Now read out your gps course.
(8) The difference in course angles will be your leeway
(9) Repeat for different points of sail
(10) Repeat for the opposite tack.
(11) Repeat on different days with different wind strengths
Note that:
(a) this method is relatively immune from current because you have normalized it out by performing the motoring task.
(b) this method will not account for the leeway due to the hull of your boat presented to the wind.
We hope you enjoy your bottle of Rum!
Posted by admin on June 16, 2010 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper, weather |
During the Americas’ Cup campaign in New Zealand in 2003, I saw one of the best explanations of this on a TV interview with the Greg Butterworth, the Tactician for the Alingi Team.
Most of us sort of understand the concept and we’ve been left with the answer of “Well – weather helm is better because it’s safer.” But few explanations go into how it gives your boat a sailing advantage.
The definition of weather helm and lee helm is simple and it is easy to remember which is which. If you have a tiller, weather helm is when you have to pull the tiller to weather (toward the wind) in order to keep the boat going in a straight line. Lee helm is when you push the tiller to lee (downwind) in order to keep the boat going in a straight line. We’ve probably all felt this slight pressure required on the tiller when underway.
Your boat can be tuned to give weather helm or lee helm. Rake the mast forward and you move the center of effort of the wind forward which causes your boat to want to turn downwind. Rake the mast back and you move the center of effort of the wind back causing your boat to want to go upwind to weather.
When your boat gets rounded up – you just experienced massive weather helm. No matter how much you pull the tiller to weather, you can’t stop the boat going to weather. Dumping the main sail moves the center of effort forward thus reducing the weather helm.
The basic perception of weather helm being safer comes from this effect: if you let go of the tiller, it will automatically go to center because of the water flowing over the rudder and because the rudder is pivoted at its leading edge. Now there is no rudder force to counter the desire of the boat to turn up wind to weather so the boat does exactly that. It turns to weather and rounds up slowing the boat down and reducing forces on the rig. Conversely, lee helm means that if you let the tiller go the boat will turn away from the wind, heel over more increase forces on the rig.
So from a safety point, weather helm is good. BUT there is another advantage that we’re not generally taught. Holding the tiller to weather means that there is a slight pressure on the rudder to windward. This actually MOVES THE BOAT TO WINDWARD as it slices through the water. And we all know what that means, race advantage!
The Weather Helm Advantage
The illustration shows how the water pressure from weather helm creates a sideways force on the rudder tending to push the boat to weather.
Now Greg Butterworth went on to explain that there are other cool things you can do. One is to put a little trailing edge swinging control surface on the keel.
The illustration below shows this effect too. For us pilots, this is much like a trim tab on a wing of a small airplane. The trim tab creates the ability to adjust the lift at that point on the aircraft and thus create a balance of forces. The issue to remember here is that you’d need to trim the tab the other way when you tack over.
A control surface on the keel
So there you have it. While we’ve all been understanding the lifting effects of the wind over the sail, the other fluid that we’ve ignored is the water under the boat and how we can gain lift from it too.
Next time you’re out sailing on a nice steady 10 knot breeze, come up on a close haul, trim the sails perfectly so that all your tell tails are flying smoothly. Then notice what pressure you’ve got on the helm. Note that if you’ve got a wheel, weather helm will be a tendency to apply downwind turning pressure on the wheel (which is the same as pulling a tiller upwind right?). Ideally you should have slight weather helm. If not, you should probably not jump right in and start raking your mast back. Talk to a mast tuning specialist in your area first.
Posted by Grant Headifen on June 8, 2010 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper |
Rounding up is caused by many factors. One is too much wind and force aloft which tends to heel the boat over. This reduces the amount of rudder in the water and thus the rudder’s effectiveness. Another factor in rounding up is the center of pressure of wind on the sails is too far aft which then pushes the aft of the boat downwind and thus the front of the boat up wind.
The NauticEd SailTrim clinic discusses this topic and so what we wanted to do was test it out for sure. So last weekend we took out a friend’s Beneteau 373 to test out an anti-round up theory. Read on to find out the results of our experiment.
First though, we must first understand wind shear. The phenomenon of wind shear is pretty easy. Wind moves faster at the top of the mast than is does at the water level because the stationary water slows the down the wind in close proximity.
Secondly, consider the concept of true wind vs apparent wind. Which is best understood by imagining driving your car in a cross wind with your hand out the window of the car. At stand still you would feel the wind coming from the side of the car. The faster you go, the more you feel the wind coming from the front of the car. But when a gust of wind comes (which is just an increase in true wind speed) then you would feel the wind shift back more to the side. When relating this to a sailboat, if your boat was standing still, the wind at the top of the mast would be the same apparent direction as at the cockpit level albeit, faster (from the wind shear phenomenon). However as your boat picks up in speed the apparent wind moves forward BUT because of wind shear it shifts forward less at the top of the mast. IE at the top of the mast the wind tends more to the direction of true wind direction because the true wind speed is higher. Thus at the top of the mast the true wind is more aft than apparent wind. Aft means it is coming from a direction further towards the back of the boat. Get it?
So – whether you get it or not. The fact is: at the top of the mast the wind is higher in speed and more aft than at the cockpit level.
Figure A and B show the boat speed, true wind and apparent wind vectors for cockpit level and top of the mast. Obviously in both cases, the boat speed vector must be the same. The true wind vector is obviously the same direction but due to wind shear it is longer (faster) at the top of the mast. This results then in the apparent wind direction being more aft. IE in this case from 135 deg to 125 deg.
Wind shear and apparent wind phenomenom
Thirdly, you should understand that if a sail is sheeted in to tight it creates more heel. This then is exactly what is happening at the top of the mast. Even though at the bottom of the sail you may have perfectly trimmed the sail, the top of the sail is sheeted in too tight against higher wind speed. No wonder you’re getting excessive heeling. And excessive heeling creates round ups.
This is now quite a revelation! It means that the top of the main needs to be “out” further than the bottom of the sail for it to operate efficiently. This is usually indicated by the top telltale. Often the leeward telltale will be stalling at the top of the sail. Especially in high wind because of the phenomena above.
The top of the mainsail needs to go further out so that the starboard telltale can fly smoothly
Thus the top of the mainsail needs to be let out further so that the leeward telltale can fly smoothly. This is commonly referred to as twisting the sail out at the top. Except people believe you are just spilling out (wasting) the wind at the top. Not quite so now, as you’ve just learned. Twisting out the top of the sail is letting the top of the sail fly according to the direction of wind it is feeling.
In the illustration, you can see the top telltale on the downwind side is fluttering. If you let out the main at the top, the wind can reattach to the sail on the leeward side and the telltale will fly smoothly reducing the force aloft.
Understanding all the above. How do we stop rounding up?
Option one: Obviously the first and safe option in higher winds is to reef the sail.
Option two: Let out the traveler which is what most people do when hit by a gust. Just so long as you realize what you’ve done is not twisted the top of the sail out – all you’ve done is let out the mainsail from top to bottom and thus depower the mainsail. This reduces the force aloft and thus the heel. It also moves the center of effort of wind on the sails forward which reduces tendency to round up. The trouble is that you spend all day fighting gusts with still quite a few involuntary round-ups.
Option three: Let out on the mainsheet. Here again you’ve depowered the entire mainsail to handle the gust. Still, it works.
Option four: Permanently reduce the force aloft by letting out further on the mainsail and tightening up on the traveler. The trick here is to bring the mainsail bottom back in again using the traveler. Yes, bring the traveler to windward up past the center point. Most sailors are reluctant to do this because they’ve been taught that it detaches the wind on the leeward side. But not when you’ve let out the mainsheet. In effect, by letting out on the mainsheet, you’ve allowed the boom to rise up and the leech of the sail to slacken. This creates the desired twist at the top and allows the top of the sail to fly according to its apparent direction. At the same time, the bottom of the sail can fly according to its apparent direction.
By trimming the traveler and mainsheet together you can manage the twist at the top of the sail as desired yet still keep power on the bottom of the mainsail. Keeping power on the bottom of the mainsail keeps your speed up which also increases the effectiveness of the rudder. Increasing the effectiveness of the rudder means it can hold more against any turning effect created by the shifting of center of pressure backwards. Wow – see how it is all connected.
What happened on our 15 knot gusty sailing day? Well, not one round up.
So to summarize, the sailing lesson here is when in higher winds bring the traveler up and sheet out the main. You’ll also need to release the boom vang a little. Letting the boom vang out allows the boom to rise which loosens the leech (trailing edge) of the sail and allows the top part to “twist out”.
This and many other finer sail trim concepts are discussed in NauticEd’s Sail Trim Clinic at http://www.nauticed.org/courses/view/sail-trim.
Posted by Grant Headifen on May 15, 2010 under About NauticEd, Bareboat Charter, Celestial Navigation, Coastal Navigation, Crew, Maneuvering Under Power, Rules of Right of Way, Sail Trim, Skipper, Storm Tactics, weather |
This is day 4 of 6 in your introduction to NauticEd
Today we’re discussing the list of courses and clinics that NauticEd offers for your education.
One of the first course we believe that all sailors should complete no mater what their experience level is the FREE NauticEd Rules of Right of Way Clinic.
If you’re an experienced sailor you’ll see the value in a quick refresher course.
If you’re new to sailing then you’ll learn some vital nautical rules.
In either case – this course is free and thus you’ll be able to see how taking a NauticEd clinic and the associated test will work. This is a graphical and fun 20 minute course.
Take the Rules of Right of Way Clinic now!
For your convenience, we’ve created a chart of recommended courses depending on your skill level.
Go to http://www.nauticed.org/recommended_sailing_lessons
Ranks and courses
In email #2 we discussed the ranks Skipper, Bareboat Charter Master and Captain
Gaining the Skipper Rank
The first lessons to begin your sailing certification is the Skipper course and the Maneuvering Under Power clinic.;
The SKIPPER SAILING COURSE is a beginner to intermediate sailing course. It is a prerequisite to any certification and covers the fundamentals that every one must know. The total time needed to complete this course will be about 20 hours. Cost $67.00
The MANEUVERING UNDER POWER CLINIC: This is our most popular course. An absolutely essential maneuvering and docking course that will save you thousands in dents, bumps and scratches at the marina. Want to dock your boat like a pro every time? Want to impress? Take the most popular NauticEd Sailing School Course now. Estimated time: 3 hours total. Cost: $39.
Gaining the Bareboat Charter Master Rank
BAREBOAT CHARTER CLINIC: Taking a sailing vacation? All hands on deck – this is the yacht charter sailing course for you and ALL of your crew. Make your charter sailing trip more enjoyable by getting ALL the bareboat charter tips you’ll need. Estimated time: 5 hours total. Cost: $39.
COASTAL NAVIGATION CLINIC: Learn to navigate your sailboat. If you plan on sailing away from your home base or are taking a sailing vacation, you need this course. NauticEd Sailing School makes navigating a sailboat – a breeze. Estimated time: 10 hours total. Cost: $39.
Gaining the Captain’s Rank
WEATHER CLINIC: If you’re a real sailor then you need to understand and read the weather. It’s as simple as that! Written by the professionals at Clear Point Weather, this is the best weather sailing course available. Estimated time: 7 hours total. Cost: $39.
SAIL TRIM CLINIC: Learn the true art and finesse of trimming the sails. When to adjust the fairleads, the traveler, the downhaul, the outhaul, the Cunningham, the boom vang. When leaning to sail properly, you should know what all these fine adjustments do. Estimated time: 4 hours total. Cost: $39.
STORM TACTICS CLINIC: Even when day sailing, a storm can be upon us in minutes. Are you prepared with the knowledge now? This storm tactics sailing course will teach the essentials to keep you and your crew alive. Estimated time: 4 hours total. Cost: $39.
SAFETY AT SEA CLINIC: This course is still under construction by Captain Ed Mapes. Captain Mapes has logged tens of thousands of miles on the sailboats around the world. He knows how to be safe and is passing on his hard learned information to you. Coming soon.
In addition to the above courses and clinics, we offer the following:
CATAMARAN SAILING CONFIDENCE CLINIC: Converting over to a catamaran or chartering a catamaran for the first/second time? Learn the essential differences between sailing a monohull and a catamaran. This clinic will give you the confidence. It includes an interactive experiential online game to practice maneuvering in a marina. Estimated time: 3 hours total. Cost: $39.
INTRODUCTORY CELESTIAL NAVIGATION CLINIC: If you’re in any way intrigued with Celestial Navigation, this is the best and simplest celestial sailing course available. You’ll be able to do an actual noon shot and determine your position. Estimated time: 5 hours total. Cost: $39.
QUALIFIED CREW MEMBER COURSE: Learn to sail and contribute as a crew member on a modern cruising sailboat. Learn the lines, sailing terminology, sail trim and rules of the road. Estimated time: 7 hours total. Cost: $37.50.
Tomorrow we’ll discuss practical sailing schools and how you can get a verified proficiency stamp added to your sailing certificate.
Until then – fair winds,
Grant Headifen
Educational Director
NauticEd
Posted by Grant Headifen on May 10, 2010 under Bareboat Charter, Coastal Navigation, Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper, Storm Tactics |
Some tips are long and some are short – This short one will save your life or one of your crew.
As you know – sailing downwind has the dangerous potential of the accidental gybe. This can be quite a common occurrence if you have an inexperienced crew at the helm or perhaps with a major wind shift when sailing close to an island and … well… with the added distractions of being on a sailing vacation, an accidental gybe is probably going to happen.
Please teach your crew to only walk to the front of the boat on the boom side of the boat when sailing down wind. In this manner, the boom is only traveling at a bruising 20 miles per hour when slamming across instead of the fatal 100 miles per hour when it reaches the other side.
Could be dangerous
It’s particularly important to emphasize this when heading out on a bareboat charter vacation where you’re often taking along some land lubbers. So, NauticEd has put together a quick briefing list for the crew prior to departure which includes tips like this.
Download the PDF at the bottom of the page at http://www.nauticed.org/courses/view/bareboat-charter
Posted by Grant Headifen on September 9, 2009 under About NauticEd, Bareboat Charter, Crew, Maneuvering Under Power, Sail Trim, Skipper |
Hot of the press today: We just launched the new Catamaran Sailing Confidence Clinic written by Nick Harvey of Lagoon Catamarans and Captain Grant Headifen.
If you want to learn to sail a large catamaran, this is the sailing course for you.
Here is an excerpt from the course.
>>>>>>>>>>>
…
And if there wasn’t enough advantages to sailing a catamaran here is another.
The mainsail traveler on a catamaran is significantly longer than on a cruising monohull. Thus you can take real advantage of this. The mainsail can now be adjusted in 2 different ways: using the traveler line or by adjusting the mainsheet.
When sailing closed hauled on a catamaran in heavier air, move the traveler up wind (on the opposite side of the sail) and let off on the main sheet. This will allow the boom to rise a little and “twist out” the top of the sail. Twisting the sail allows you to let some of the top part of the sail “deflate” in case of slightly stronger winds. In light air, make sure that the top of the mainsail is not “loosing air” meaning, keep the traveler close to the center and tighten the mainsheet pretty good to make sure the main cannot open up at the top.
As soon as the breeze kicks up, bring your traveler up a bit more and ease the mainsheet so that the boom does not come past center point.
Lagoon 420 with traveler pulled to windward
Once out sailing you’ll be able to dispel one of the biggest “myths” surrounding catamarans because modern cats actually do do point pretty well!!
The flatter the water, the better they will point and it’ll be possible to sail in the high 30’s degrees off the wind and if you cat has the genoa tracks up on the coach roof, you will have a nice tight sheeting angle allowing you to go upwind comfortably.
As soon as you bare away from the wind slightly, you will want to bring the mainsail traveler down to leeward and start easing the mainsail (similar to a monohull).
Catamaran sailing on a reach
The Catamaran Sailing Confidence clinic retails for $39 but for a limited time it is priced at $27. Please enjoy.
Posted by Grant Headifen on September 8, 2009 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper |
When learning to sail the main thing we’re excited about doing is getting the boat moving, but as we become more advanced, we really want to understand the different forces on the boat and maximize the efficiency. Proper understanding of sail trim can help us achieve that. This post is a good example of exactly that.
What a wonderful labor day sail we had here last weekend on Lake Travis. The lake is currently 38 ft low in one of Austin’s worst droughts since the 60’s. So the sail started out by me walking out to an island – yes walking, then catching up with some friends who had already sailed their boat over for an island (now peninsular) pig roast.
At about 7pm we hoisted sails and did great westerly down wind run to a point in the lake where it turns south. About 20 minutes after the turn south the wind picked up to 15 knots and put us on a really nice beat for a 2.5 hour sail back to the dock.
We were sailing a Beneteau 373. Traditionally, my friend has had issues with this boat rounding up in higher winds and so we put some of the sailing lessons from Captain Ed Mapes NauticEd Sail Trim Course to work for us.
Rounding up is caused by many factors. One is too much wind and force aloft which tends to heel the boat over. This reduces the amount of rudder in the water and thus the rudder’s effectiveness. Another factor in rounding up is the center of pressure of wind on the sails is too far aft which then pushes the aft of the boat downwind and thus the front of the boat up wind.
What we wanted to do this last weekend was to reduce the aloft pressure from the 15 knot wind.
We must first understand wind shear. The phenomenon of wind shear is pretty easy. Wind moves faster at the top of the mast than is does at the water level because the stationary water slows the wind down which in turn slows the wind down slightly above it etc.
Additionally, if your boat was standing still the wind at the top of the mast would be the same apparent direction as at the cockpit level. However as your boat picks up in speed the wind at the top appears to come from further aft. This is also easily understood by imagining driving your car in a cross wind with your hand out the window of the car. The faster you go, the more the apparent wind moves towards coming from the front. But when a gust of wind comes from the side then the apparent wind shifts back to the side. In a boat, since the wind at the top is faster than the wind at the bottom, as the boat picks up in speed then the top wind appears to come from further aft.
This is now quite a revelation! It means that the top of the main needs to be “out” further than the bottom of the sail for it to operate efficiently.
The top of the mainsail needs to go further out so that the starboard telltale can fly smoothly
In the illustration, you can see the top telltale on the downwind side is fluttering. If you let out the main at the top the wind can reattached to the sail on the down wind side and the telltale will fly smoothly.
The way that you can let out the top of the main is to let out the main sheet. However the consequence of this is that the bottom also goes out. To bring the bottom back in again, use the traveler by bringing it up to windward.
This can also be continued to “twist out” the sail in higher wind speeds at the top to de-power the top of the sail which thus reduces the force at the top and decreases heel angle of the boat. At this point you’re using mostly the bottom part of the main sail which has less heeling moment.
So the sailing lesson here is when in higher winds bring the traveler up and sheet out the main. You’ll also need to release the boom vang a little. If the boom vang is down tight, the effect of sheeting out the main will be reduced. Letting the boom vang out allows the boom to rise which loosens the leech (trailing edge) of the sail and allows the top part to “twist out”.
All in all, our 15 knot labor day sail in the night back to the dock was a successful learning event for the boat owner and confirmation that the NauticEd SailTrim course is very much worth the $39 investment.
Posted by Grant Headifen on August 17, 2009 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper |
That’s the last sound you want to hear when sailing. Now you have to pull the sail down, fold it up, carry it up the dock to the car (it’s heavy) wait for a week day to take into the sail maker, beg for them to fix it fast, pick it up on a week day and get it back up.
This weekend we noticed a rip in the mainsail 
It was right towards the top and actually not in a place were there is a lot of stress on the sail – unless …
A tear in the sail due to the spreader
With further observation, the rip was right in line with the top spreader. AHHA the culprit.
It’s due to one of two scenarios. Both are operator error.
(1) The rip was can be caused by some one who doesn’t know proper use of the roller furling system.
When rolling up the mainsail – you must be pointed into wind. With the furling system, it is sometimes tempting to roll the sail up when sailing downwind – however this drags the sail across the spreader bars and causes the sail to wear and tear at that point.
(2) When sailing down wind it’s ok to have the mainsail touching the spreaders but make sure the mainsail is not let out enough so that there is undue pressure of the sail against the spreader. This also causes wear and tear at that point.
So our mainsail is now at the sailmaker. Fortunately our sail maker Barlett sails in Austin Texas is a good one.
Remember the old saying of “a stitch in time saves 9″. This is certainly true when sailing so while you’re at the sail maker spend the few extra $ with them to give the sail a good going over. Ensure you have them the “expensive” UV protected thread, otherwise you’ll be back in a few years.
Posted by Grant Headifen on July 16, 2009 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper |
NED is an interactive online sailing instructor developed by NauticEd – The World’s Most Advanced Online Sailing School.
The educational sailing training tool uses interactive flash technology to show novice sailors how to set the sail trim according to the wind direction which maximizes the efficiency of the sails. The tool teaches in about 5 minutes that which sometimes takes hours on a sailboat. Sailing Instructors worldwide are adopting this tool as the standard for teaching basic sail trim.
To play with NED below – READ THIS FIRST.
There are 4 main controls:
Mainsail: Sheet-in and sheet-out (pull the main sail in or let it out)
Headsail: Sheet-in and sheet-out
Helm: Turn to port or starboard
Wind Speed: Click the red triangle to change the speed of the wind
IMPORTANT: The center dial represents a true wind meter on a sailboat. All windmeters have the boat pointing straight up because you are standing behind the wind meter when on a boat. On NED however, there is one slight difference to simulate the boat turning when you depress the helm button. The boat will turn but will flick back up to its proper position when the helm button is released. You will notice then that the wind direction and the HDG (compass heading) has appropriately changed according to how much you turned the sailboat.
As you turn you’ll notice that the speed of the boat changes as with the efficiency slider bar across the bottom. the trick is to maximize the speed and efficiency for the wind direction.
Go ahead and try it out. Here are some exercises – each time set the sails to maximize the sailboat speed.
- Turn the boat to 120 degrees off the wind on Starboard (wind from the right hand side of the boat). Notice the screen will announce the point of sail “Broad Reach”
- Turn the boat to 90 degrees off the wind on starboard (”Beam reach”)
- Now change the wind speed to 20 knots and notice the change in boat speed.
- Tack the boat through the wind to 30 degrees on port (”Close Haul”)
- Turn the boat to 80 degrees onport
- Now go to 180 degrees (wind directly behind)
- You’ll see the sails gybe over when you go to about 170 degrees.
Play with NED as much as you like until you really feel you have the hang of the sail set. You’ll discover that this is almost exactly what you’ll need to be doing when out sailing. See below for a few tips about sailing with a windmeter. Once you’ve mastered NED – you can play with the Advanced sailing Instructor version on the NauticEd Online Sailing School website.
Windmeters are great because you don’t have to keep looking at the top of the mast (and around the bimini) to find the exact direction of the wind. Therefore learning to sail with a windmeter is a necessary skill. When sailing with a windmeter here is a sailing tip which we cover in the NauticEd Skipper Course.
One issue that appears most often with new sailors is focusing too much attention on the electronic wind meter or the wind direction indicator (the pointy arrow thing at the top of the mast). Imagine driving down the highway looking at your speedometer for more than 10 seconds. You would surely have an accident. Now relate this to looking at your wind instruments. As with a speedometer in a car, you only need to look at them for long enough to gain the information it is telling you (IE check wind instruments for about 1 second every 10 seconds). The rest of the time your eyes should be up out of the boat and looking at your surroundings and the horizon taking note of which tree, house, cloud, island etc that you are sailing towards to hold a straight course. You make your course corrections when looking out of the boat then you check the wind instruments to see if you’re back on the desired wind angle. If not then lift your head out of the boat again and make a new course correction. In this manner you can judge exactly how much your boat is turning.
If you make course corrections while looking at the wind instruments you will tend to over shoot every time. So the Sailing Technique is to keep your head out of the boat and check the windmeter in short glaces. Think about trying to drive down a highway using a compass only and stay in a straight line or make a 90 degree turn using a compass. Not really possible or practical yet the tendency to do this when sailing is high. Rid your self of any such habit from day 1.
People ask “well what if you’re on the open ocean and there are no objects to point at”. Don’t worry – by the time you get to the open ocean you’ll have the “FEEL”.
This discussion is equally similar when you give the helm over to a novice. The best thing to do to a novice is to start them out by having them aim at something so that they can get used to sailing in a straight line using small 1/4 turn max corrections on the wheel. Trying to explain to someone who has never taken the wheel about the wind indicators is pretty pointless.
As you’re becoming more confident in your sailing abilities you can test your self out on a clear steady wind day by looking at the wake you’re leaving and ensuring it is in a straight line. This will tell you if you’re tending to slightly over steer and keeping focused on the job at hand.
The previous discussion was taken from the NauticEd Skipper Course.
