Join Your Local Yacht Club

Posted by admin on January 8, 2012 under Bareboat Charter, Crew, Rules of Right of Way, Sail Trim, Skipper | Comments are off for this article

This is the 2012 New Years Resolution Sailing Tip

This issue’s sailing tip is a pretty simple one. It will lead to you having more valuable practical sailing experience than you’d ever imagine. And it fits nicely in with any new years resolutions you might be considering.

When I lived in Austin Texas, I raced a lot with the local sailing club there on Lake Travis, an inland small lake. And I have to admit that much of my finer technical sailing knowledge came from those many regatta races.

When a sailboat racing next to you is inching ahead moment by moment you learn quickly the importance of accurate sail trim. And talk about drilling the rules of the nautical road – wow when you’re on collision course with dozens of yachts you’ve got to know the rules.

Here’s the tip: Join a local yacht club this year.

At NauticEd we REALLY believe that practical sailing experience is one of the keys to becoming an excellent sailor (of course we’re making a big assumption that you don’t have a goal to be a crappy sailor).

A bit of History: When we designed the NauticEd sailing certifications, we consulted with dozens of sailing instructors and many of the world’s largest charter companies. With out any hesitation, they all rated practical sailing experience as a must have to becoming a competent sailor (durh). When we looked at every other global sailing certification, none required practical sailing experience as a prerequisite to gaining the certification. That’s a bit strange we thought because in this digital age, it’s easy to write an algorithm that can combine theory knowledge and practical experience (well not that easy but you get the point).

Then we looked at the scuba diving industry and the scuba certifications. We found that the theory education was excellent but practically – if you can barely swim, you’ll still end up with a certification. Still strange! The scuba magazine editorials are full of complaints about new divers banging into the protected reefs because they can’t do the most basic buoyancy control.

When it comes down to it I guess, most certifying companies are more interested in the $ than the true competency of the student. Thus we decided to set the competency bar high so that the charter companies could truly trust a experience and theory based certification.

So here’s the big “but” that people ask us all the time then.

“But … how do I get sailing experience when I don’t own a boat”.

Well… in virtually every city with a sailing waterway there is a yacht club.

• Joining a yacht club is pretty simple and relatively inexpensive for the return you’ll get. Costs range from $40 to $80 per month. And if you own a boat, many times the marina fees are less expensive than a regular marina.
• Some clubs are very racing focused some are not. I’ll maintain however that even if you’re not a racing type person, racing experience will improve your cruising sailing skills vastly. Racing is like learning a language by immersion.
• Yacht clubs are highly social and so you’re going to meet a lot of very cool and interesting people who will become your friends. Throw away the preconceived notions of the stereotype snooty stuffy yacht club and just join one and find out for yourself.
• Yacht clubs many times have a nice pool for the kids to hang out in and they will get to hang out with other yachting type kids. A vast improvement from learning life skills at the mall.
• Yacht clubs organize weekend sailing trips away. These are usually very fun flotilla events. Here you can learn a lot of overnighting and anchoring skills.
• Occasionally yacht clubs will also organize a bareboat charter sailing holiday to places like the Caribbean, Mediterranean or the pacific islands. This is a great opportunity to join in on the safety of a flotilla.

Some people think that if you don’t own a boat, then what’s the point of joining a yacht club. However, if you don’t own a boat, then you should definitely join a yacht club. Here’s a big fact. Virtually all boat owners are desperate for crew for either racing or cruising events. This is proven by the dozens of post-its on the yacht club notice board from skippers looking for crew.

Typical Yacht Club Notice Board

So – this year, join your local yacht club. Put your name up on the notice board that you’re willing to crew. Commit to some regatta race series. Do some boat jumping to find the boat/crew/skipper that you like. Make some friends. Get lots of sailing experience and most importantly, fill out your free NauticEd electronic sailing logbook. As with above, your logbook is the single most important thing that the charter companies look at when you are trying to charter a boat.

And one more comment – years ago when I ran a large yachting membership program, the biggest reason that people dropped out was that they did not have friends to go sailing with them. A mistake that I made was that we should have promoted our boat owning members to also join a yacht club. There, they would have found plenty of new friends to go sailing with, from the exact same notice board mentioned above. If you own a boat – join your local yacht club this year.

Happy Sailing Experience!

When to reef a sailboat

Posted by admin on December 7, 2011 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper, Storm Tactics | Comments are off for this article

While all sailboat designs are different and will sail optimally at different heel angles and reef points, there are a few generalities that we’ll cover in this sailing blog.

General reefing point number 1 through infinity: Don’t scare the beegeebees out of those on board by heeling the boat over too much. While you may be singing and enjoying yourself, others may be frozen solid.

One time sailing off Corsica (lovely sailing destination btw) we encountered a 40 knot Mistral breeze. We were sailing a Beneteau 50 and what a delight it was. The waves were about 8 feet and consistently washing over the deck. It was a beautiful day and we all had a blast – EXCEPT one person on board who had not been sailing much before. When we reached the marina in Bonifacio he jumped off the sailboat and lay flat on the dock kissing the dock boards. I learned that he had been so terrified that he could not speak and was looking between each wave where to jump clear of the boat it in case we went over. Lesson learned for me! That’s not a good thing to do to your guests and not a good way to keep the sport of sailing growing.

Funny as it is (sort of), now I make sure that everyone new on the boat knows to look first into my face when they start to get scared. I tell them that if I’m smiling then it’s all ok and that they are only allowed to get scarred if they see worry and fear on my face. Now the thing to do is to not show fear through facial expressions or through my voice. This keeps the crew thinking straight and following instructions instead of worrying about jumping clear of the boat.

Ok back on topic to heel angle and reefing. We’ll cover non-spinnaker/genaker operations here because broaching (getting knocked down) with those sails is a different topic.

Certainly in light winds, some heel angle will ensure your sails have some airfoil shape to them so position your crew to leeward to create at least about 5 degrees of heel angle. As the winds pick up you can begin to move your self moving ballast (crew) to the windward side to balance the wind force aloft in the sails.

In general, for most cruising sailboats, once you reach about 25 degrees or so the sailboat hull design and sail rig design will begin to reduce the ability of the boat to increase in speed in an efficient manner. OK wow that’s a very general statement but it’s a statement that will allow you to watch, learn and experiment with your own particular boat.

A weighed keelboat typically is not in danger of capsizing for three main reasons:

1. As the boat heels over the distance aloft to the center of pressure of the wind is lowered and thus the heeling moment is reduced. As an example, lets say the boat leaned all the way over. This heeling moment then is reduced to zero. So theoretically the wind can’t heel you all the way over anyway.
2. As the boat heels over the vertical area of the sails presented to the wind is reduced which reduces the actual heeling force.
3. As the boat heels over the weighted keel is lifted to windward thus creating a righting moment. The more the keel is lifted to windward the more the righting moment.

Heeling Moment vs Righting Moment

From above then, the more the boat heels over, the less the “heeling” moment from the sails and the more the “righting” moment from the keel. Or again in very not tech speak: in a full laydown situation there is no more tipping over force left and only straightening up force remaining. It might not feel like that when your hanging onto the rails for dear life but it’s pretty much the reality of the nature of forces and moments.

What is “moment”? Moment is the ability to use a screw driver to open a paint can. Imagine a very stubborn paint can and a very short screw driver. Now use a longer screw driver you can imagine the force needed becomes much less. That’s moment. It’s not the force that opens the can but the moment. Moment is mathematically force x distance. In the same manner it’s not the force that heels the sailboat over it’s the height of the wind times the force of the wind.

Wind force on sails

Mathematically, when you apply wind pressure to a triangle (sail) the center of force can be equated to be at the position of 1/3^rd of the way up the triangle/sail.

Here’s a few more equations. Lets assume a right angle triangle.

• Force = pressure x sail area presented vertically to the wind = pressure x foot length x sail height x (cosine (heel angle))/2
• Pressure = ½ (density of air) x (wind velocity)Squared
• Height of force above the sail foot = 1/3 rig height * cosine (heel angle)
• Moment = force x height

Or to wrap it up into easy terms:

Moment is proportional to the following:

• wind velocity squared
• the cosine of the heel angle squared
• the rig height
• the foot length.

In practical terms if the heel angle is 30 degrees the heeling moment is reduced to 75% or if the heel angle is 90 degrees (laying down flat) the heeling moment is zero zip nada.

Also note that in the above, if you go from 5 knots to 20 knots the heeling moment goes up 16 times. In most sailboats you should be looking at reefing anywhere from 12-15 knots. The other thought process to use is when you are starting to think about reefing, you probably should have reefed ½ an hour ago.

What effectively is reefing the sails doing? Well, it’s just reducing the sail area and the height of the position that the wind force acts upon the sails. As an example if the sail was reefed down 15% of its height the area is reduced by 0.85 squared = to 72% of it’s original but the heeling moment is reduced even further because the center of pressure on the sail is lowered . IE reefing has a cubic effect on reducing the heeling moment. Wow that’s pretty enlightening.

Another consideration regarding reefing and heeling is that the more you heel over the less effective is the rudder because you’ve reduced the vertical presentation of the rudder to the horizontally flowing water. IE at a 45 degree heel, you’ve lost 30% of your rudder area which gives you less ability to handle the weather helm from a gust. This can put you into a dangerous rounding up position. And believe me rounding up can be VERY dangerous. One time when sailing along I saw two things about to happen – a gust was on its way across the water towards us and a boat was heading towards us to pass to windward. A rounding up in this gust would drive us right into the oncoming boat. I reached over and let out the mainsheet. This twisted out the top of the sail and effectively lowered the heeling moment but keeping the bottom of the sail powered. The gust passed with out a round up. Just think what if I’d been below and a rookie was helming the boat? No, don’t think!

A sailboat Captain friend of mine who would sail regularly from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean on a 150 fter would always say, if you’re thinking about reefing, you should have yesterday. If you’re thinking about shaking out the reef, wait until tomorrow.

Heeling Over

So when should you reef?

1. So as you’re not scaring the crew
2. At about 25 degrees of heel angle
3. At about 12-15 knots of breeze

If you enjoyed this sailing article blog, consider taking the NauticEd Skipper and Sail Trim sailing courses. NauticEd also provides a free sailing course describing the basics of sail trim.

This article was written by Grant Headifen, Director of Education for NauticEd Online Sailing School. NauticEd provides basic to advanced multimedia online sailing courses and a globally accepted sailing certification by most all yacht charter companies.

Twist in the mainsail

Posted by admin on September 14, 2011 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper, Storm Tactics | Comments are off for this article

Here is a question from a student regarding letting out the main traveller in a gust.

I referred them to this post

http://www.nauticed.org/blog/sailtrim/stopping-rounding-up-dead-in-it’s-tracks/

which talks about moving the traveller upwind and letting out onthe mainsheet to increase twist at the top of the sail and thus reducing the forces aloft.

>>>>>>>>

Greetings from Northern Michigan and the Great Lakes-
I have enrolled in your Catamaran Sailing Confidence Course in preparation for my first bareboat charter in the BVI’s on a 47ft Cat. In the section on sailing you state:
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.

I am a crew on a 26ft monohull that races and when trying to go upwind we move the traveler to a windward position and try to keep the boom centered with the mainsheet (we also tension the outhaul and backstay). During heavy or gusty winds when weather helm and heel require us to depower the sails we will move the traveler down to center or leeward (rather than simply letting out the mainsheet and having the main luff) and this serves to “spill some air” and depower the mainsail. It certainly has worked to decrease the heel of the boat. This would be followed by reefing as winds increase.

So I have learned that in a close haul to move the traveler down to depower, but your statement is to move it upwind and I am therefore confused. What am I missing?

Thanks for your wisdom-

Josh

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Heaving To in a Sailboat is a Practiced Skill

Posted by admin on August 8, 2011 under Bareboat Charter, Coastal Navigation, Crew, Rules of Right of Way, Sail Trim, Skipper | Comments are off for this article

How to Heave To
The books simply say to tack the boat and leave the head sail cleated to windward and turn the wheel all the way to windward (tiller to lee). While that’s correct, there are a lot more things to think about to pull it off correctly. This article is part of the training in the Skipper Sailing Course and is written by Grant Headifen, the Educational Director.

There are a few reasons you might want to heave to.

1. Lunch, simply taking a rest, or instructor debriefing
2. Storm Tactics and Reefing
3. Man over board recovery
4. Boarding by another vessel (ie, crew change during a race, or law enforcement safety inspection)

A Cool Trick about Heaving to!

The first thing to think about is (if you can) lie in a heave-to position so that your boom is on the port side. Why? So that you’re technically sailing “on starboard tack”, putting you in a more advantageous stand-on position with regard to the Navigation Rules vis-a-vis other sailboats “on port” tack. Wouldn’t want to disturb our lunch now would we? It’s not a big deal but just something most people may not have thought about.

What is Heaving To?

When you are successfully hove-to, your sailboat will be in a stable situation with the mainsail and headsail still up. Your forward speed will be minimal and you’ll be sliding downwind slightly. This makes it an ideal strategy for the situations above. Essentially you’re under full sail but nearly stopped! Cool eh?

How Heaving to works

The mechanics of the heave-to situation is that the forward speed of the boat has dropped to a minimum because the head sail is back winded (aback) and the main sail has been eased out far enough to reduce nearly all of the forward driving lift on the sail. The backwinded head sail creates a large turning moment on the boat to turn it downwind. As the boat turns downwind however the boat tends to pick up a little speed. As the boat picks up a little speed, the windward locked wheel causes the rudder to turn the boat back upwind, killing off the speed. It creates a little see-saw action. You can adjust the see-saw action by adjusting the set of the headsail, the mainsail, and the rudder angle. Each boat will see-saw a little differently in differing wind conditions and due to the distances of the rudder and the headsail center of pressure positions around the hydrodynamic pivot point of the vessel. Once the boat is settled, by making small adjustments to the angle of the rudder, the amount the mainsail is eased, and by the “depth” or flatness of the headsail, a skilled operator can make very useful adjustments to the exact way in which the boat is lying to the wind and seas. Practice practice practice! When that storm comes, you’ll be glad.

How to Heave To

Once you’ve got it down, you’ll enjoy having this little skill under your belt but you’ve got to practice it a few times. To enter into a hove-to position, if practical, start out on a on a port tack with the headsail sheeted in tight. Tack the boat slowly onto a starboard tack (bleeding off some speed while head-to-wind) but leave the headsail cleated (ie don’t tack the headsail).  Turn the boat so that you’re on a close reach (60 degrees off the wind) and let out the mainsail most of the way out so that it is luffing. Now wait until the rest of the boat’s headway speed bleeds off. That’s the key part. If you turn the rudder to windward (the wheel to windward or the tiller to leeward) before the speed bleeds off, the momentum of the boat may carry it through another tack. Once the speed has bled off, turn the rudder all the way to windward (wheel to windward or tiller to leeward) and lock it in that position (lashing the tiller).

Heaving to in a Storm

It’s really important to realize that this is a completely wise thing to do in a storm. With a huge caveat, make sure you have plenty of sea-room distance to leeward on the track of your hove-to reckoning, avoiding shoals, or the other hard stuff (like land!). Heaving-to in a storm gives you and your crew a rest from the elements. And it can be a safer means of riding out a storm rather than trying to sail it out.  The boat is in a completely stable position. You should probably lower or deeply reef the main or raise a storm trisail (very small mainsail) as well as a small headsail to reduce loads on the rig. Here’s the kicker that is really cool – since the boat will be slipping sideways, a wake is left to windward. Any breaking waves hit this “slick” and flatten out, thus reducing the wave action on your vessel. Now that’s really cool.

Heaving To in a Sailboat in a Storm

Using Heaving to in a Man Overboard Situation

Heaving to can be a very effective crew over-board recovery technique. The very moment the victim goes over the side you can crash tack the boat and go into a heave-to position. You must be sure that the victim is able to swim, that they did not sustain injury whist falling. It’s your call on this one but it’s a technique not often taught and so isn’t considered in the panic but, it will keep you from getting too far away from your friend in the water which is clearly the biggest danger. Me? I’d still get the engines on. On that topic, the biggest danger they say from turning on the engines is not chopping your friend up, you’re smart enough not to do that, it’s from getting a line wrapped around the prop in all the panic. So just make that’s part of your “engines-on” routine in crew over-board practice. Next time you’re out practice man (or woman) over board.

There you have it, you’re now a heave to expert. NOT! You haven’t practiced it enough yet! And while you’re out there practicing it, have fun. Or should it be the other way around???

Start with the NauticEd Skipper Sailing Course now!

How to Sail with a Jockey Pole

Posted by admin on June 22, 2011 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper | Be the First to Comment

Last weekend we were out racing and one of the legs was very similar to a race we’d done a few weeks back with the same wind condition. On that previous race we’d lost huge ground over the other boats solely because the sail configuration and hull design etc on this boat doesn’t allow the boat to do too well on a beam/broad reach. So this time we elected to keep up the spinnaker and try to use it much like a gennaker. This meant leading the spinaker pole all the way forward so that it was almost touching the forestay.

A couple of situations arise when you lead the pole this far forward. One, the guy (spinnaker sheet on the windward side) tends to tension up around the stantions and secondly there is very little ability to pull the pole back when needed because the guy is almost aligned with the spinaker pole. Applying too much force to bring the pole back could easily bend and snap the spinnaker pole.

The solution is a jockey pole. The Jockey Pole pushes out the guy keeping it away from the stantions and it also provides a more outward angle to pull on when you want to bring the pole back.

Sailing With a Jockey Pole

Here’s the photo with Rangitoto Island in the background.Any guesses on which country we were racing in?

The Jockey Pole Keeps the Guy Away From the Stantions

The next mark was more of a run and so we were able to winch the pole back with out a problem. Had the jockey Pole not been in place it would have been more difficult. You can see from the schematic that the force to bring the pole back is more outboard than it would have been if the jockey pole was not in place. The more outward force provides more turning moment to the pole allowing it to come back.

Moving the Spinnaker Pole Back

Once the run was established with the pole in its more aft position, we removed the Jockey Pole. All in all it was a good day sailing with the Jockey Pole and although we didn’t win the race, keeping the spinnaker up gave us a big advantage on that leg.

NauticEd sailing courses are jam packed with tips like this. See which sailing course fits your personal sailing objectives by taking the NauticEd recommended courses questionnaire. It’s fun and takes about 30 seconds.

Yacht Club Intelligence: NauticEd Sailing School Press Release

Posted by admin on May 15, 2011 under Bareboat Charter, Celestial Navigation, Coastal Navigation, Crew, Maneuvering Under Power, Rules of Right of Way, Sail Trim, Skipper, Storm Tactics, weather | Be the First to Comment

Imagine if you could just hang out at the yacht club every day – how much you’d learn from everyone. That’d be cool. Well … now you can!

It’s a very cool piece of technology we just installed on the NauticEd site. It’s called DisQus and the concept is based on crowd intelligence. It shows how the power of the Internet can beat out a boring ol’ book. Thousands of websites have already introduced it and it’s ideally suited for you and NauticEd.

On every page through out all of the NauticEd sailing courses you can now discuss (Disqus) the topic at hand and read what others are saying about the topic.  For example, lets say you know a few things about docking using spring lines but are a bit confused about backing into a slip. Right in the course you can add your springing off knowledge and ask all other students their opinions on reversing. When any one comments and adds to those comments you’ll be sent an email (if you want). You can add pictures and diagrams if you want. Our part is to use the crowd intelligence to improve our sailing course material for everyone.

You can even invite facebook friends to join in on the conversation and help out.

Crowd-Intelligence with DisQus and NauticEd Sailing School

How cool is this? Now you’re tapping into the knowledge of thousands of other NauticEd students – wow that’s a big yacht club with a lot of combined experience. You’re not on your own any more. It’s not just us and our authors pontificating about sailing – it’s a real open discussion and conversation in real time.

But like any party or social – you can’t just stuff your mouth with cake and listen – you’ve got to add your two cents. And you can’t be rude because people are watching and the bouncers will bounce you out. So come on join in – ask questions and post your knowledge.

To kick off, I’ve gone in and asked a few questions and posted a few comments in each course topic. I invite you to join me and start new conversations. Like who gives way – the paddle board or the sailboat? Do you know the answer?

Login and give us your opinion to the Rules of the Nautical Road topic embedded in our Rules course.

Do YOUR Job

Posted by admin on May 14, 2011 under Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper | Be the First to Comment

Yesterday we were out racing in our local sailing regatta. At the end of any regatta race we always have a debriefing on what we could have done better. Turns out this one works especially well in our work lives as well and so that was the topic of conversation over a few beers afterward.

We were approaching a downwind mark and setting up the strategy for a reach to the next mark. Unfortunately we were not leading the pack but at least we could see what every one else was doing. They were all dowsing their spinakers and reaching with their genoas for the outer mark. One lone boat however kept up their spinaker but things were starting to get busy as we closed in on the mark and so we didn’t see him. (Turns out the skipper on that boat was the 80 yr old father of the famous Chris Dickson – one of New Zealand’s top sailors having skippered in 5 America’s cup challenges).

So up went the genoa, down came the spinaker and round the mark we went. Once around the mark we just couldn’t keep up speed with the pack. And as we were seeing, the wind had shifted a little so that keeping up the spinaker for the reach would have been advantageous. The order came to get the spinaker back up.

Thus starts the lesson:

Getting the spinaker back up again immediately after a take down is out of the ordinary. It was quickly packed in the launch bag and passed upstairs and set into place on the bow pulpit. The spinaker sheets were quickly re run. The pole was clipped into the port guy and raised with the topping lift to clip onto the mast. The halyard was bought forward to be clipped onto the head of the spinaker (top grommet of the spinaker). BUT the spinaker head was no where to be found. Luke, who was working the foredeck was yelling back to the spinaker packer that he couldn’t find the spinaker head. All eyes fell on Luke as he frantically dug through the launch bag to find the top of the sail.

Now if if you’ve ever worked with a spinaker, you’ll know that it must be packed perfectly like a parachute in order for it to launch properly. Each edge of the chute must be “chased” from one point to the next as it is packed. The clew, tack and head must all be positioned in the launch bag properly. It not the results can be disastrous.

As eyes  stayed on Luke hoping and willing him to find the spinaker head, focus was lost. The helms person was watching Luke, The mainsail trimmer was watching Luke. The headsail trimmer was watching Luke. Everyone was wanting to help Luke.

It was the skipper who pulled it all back together and called an end to the kafloffle that was going on. Spinaker efforts were abandoned and focus was back to everyone doing their jobs. By that time we’d lost incredibly valuable distance to the main part of the pack.

In reality, it only required one person to sort out the mess and the rest to just keep doing their jobs – trim and steer trim and steer. On a sailboat – you’re job is to race the race doing YOUR job. As a skipper your job is to keep everyone focused on their jobs and keep the big picture in play. Getting the spinaker up was not the big picture. Making the boat go fast was the big picture.

How can we make our business’s go fast?  What’s the big picture of your job? I know this – for a sail trimmer – the big picture is to keep all the tell tales flying – that’s it. And it’s not an insignificant task!

I recently experienced this myself again in the Rolex Regatta in St. Thomas last March. NauticEd and its adventure Partner Safe Passage sailing chartered an 80 ft Maxi race sailboat to compete in the series. For much of the race series I was working the mainsail. A dozen other NauticEd students joined us. The boat was awesome, huge, and the biggest I’d raced on. I found it incredibly hard to focus on my job. There was only one thing I could do when all hell was breaking lose at the bow of the boat. That job was to sail the mainsail.

At the start of one race, we had a 90 ft boat right next to us forcing us up to the start line. The job was to sail the mainsail not look at the paint job on the multimillion dollar boat 10 feet away and fear a crash. Just sail the mainsail!

NauticEd Students Racing in the Rolex Regatta

One more example which we talk about in our bareboat charter course. We were coming out of North Sound on Virgin Gorda in the BVI’s. Another catamaran had already exited and had turned back towards Virgin Gorda to head to wind to get the main sail up. As you may know, getting the mainsail up on a big cat is not an easy job and it was taking some time. All eyes were on the sail going up. No eyes were on Prickly Pear reef towards which the Catamaran was immanently going to hit. Had it not been for our horn blast and pointing, they surely would have grounded on a breaking nasty reef.

In this case the helms persons job was to keep the boat into wind and watch out for traffic.

So many analogies can be made between sailing and the corp world. What I’ve found is that through out a race (which takes about 2 hours) almost all the same issues come up in a 10 month project. You can see a very subtle secondary analogy in the example above. The 80 year veteran kept up his spinaker whist every one was taking theirs down. We had the advantage of observing that – but we didn’t because ”things were getting too busy”. Hmmm, how’s that for a lesson in watching the competitive field.

It would be of incredible value if we could take our project team and run them through a sailboat race first before we start a project. Quick side note:  I’ve got 32 different exercises to be done on a sailboat depending on the required developmental strengths that a team needs. If anyone needs a experiential training program for their team let me know.

Regardless – next time you’re leading a team in a race regatta – make sure your team keeps focus on their own personal job.

How to win in sailing regatta

Posted by Grant Headifen on February 24, 2011 under About NauticEd, Crew, Rules of Right of Way, Sail Trim, Skipper | Be the First to Comment

I’ve got one basic comment for the title of this post.

“You have to be good – real good – no no I mean really really good”

They say if you loose a race it was bad luck but if you win it was pure skill. When you win a sailboat race, one thing is for sure, even if you got lucky, you’re a good sailor and not only a good sailor but a good racer. There is a big difference between the two. I consider myself a pretty darn good sailor but … a good racer? Well.. not so much when I compare myself against those that race every week.

Last Wednesday we raced in a local regatta. I was rail meat (or self moving ballast – which means the guy who hangs his weight out to balance the boat). About 50 boats were involved. Our fleet of Young 8.8 meter sailboats was about 10 strong. Wind was about 12- 15 knots. And just to prove the point from above, the skipper is an old college friend of mine and an accomplished racer, yet we didn’t win. I would have to say that no bad decisions were made. We raced an almost picture perfect race, yet came in about 5th. Spinnaker launches and retrievals were perfect and done in a timely manner at the correct places. We even rounded the bottom mark in third place and came out of the mark in first place.

One failing we probably did have was not enough rail meat. The boat was healing slightly more than the other Young 8.8′s who had more crew on the rail.

Just one other thing I noticed was that on the two upwind legs back up to the finish line, the skipper/helmsman was needing to call to the mainsheet trimmer to trim-in & sheet-out, this causes a second or so lag each time. Multiply this over 200-300 trim changes throughout a race and you can loose significant ground.

The main sheet trimmer has to be really good when it comes to a close hauled boat riding on the edge of being over powered. There is a fine and skilled balance of perfect trimming of the traveller and the sheet. You’ve got to know instantly which one to trim. Main sheet out to spill wind out of the top – main sheet in to power back up. Traveller down (out) do depower from a gust – traveler up to recover once the gust passes. And they all have to be done in unison. Additionally the trimming can’t be reactive – it has to be slightly preemptive to keep the boat going fast.

This is the stuff you can’t become proficient at through online lessons or even just a few practical lessons on the water. There is only one way and that is to get out there and just do it. We highly recommend joining a yacht club and putting a notice on the board that you’re available to race. Guaranteed you’ll get a call. Skippers are always looking for reliable people to show up with out fail. Start out as rail meat then you can move up to trimming.

However, saying that, you’ve got to learn the principles. At NauticEd, we teach the theory so that you understand what is happening and why you might sheet in / sheet out / traveller up / traveller down.

Shortly – NauticEd will launch a FREE Introduction to Basic Sail Trim lesson. We’re going to use some REALLY high tech interactive flash demonstrations so that you’ll really GET the picture. Once you’ve completed that you’ll be really jonesing to get your head around our full Sail Trim Course.

Additionally, this year we’re going to launch a Regatta Race Tactics clinic – we’re interviewing authors now. So stay tuned.

To complete the story from above – wow, what a fun race. At the bottom mark, we were inches from another boat. They we all yelling at us but we had overlap and rights – they needed a few lessons in race rules of right of way. Hee hee! At the last mark before the finish line, we were on a starboard tack going for the mark – another boat in our fleet was approaching on port. We hailed starboard to establish rights ( we were outside the three boat lengths from the mark). They had to come up on the wind  a little. Had we kept going, they would have had to tack over and we easily by the rules could have forced them to do that and make them loose a lot of time. However, there were other boats ahead of us in the course and so the prudent tactic was to tack on the layline to the mark and go for the finish. Because of the other boat’s momentum they were on top of us and beginning to pass as we picked up speed. Dave our skipper concentrated on making our boat go fast. I pulled my legs in from over the rail because they were so close. Then slowly because of everyone concentrating on making the boat go fast we pulled back ahead of the boat. We finished about 100 meters ahead of them but still in 5th place. Grrrrr!

It’s all extreme fun. If you want to learn to sail – learn the theory here at NauticEd then get out there and race. Man you’re going to learn a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Learning to Sail with an Electronic Wind Meter

Posted by Grant Headifen on February 16, 2011 under Bareboat Charter, Coastal Navigation, Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper | Be the First to Comment

Even if you don’t have one on your boat – one day you’ll be helming someone else’s boat with an Electronic Wind Meter and you certainly want the owner to be confident at what you are doing. There’s a couple of secrets so read on.

He’s what happened – I took out two guys who were experts at racing at their local yacht club. The trouble for them was they both kept on having to look around the bimini on our 373 Beneteau to get a peak at the wind vane at the top of the mast. I tried to tell them to use the electronic wind meter 18 inches from their face but they’d have nothing of it. It wasn’t pure enough. Then day turned to evening and evening to night. IE no wind vane watching at night … and they now had sore necks.

Wind meters are cool, and given the right calibration they’re pretty accurate. The resolution is greater than eyeballing the wind vane and thus you can be more consistent with your angle to the wind. I’m necessarily saying they are better than wind vanes but I’m definitely saying that being both vane and meter skilled adds to your sailing abilities.

Here’s a typical Wind Meter – it shows that the wind is 42 degrees to starboard. You’ll see a red dot at the bottom. Next to the red dot are the words TRUE and APP (apparent). The dot represents which wind direction the meter is measuring. In this case Apparent. For a discussion on True vs Apparent Wind see the NauticEd Skipper Course or this blog http://www.nauticed.org/blog/skipper/true-wind-versus-apparent-wind/ The green and red don’t mean any thing other than green is the starboard side of the boat and red is port.

Typical Wind Meter

LEARNING TO SAIL WITH AN ELECTRONIC WIND METER – SECRET NUMBER (1): This goes to working with wind vanes as well. When making heading adjustments, keep your head out of the boat. This means DON”T watch the meter or vane as you turn the boat. You’re guaranteed to over shoot your desired new heading. Also it’s dangerous traffic wise. Watching the meter or vane means you’re not looking out for traffic during a turn. IE When driving a car and turning at an intersection you never would look at the speedometer. It’s too dangerous and besides what’s the point, you can best judge a safe speed in the intersection turn by the rate things are going past your car. Same same – watch things outside the boat when you turn.

Imagine this – make a 90 degree turn in your car using a compass and stay exactly in the center of the lanes. Well maybe Al Pacino (acting as a blind guy) in the oscar winning movie Scent of a Woman could do it but me? Never in 100,000 trys. Again – same same why would anyone make a 10 degree adjustment to their heading looking at the wind vane or wind meter. You can’t stay in the center of the lane (new desired heading).

I’ll provide an example scenario: Assume you’re sailing along on 40 degrees apparent (your wind meter and vane point 40 degrees off from the front of the boat). You notice the wind direction changes to give you a 10 degree lift (a lift means the wind direction has changed so that the wind meter or vane points more towards the aft than before – in this case now 50 degrees). You want to turn upwind to bring the wind back to 40 degrees. Here’s how to make the turn: Pick out something on the horizon dead ahead then pick out something 10 degrees upwind from that point. Turn the boat to the point with out looking at the wind meter or vane. Once you are now sailing at the new point, check how you’re doing against that 40 degrees and make another adjustment in the same manner.

This was so basic it’s not too much of a secret, but you’d be surprised … one time teaching in my sailing school I actually had to cover up the wind meter as I could not get my student to stop watching the meter and to watch the horizon instead. As soon as she started watching the horizon her whole sailing world changed. She could hold a course, tack, gybe make adjustments with out over shooting – everything. Her whole problem was that one little point.

Here’s another scenario  similar to a wind meter/vane turning problem – your navigator says to come onto a new heading of 160 degrees. Don’t watch the compass during the turn. First determine how many degrees the turn is, pick out a point on land or even a cloud to turn to.  Make your turn watching out side the boat – then check your heading.

LEARNING TO SAIL WITH AN ELECTRONIC WIND METER – SECRET NUMBER (2): Don’t teach new people at the helm anything about the wind meter or the wind vanes. It’s too confusing – First, just have them focus on sterring to points on the horizon and making turns to new points on the horizon that you pick out for them.

LEARNING TO SAIL WITH AN ELECTRONIC WIND METER – SECRET NUMBER (3): Don’t stare at the wind meter and try to figure out which way you should turn the helm to make the meter move in any one particular direction. That’s too hard because it’s backwards from what you’d think and guaranteed you’ll get it wrong when some one embarassing is watching. And as above, make sure when you’re explaining the wind meter to a new helmsperson that you disallow them from similarly using it to figure out which direction to turn.

Instead, the wind meter should be used to determine how many degrees off the desirable wind angle you are and if the turn should be towards the wind or away from the wind. That’s all. Example – lets say we want to be flying 30 degrees APP off the wind. Using the wind meter above, we’re 12 degrees away from 30 and we are heading too far down wind. So lets pick out a point on land or a cloud that is 12 degrees upwind (the what? Port or Starboard) from our current heading.

The NauticEd Skipper Course is chocked full of tips like this one.  Get started today and register for the NauticEd Skipper Sailing Course

Have you played with our FREE Sailing Instructor, NED? We use interactive tools like this to quickly and effectively teach sailing skills.

NED the Sailing Instructor

Furling a head sail in high winds

Posted by Grant Headifen on February 5, 2011 under Bareboat Charter, Crew, Sail Trim, Skipper | 2 Comments to Read

Sailing last weekend reminded me of this tip so here it is.

Often times when using a roller furler head sail you’ll find that if you’re furling it in really high winds, there is not enough furling line in the spool. And this has the potential problem of damage if you’re not watching what you are doing.

Here’s the scenario: You’re trying to stop the sail from flogging whilst furling so you’re holding the sheet on the winch and releasing slowly. The high wind puts a lot of tension on the sheet and thus you require a lot of tension on the furling line. The sail then furls up very tightly. This means that it takes more turns to furl to sail. Turns that you don’t have stored in the furling drum.

Now you’re cranking and cranking and all of a sudden it becomes very hard to pull in more furling line but the head sail is still a little bit out and needs a couple of more wraps. If an inexperienced crew member is doing this then, with the power of a winch, something is going to break. Ouch!

This happened to us last weekend sailing in a 30 knot blow in Tasman Bay, New Zealand on a 42 foot PDQ Catamaran. Fortunately I was doing the furling cranking and determined the problem instantly.  Not that I’m the world’s greatest expert, but I’ve just seen this plenty of times before.

Oh oh - no more line left in the furling drum

I’ve got two solutions for this issue – of course once you reach shelter you can unfurl the sail and furl in back in with out all the back tension and problem is solved right? Well sort of. Not really because you might not be so lucky with the next crew member. So that’s not counted as a solution.

Here’s number one. Get some more wraps into the furler so you don’t have to deal with this again but how do you do that? I can remember the first time taking the end of the furler line, lying down on the deck with my head cocked all skew and feeding the line in and around the drum with great difficulty and frustration.

No the solution is much simpler.

(1) Pull out the head sail sheets forward and out from the fairleads, coil the sheets  and bring them forward.

(2) Wind the sheets around the furled sail  until the sail is fully wrapped then three more times for good measure.

(3) Pat yourself on the back that you read this blog.

(4) Uncoil and feed the sheets back through the fairleads – you’re done.

Wrap the headsail sheets around the furled sail

BTW – notice the awesome bay in the background.

A quick note however, some drums are really small and you might find that there is not enough room for those extra wraps. In that case you might consider a smaller diameter furling line.

What a small fine point of learning to sail this tip is. And now you’re understanding that it’s impossible to train your crew members on all the things like this on a sailboat but it can be a real problem and ultimately who pays for something on your boat when a crew member breaks something. You do!

So here’s the second part of the tip – A) Send this blog onto your crew members and also send to them your personal NauticEd Promocode. They’ll get $15 off their first NauticEd sailing course and you’ll get friend kudos and $10 credit towards your next NauticEd Course. Cool eh!

Don’t know about the personal NauticEd Promocode? See here.