Boats and crew numbers for club racing. Sym vs Asym

[roblpm]

I have a 28 foot boat with a symmetric spinnaker which we race with 5 total. (Helm (who does the mainsheet), foredeck, pit, sheet and guy).

Obviously we struggle with regular crew and are crap as a result............................. But that doesn't really matter!

Was chatting to a club member last night and said to him that my next boat would be asym so I could get a bigger boat but not increase the crew too much. He told me he had been talking to a J109 owner who had told him that when he bought it but now needs 8 or 9 to race successfully?!

It's pretty windy where we race. I saw 30 knots on the wind instrument last night! (Probably 26 knots true).

I would be interested to know a sample of crew numbers that people do on 28-35 foot boats.

A lot of boats struggle with crew at our club and it seems like there is no solution.............??!!

 

[Judders]

Optimum for an Impala is 6.

Sometimes in light airs we get an advantage if we have a good five and we've even managed the odd good result with four. On the other hand, on a windy day, seven can be cracking.

 

[flaming]

I have a 28 foot boat with a symmetric spinnaker which we race with 5 total. (Helm (who does the mainsheet), foredeck, pit, sheet and guy).

Obviously we struggle with regular crew and are crap as a result............................. But that doesn't really matter!

Was chatting to a club member last night and said to him that my next boat would be asym so I could get a bigger boat but not increase the crew too much. He told me he had been talking to a J109 owner who had told him that when he bought it but now needs 8 or 9 to race successfully?!

It's pretty windy where we race. I saw 30 knots on the wind instrument last night! (Probably 26 knots true).

I would be interested to know a sample of crew numbers that people do on 28-35 foot boats.

A lot of boats struggle with crew at our club and it seems like there is no solution.............??!!

The 109 is just about crew weight to hike. There are only about 6 jobs on the boat, but you need the crew weight to be the OD max when racing OD, so you end up with 8 fat blokes or 10 normal people. You end up with either just people hiking, or some bizarrely specific job roles. I was the starboard tack kite trimmer at one nationals.

Even with IRC racing there is a crew limit written into the rule, which is the crew number on the cert. But almost every regatta modifies this. Of the ones we're doing this year Cowes, Taitinger and Dartmouth scrap it altogether, JOG inshore is cert +1, warsash Spring series and Hamble winter series go to cert + 2 (or more for bigger boats). In ww/lw racing with no crew limits, stack the boat unless you're expecting very light conditions.

I would say that 6-7 would be what I would expect for a 28 foot symmetric boat. The issue of getting crew is a perennial one, and is I think often added to by owners who do nothing about getting new sailors out when they have a settled crew.
For example, we don't struggle with getting crew. I currently have 35 people on my crew email list, and we need 9-10 to race. That hasn't come about by chance though, a lot of hard work has gone into creating that list. Whenever someone at a party etc mentions casually "oh, I'd love to try racing" I always try to make sure that they've done a race with us within 6 months. Having a settled crew means the people you then bring in don't need to be skilled. They can be first timers along for the ride. Get them hooked and they're your next pit or bow or trimmer. If you leave recruiting until your kite trimmer announces she's pregnant and moving to New Zealand, you're stuffed. You should already have someone in mind, in my experience it's a constant evolution.

In club racing I'd have a rule that if you have a complete newbie on your boat you get a rating credit. Encourage owners to introduce new people to racing.

 

[H4B]

@flaming This man talks so much sense. Absolutely spot on.

 

[roblpm]

@flaming This man talks so much sense. Absolutely spot on.

Yes really he should be writing for the magazines on the racing scene. A font of knowledge.

 

[lpdsn]

In club racing I'd have a rule that if you have a complete newbie on your boat you get a rating credit. Encourage owners to introduce new people to racing.

That's done for the winter racing in Dublin. Just for the first three races per newbie though.

 

[Ingwe]

Probably the biggest advantage crew wise of going asym is that you reduce the number of "skilled" crew by at least one for any given boat size as the foredeck role is a lot less complicated.

For club racing my SunFast 3200 (we have a longer than standard fixed bowsprit) using asym kites we can quite happily manage with four experienced crew up to about 20 knots of breeze, we have a crew pool of seven for the boat which works out about right as most weeks we end up with five or six crew for our club racing which is comfortable. For doing a regatta we would take six crew because else you just end up burning people out over a few days with fewer.

 

[roblpm]

Probably the biggest advantage crew wise of going asym is that you reduce the number of "skilled" crew by at least one for any given boat size as the foredeck role is a lot less complicated.

For club racing my SunFast 3200 (we have a longer than standard fixed bowsprit) using asym kites we can quite happily manage with four experienced crew up to about 20 knots of breeze, we have a crew pool of seven for the boat which works out about right as most weeks we end up with five or six crew for our club racing which is comfortable. For doing a regatta we would take six crew because else you just end up burning people out over a few days with fewer.

Where do you race? Ww/lw courses? How do you get on against the j boats in your sf3200??

 

[mrming]

Where we sail (a tidal river / estuary) there's a lot of tide dodging in the shallows. I've found that an a-sail simply doesn't work unless the boat is fast enough to plane. Whatever the VMG you might make in theory, sailing the angles with the a-sail invariably takes you out into the foul tide. We very rarely use ours as a result. So I'd say as well as considering that you may need less crew to handle an a-sail, you've also got to consider whether sailing the angles for greater VMG actually suits your boat and sailing area. For us it's sym kite 90% of the time.

 

[Ingwe]

Where do you race? Ww/lw courses? How do you get on against the j boats in your sf3200??

We sail in Plymouth. Mostly on triangle / round the cans courses which using the asymmetric setup works very well for, on windward leeward courses we can sail to our rating against the J boats (and will plane so will be faster in a blow downwind than a 109) but any asymmetric rig boat will pretty much always loose out on a windward leeward course to a well sailed equivalent symmetrical boat in medium winds. The Achilles heel of the Sunfast is upwind in sub 6 knots of breeze where it is basically just too fat - but locally our race officers decided a few years ago that they wouldn't start any races in less than 6 knots so it doesn't actually come in to play that often and downwind in light airs we have a big enough asymmetric to do pretty well.

Two of the French Sunfasts have been "turboed" this year specifically for round the cans racing with a 40cm taller carbon rig a fin lead keel and a mix of symmetrical and asymmetric kites (these will all be factory options from next year), which looks to have worked very well if you want to race mostly inshore - Cifraline 4 won Spi Ouest at the beginning of the season and have just come in as second individual boat overall in the commodores cup, my understanding is that the new keel makes the boat more crew weight reliant though so will probably not be as good offshore.

 

[Triassic]

....
I would say that 6-7 would be what I would expect for a 28 foot symmetric boat. .

Wow, I'm just trying to get my head round some of the crew numbers being quoted here. No wonder racing is getting so expensive, imagine buying enough bacon to feed that lot!

I race my F27 trimaran reasonably competitively with just the two of us, although sometimes it's nice to have a third pair of hands on board if it's blowing a bit. Getting the kite down in a bit of a breeze does require some co-ordination mind.

 

[flaming]

Wow, I'm just trying to get my head round some of the crew numbers being quoted here. No wonder racing is getting so expensive, imagine buying enough bacon to feed that lot!

This attitude staggers me. Why would the crew expect the skipper to buy their bacon? We don't.

The normal way of things (except on very big / posh boats where the cost of all the food that the crew could eat in whole year is insignificant next to a new Jib) is that the skipper provides the boat and enters it in the races he wants to do, and the crew provide their own nourishment. In our case the skipper is also left out of the food rota. Seems fair as we get to play on his expensive toy for the cost of providing lunch for the crew once every 9 races.

 

[Triassic]

Sorry Flaming, my attempt at humour obviously went straight under your guard rail.....

On a serious note, and I am genuinely displaying my ignorance around monohull racing needs here, do you actually need that many crew to operate all the various lines and systems in unison, or is it simply a case of ballast on the rail?

If it is just a question of weight how much of a difference would it make if you ditched half the crew and reduced sail accordingly?

 

[flaming]

Sorry Flaming, my attempt at humour obviously went straight under your guard rail.....

On a serious note, and I am genuinely displaying my ignorance around monohull racing needs here, do you actually need that many crew to operate all the various lines and systems in unison, or is it simply a case of ballast on the rail?

If it is just a question of weight how much of a difference would it make if you ditched half the crew and reduced sail accordingly?

Sorry, having a generally argumentative day....!

It's a bit of both. We sail 10 up, and at the corners everyone is busy. We could sail with 8 without any real loss of corner turning ability, but that would involve our nav doubling up and pulling a rope. There is no doubt whatsoever that weight on the rail is the way to get uphill. As soon as you're depowering your sails you need more weight on the rail. This of course is why water ballast first came into being!

The most amazing numbers I've ever seen on that boat was one RTI when we had 12 on the rail and in 20 knots upwind we were still in full power mode and going nearly a knot faster than our normal upwind targets.
And when I used to work for Sunsail, one Cowes week I met my crew one morning and out of the 7 of them 6 were front row Rugby players. It was howling and I was passing people upwind for fun. Unfortunately none of them had ever sailed before so we didn't fly a kite, otherwise we'd have won that race with ease. I was miles clear of the fleet after the first beat half way to Lymington.

 

[r_h]

On a serious note, and I am genuinely displaying my ignorance around monohull racing needs here, do you actually need that many crew to operate all the various lines and systems in unison, or is it simply a case of ballast on the rail?

Inshore racing on short courses, whether round the cans or on windward-leeward, does require a number of people, otherwise it can get very energetic. And weight in the rail invariably helps to maintain a lane coming off the start line

Longer distance both my partner and I race her 36ft monohull either solo or double handed with no issues. Granted, without weight on the rail you're disadvantaged on a long beat, or a powered up reach, but equally downwind and in light airs you have a small advantage.

But I reckon the biggest advantage is in the logistics of practising manoeuvres - it's much easier to do so if the total size of the team that ever races on the boat is only four people. As a result, for instance, our gybes (of a symmetric kite) are typically quicker, smoother and quieter than those on the fully crewed boats around us and in a JOG race with a downwind start we're invariably one of the first boats with the kite filled.

 

[MissFitz]

I regularly crew on a J109. They reckon eight crew effective minimum & 10 in a blow for weight. The eight positions are: helm, tactician, three on trim (release, winch, tail), pit, mast, bow. Anyone over that is ballast & we can manage with less in light conditions.

(To clarify, not suggesting this is the definitive arrangement, just the way one boat operates.)

 

[Birdseye]

I regularly crew on a J109. They reckon eight crew effective minimum & 10 in a blow for weight. The eight positions are: helm, tactician, three on trim (release, winch, tail), pit, mast, bow. Anyone over that is ballast & we can manage with less in light conditions.

(To clarify, not suggesting this is the definitive arrangement, just the way one boat operates.)

Could you expand on those roles a bit please. . What, for example, does "mast" do?

 

[Birdseye]

This attitude staggers me. Why would the crew expect the skipper to buy their bacon? We don't.

The normal way of things (except on very big / posh boats where the cost of all the food that the crew could eat in whole year is insignificant next to a new Jib) is that the skipper provides the boat and enters it in the races he wants to do, and the crew provide their own nourishment. In our case the skipper is also left out of the food rota. Seems fair as we get to play on his expensive toy for the cost of providing lunch for the crew once every 9 races.

Is there any way I could introduce you to my crew? They expect the skipper to pay for everything.

 

[flaming]

Could you expand on those roles a bit please. . What, for example, does "mast" do?

http://www.rya.org.uk/cruising/CruiserRacing/Pages/CruiserRacingPart9–clearcrewroles.aspx

That's a good start.

 

[MissFitz]

Is there any way I could introduce you to my crew? They expect the skipper to pay for everything.

I'm also surprised by this. Standard practice down our way is not only for crew to feed themselves but also to chip in for costs, either via a small sub for each race or a whip-round once a year. Given the ever-increasing expense of running race boats, this seems entirely fair. I certainly don't see why I should get to sail for free!