Do's and Don'ts of sailing in Gale/Force 8+

[mcframe]

I once sailed in the Solent in a wind averaging 45 knots, gusting to 55. It was a heavy classic 40 footer operated by a sailing school (the punters have paid to go out so out we go).

Very good points, Snowleopard.

if it's an 8+, I probably won't be out in our family 27' bilge-keeler; I might be in a heavy classic 45' or maybe a 37' fully-crewed race boat.

All the time I'm sailing and learning - maybe more than many single-objective sailors.
(i.e. racers should cruise; cruisers should race & people with little boats should go out on big boats in a blow)

 

[TradewindSailor]

These wind conditions would be an ideal opportunity to practice some of the following, provided you have sea room:

Reefing

Lying to under bear poles .... almost certainly with the rudder trying to bring the bows into the weather. This will usually put you slightly to windward of beam-to ...... not at all comfortable.

Hoving-to ...... you may find this a problem with your type of boat. Now's the time to find out. Whether you can hove-to or not, you'll be grateful for the experience in more severe weather.

Working up on the foredeck ..... hanked on of coarse. It's amazing the number of people I speak to who won't go up on the foredeck in bad weather. Consequently their boats are usually over-canvassed when the weather get even worse.

As for being worried about gybing ....... I always set a preventer when going downwind : if you gybe unintentially the boat usually screws round into the wind. Without using the engine, you should have plenty of time to release the preventer whilst hauling in the mainsheet (if you don't do this you may find the boom will foul with the backstay). Generally you'll end up in irons ....... another useful practice.

 

[Jamesuk]

Based on who I had on the boat I kept things very simple and took beam reaches for the worst of the sea with only enough Genoa out to give the sail some shape (avg speed was ~8kts)...

Comments, advice & ideas invited!

I am still yet to experience Hurricane force winds but when I was sailing a 57ft yacht on pasage from Newport RI to Charleston SC We experienced 60 knots (we did read 94knots on the ST60 but to keep up moral we shrugged it off as "an error")

Key points - Sail setting, Keeping warm, Engine on 1500RPM (to get through the swell/waves) Storm Sails up. One pot wonders while cooking, Pasta with veg a winner!

all in a weeks work (while on passage)

 

[Bosun Higgs]

Keeping warm, Engine on 1500RPM (to get through the swell/waves) Storm Sails up. One pot wonders while cooking, Pasta with veg a winner!

I'd agree with the engine bit. I once got caught in an 8 / 9 whilst sailing a 26 footer round Hartland point in the Bristol channel. Luckily going down wind. The boat was managing OK with just a scrap of genoa out whilst on the top of the rollers, but lost steerage way when down in between. Needed the engine going to keep steerage.

Rough old trip. The lifeboat who turned out to rescue a mobo, lost a man overboard and needed the CG helicopter - the plonker who was my crew wanted us to turn round and go to try and help the lifeboat! Well I suppose we would have given them something extra to do.

 

[Genoa]

As Snowleopard hinted, you have not truly experience 35kt to 40kt sailing conditions yet. Such winds in the Solent don't really count, so don't let an exciting sail in the Solent lead to false confidence.
QUOTE]

I do wish sometimes people wouldn't overlook the fact that the Solent in a strong SW or W breeze with a W going spring tide of 4+ knots can raise 4-5 m very steep waves both in the Needles/ hurst channel and between the forts at the East end.

I have come closer to a serious roll in these two places than I did in the middle of the English channel on a certain day in August '79.

Don't set the expectation the Solent will be a walk in the park. In the conditions mentioned it certainly is not!

 

[Jamesuk]

I'd agree with the engine bit. .

The other perk to having the engine running is that it keeps the batterys topped up and in the case of the 57ft yacht - the refrigeration running aswell. It is just nice to keep above 2 knots :-s We were absolutely hammered that week!

 

[adl]

I have had the pleasure of trying to sail in the solent in similar conditions to Snowleopard, wind over tide can create some large breaking waves in solent that our 38ft boat wasn't that happy about, we stuck out there for a while and then headed for cowes.

I have also been caught cross channel in our oceanranger in a forecast F5-6 that turned into a F8-9 that from the NEE, we were heading back from the CI to Weymouth. It was a great sail with a large swell on the beam, as long as you steered up into the wave and weren't caught beam on you were ok, the wave heigh was larger than our beam width. Our fall back position was bearing away somewhere down the west country.

During Jan 2000 I was on an old whitbread 60 "Tokio" on a delivery back from Antigua to Scotland, we were beating for 9 days into continually strenghting winds in the end the wind backed and we were riding in the front of a weather system heading West to East, we saw F10-11 for two days with the largest waves I have ever seen, we were actually sailing up the back of the wave train in front and taking of the waves 20 knots+, this was with 3 reefs in the main and either the No4 or StormJib up.

For me the solent was as bad as that great 48hrs in the Atlantic in 2000. Different boats for different things and different crews.

As someone has said above once you experiance some really bad weather everything else doesn't look so bad.

As long as you have the depth and sea room it your ok. Hurricanes aside.

 

[SAWDOC]

Duncan_M this subject is as big as the planet in sailing terms. I suggest the following good books which cover all aspects of sailing in big winds; some of the guidance will be more relevant to ocean crossing but never the less plenty of good advice and tips for those coastal bashes: -

1. Heavy Weather Sailing; Peter Bruce
2. Close To The Wind; Pete Goss
3. Safety and Survival At Sea; ECB Lee and Keneth Lee
4. Venturesome Voyages; J.C. Voss

Big wind sailing is much the same as normal wind sailing except that the loading on your equipment is massive and if it goes wrong it usually happens far faster and the solution is more difficult to execute. If your boat is well found and navigated with wind and tides in mind then all should be OK.

My single bit of advice would be to check everything before you go out for a bash in strong winds and make sure that you can deploy your anchor without unnecessary delay. With a good blow, sails down, little sea room, and a sudden dead engine it may be the rapid deployment of your anchor which prevents a good sail becoming an expensive prang.

Before I go out in big winds I walk through the boat and store everything properly and check that the hatches are closed. Friends and family's idea of wedging stuff behind bunks or the shallow shelves is not my idea of stowed properly.

My copy of Heavy Weather Sailing has the following quote on the back cover

"All of seafaring tradition and cutting edge modernity rolled into one book. Don't put to sea without reading it over and over again"

 

[PeterR]

There has been lots of good advice posted for surviving storms. However, all most AWBs need to cope with the sort of summer gales we tend to get caught out in around UK is the ability reduce sail properly. Most, if not all, AWBs are supplied with only 2 reefs in the main as standard. Many also have just a single large overlapping genoa.

Above about 30 Knots they therefore have to drop the main and try and role up the genoa till it looks like a bag of washing. Unsurprisingly, they tend to have problems going any further upwind than a beam reach when the seas build up.

As an example, last summer in my Dufour 34p - an AWB by most descriptions -we left Calais with a forecast of W5/6. It almost immediately blew up to NW 34, knots rising rapidly to 42 Knots, where it stayed for about half an hour before decreasing to around 35 knots. With a third deep reef - to about the lower spreaders - and 2 or 3 rolls in the number 3 jib we close reached across the channel at about 8 knots. After crossing the shipping lanes we bore away down the South of the Goodwins - surfing at about 13-14 knots - before hardening up against wind and tide to lay Ramsgate. All this was under perfect control with a finger light helm.

I don't know but it seems to getting windier. That is the third time I have been caught out in F8+ in the last 2 years and our standard channel crossings have rarely been in less than 20 Knots in recent years. Anyone who ventures more than a couple of hours from port without the ability to put a deep third reef in must be mad.

 

[webcraft]

I don't know but it seems to getting windier. That is the third time I have been caught out in F8+ in the last 2 years and our standard channel crossings have rarely been in less than 20 Knots in recent years. Anyone who ventures more than a couple of hours from port without the ability to put a deep third reef in must be mad.

Agreed. Ten years ago very few went out into unsheltered water in a forecast F5-6 if they didn't have to. Nowadays that is widely regarded as a good sailing breeze.

- W

 

[fishermantwo]

Agreed. Ten years ago very few went out into unsheltered water in a forecast F5-6 if they didn't have to. Nowadays that is widely regarded as a good sailing breeze.

- W

Of course you have to remember the average size of yacht has increased dramatically.

 

[LittleSister]

A lot of good advice above, but most of it concentrates solely on handling the boat. I've not a great deal of heavy weather experience, but that I have had confirms something I'd read somewhere

- There is a hugely increased danger of injury such as broken bones, cuts, strains, concussion, etc.
- One or two 'minor' problems (including injuries) can (as someone has pointed out above) quickly become a major problem.
- There is a real danger of failing to see other vessels, or other dangers, because one is concentrating so much on managing the boat and oneself (aside from any reduced visibility).

I'd also add that it's bloody tiring, and every task takes many times longer than normal, especially so in a small boat. Try to conserve your energy and that of the crew. It may not be over as soon as you think!

If you know bad weather's coming, get some good food inside you and perhaps pre-prepare some food and flasks of hot drinks. It may all be much harder later.

Can be useful to have established in advance signs for communication between the crew - it may well be impossible to hear what anyone is saying, i.e. between cockpit and deck, or cockpit and saloon. Having a whistle each can be very handy.

Others have emphasised the need for things to be be well secured, but its also important to make sure things are where they should be - you need to know where that winch handle, torch, tool, or whatever, is. You won't want to be searching for it.

At night a head torch is especially useful in heavy weather as you'll need to be doing a lot more holding on than normal, and at least you'll know where your torch is, if nothing wlse.

Probably the best advice is make sure its sunny and warm. That seems to make all the difference.

 

[thedoc]

my tuppence worth

Based on 55 knots in the southern ocean with massive waves, you do need someone on the kicker. Firstly to dump power very quickly in a gust, otherwise the helm can lose control. Dumping power by easing the main proved slower, and then hard to get power up again. Secondly with a severe heel the aft end of the boom hits the water , risking the boom or kicker breaking.
We found it better to fore reach and keep the boat moving, the boat dictated the tune, it definitely liked it best on this point of sailing. Running downwind in large seas risks the uncontrolled surf/broach, I would not want to have tried it in the wave size we had.
I suspect this all depends on the boat you have and your experience of how it behaves. Seamanship to the fore ......

 

[sail360]

Could not agree more

After just return home after completing my circumnavigation in my Sun Odyssey 37.. There are many books you can read BUT nothing is better than getting experience of these conditions, depending on location there will be local variations of the sea conditions.

As so often: 70% common sense + 30 knowledge = seamanship

Fair winds, calm sea's

***********

I have had 3 experances of sailing in f8s
1. 130miles Menorca to Bacelona head to wind
2. 1600 miles Barcelona to Cyprus, 2 f8s down wind.

My advice
1. Head to wind use just the sails you need to do 3 to 4 knots, you want to go over the waves and no smash into them and damage things.
If you dont like it turn round 180 degrees and in comparison it will all go carm and you will not beleave you are in the same sea.

2. Down wind, Just youse head sail, loved it 11.8 knots with the head sail the size of a bath towel pulling a fifty footer, drinking eating and chiling with mates best sailing I have ever done.


Would not go beam to, in them condistions, would keep going head to wind turning round and going down wind till conditions got better