Heavy weather sailing

[Chiara’s slave]

It's all "interesting" stuff for winter time or lying in your bunk reading but largely if not totally irrelevant for todays sailors and coastal cruisers and boats. With todays forecasting even the odd 300 to 500 mile offshore 3 to 4 day passage will ensure that you have very little to no risk of experiencing really adverse conditions. If on the other hand you will decide to undertake longer offshore passages it is much more likely your boat will be significantly different better equipped even to the extent of being able to upload passage plans and grib files, carry and employ different equipment than the times the book was written.
As a disclaimer it must be over 20 years since I even glanced at it but when I first started sailing offshore longer ago than that, in the days when you listened to the forecast and drew your own synoptic chart or later if really up to date down loaded one from one of the meteorologic SSB broadcasts, I read it and many other tomes in preparation for that which never arrived.

Of course for coastal cruising you now have the facility to look at live wind info, as well as regularly updated forecasts. It’s no longer a roll of the dice. 20 years ago, we were on the receiving end of a particularly nasty but short lived squall, on a channel crossing. Saw it coming, reefed and fed before it reached us. I wonder if modern forecasts would have predicted it.

 

[Fr J Hackett]

Of course for coastal cruising you now have the facility to look at live wind info, as well as regularly updated forecasts. It’s no longer a roll of the dice. 20 years ago, we were on the receiving end of a particularly nasty but short lived squall, on a channel crossing. Saw it coming, reefed and fed before it reached us. I wonder if modern forecasts would have predicted it.

A squall is not heavy weather by any means but I take your point which is exemplified by the 79 Fastnet, which I escaped by the skin of my teeth the boat being withdrawn at the last minute due to other, not weather related reasons.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

A squall is not heavy weather by any means but I take your point which is exemplified by the 79 Fastnet, which I escaped by the skin of my teeth the boat being withdrawn at the last minute due to other, not weather related reasons.

We saw 55 kn of wind, that was heavy enough for me The sea built up pretty quickly too, 3m or so. But no, not the heavy weather to book is about. We ran off under a little corner of main, F27 tri like Rum Pirate’s lamented craft.

 

[Roberto]

I wonder how many forumites have been likewise prompted to check their copy of the book.

First edition in Italian language, 1973, a gift I then made to my father.

 

[zoidberg]

Offshore, running before may be best, with heavy warps to keep a course and take strain off the rudder. You need big warps!

I must demur.

There is now a better way. Far better.... and it's discussed in great detail, with contributions by several of the good and great, in a full chapter of 'Heavy Weather Sailing Edition 5'