Hints on using a cruising chute

[alahol2]

Using a single long sheet I just do a slow gybe by walking the sheet forward, passing it round the forestay and the tack line then taking it back on the other side of the boat. Short or single handed I turn dead downwind to let the sail collapse before going forward and turn fully onto the opposite gybe once I have re-secured the sheet.

That sounds like a fairly 'safe' way of doing it. I'll give that a try on the next opportunity.

 

[nigelmercier]

My advice would be to make sure the knot holding the sail bag shut is really tight, and keep it that way.

 

[lpdsn]

Thinking about it some more, how do you keep the lazy sheet out of the water and keep from sailing over the top of it?

Racing assymetrics tend to have a little hook on the luff just above the tack to hang the lazy sheet on. It falls off as soon as the bowman gets nicely settled on the rail.

 

[Iain C]

My tip is to simplify things at first by rigging only one sheet. Find somewhere where you can go a decent distance with the wind on one quarter, and choose a day with a steady gentle breeze. First time at least you will just want to play with the sail and find out how to trim it so you won't want to gybe it and one sheet gives you one less rope to get tangled. You can actually gybe by walking the sheet forward and taking it around the forestay and back down the other side of the boat. I have used mine single handed that way, though snuffing it was hard due to the halyard being taken back to the cockpit. This year I plan to re-rig so that the halyard is handled at the mast.

I don't really get what the single sheet method hopes to achieve. If you can rig one sheet OK, why not two? Compared to rigging a dinghy kite with a triple patch downhaul, a cruising chute is very easy.

Hanging onto a sheet and walking it forward, with the chance of friction burns or it flicking you over the side seems counter intuitive from a safety perspective. Rig both sheets and you rig them twice and twice only, with the kite on the deck or in the bag, and you doing all the gybing work from the cockpit. Single sheet means you have to rig it every time you gybe, going forward, with the boat in motion and the kite pulling or flogging in some way and the chance of an inattentive driver or autohelm gybing back. Plus, for safety and COLREGS reasons I would expect any boat to be able to gybe fairly promptly and in a seamanlike manner...I'd argue that having one sheet on your kite would prevent this. You certainly don't see boats going upwind with just one headsail sheet rigged!

OP, some other tips...an oversheeted kite won't produce much power. It's when you ease it out that the power comes on and you'd best have some turns around the winch! A bowsprit does help gybing (however I would always set up for an inside gybe, gybing the kite between the kite luff and the foresail). Also easing preferably the tack line (or possibly the halyard) prior to the gybe will make the gybe easier. And when the kite is up and the breeze is on a bit, obey the golden rule of skiff sailing...steer the boat so it stays under the rig.

Good luck and enjoy!

 

[MikeBz]

(however I would always set up for an inside gybe, gybing the kite between the kite luff and the foresail).

As a fellow dinghy sailor that would be my first reaction too, but watching vids of keelboats racing with kites they always (at least the big ones) have the windward sheet running round the luff and do an outside gybe. I don't know 100% why but I tend to trust their experience. Maybe it's because you don't want a kite that size draped over the rig, or because it's much lower risk in terms of sudden unexpected loads, or more likely because they don't have a bowsprit which significantly exceeds the J measurement so an inside gybe would mean a lot of sail going through a very small gap which would probably result in the kite filling/chinese gybing when you don't want it to.