Learning Curve - Oct YM

[Jacket]

Re: Shock horror agreement

If the furler is jammed with the sail half furled, how do you unfurl it enough to drop it? Unless you cut the sheets and motor round and round in circles, which wouldn't be much fun in the conditions described?

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[Twister_Ken]

Re: Shock horror agreement

Why would you need to cut the sheets, don't they have stopper knots that can be undone?

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[Jacket]

Re: Shock horror agreement

If you untie them at the cockpit end, you have the sheets flapping around in the water while you're motoring around, all ready to snare the prop. The sail end's probably a bowline, so couldn't be undone under load, and anyway may be beyond reach if the sails wrapped itself around the forestay in some strange way.

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[marki]

Re: Shock horror agreement

Totally agree that motoring in circles would be a bore and to trying to unjam the furler would risk a finger! Probably best to cut the furling line where necessary and let the drum spin free. Then drop the sail. By the way rather than using stretchy braided rope which can compress and tangle it is worth considering something like spectra.

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[Jacket]

Re: Shock horror agreement

I assumed that they'd got a halliard wrap rather than just a jammed furling line, else surely they'd have the common sense to have done as you've suggested.

On second thoughts, given the rest of the article, they probably wouldn't.

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[marki]

Re: Shock horror agreement

and finally if one looks at the track on the chart in YM at no stage were they "22" miles from Alderney & Cherbourg.

Next month you can read about how I get on piloting the Space Shuttle around the solar system at the w/e. Or did I forget to mention that I did a Fast Track couse at NASA last year and I need to put in a few hours before I forget......................!!!

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[tome]

Re: Shock horror agreement

I'd imagine from the symptoms of the wrap that it would have backed the top half of the sail, much as shown in the illustration. Trick in this situation is to assess before you do anything which might cause further damage. Probably a gybe onto a reach would clear the wrap and then to windward under power whilst you furl or drop.

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[NigeCh]

The learning curve is what you make it

... and how you make it.

Let's rephrase Steve Cronin's origianal question and ask if you would lend your boat out for a cross channel cruise in mid December to anyone????

IMO, it was not the crew that was irresponsible but the laid back charterer who said, "If anything's missing, take it from the next door boat."

And the saddest thing is that the new YM editorship sees fit to publish it as it was published ... Perhaps that is just as equally as sad as YM saying that they want to refubish Gypsy Moth and re-sail her aroud the world in spite of Francis Chichester saying that she is a rocker.

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[Twister_Ken]

sheets and furlers

Without being there, I suspect no-one can guess what would have been the best way to solve the problem. Not that such considerations hae ever stopped Scuttlers trying!

Trouble with cutting the sheets is that what's left on the sail will just fly off to leeward, giving you nothing to wind or unwind the sail with, or help control it if you try a drop. On second thoughts, as suggested elsewhere, cut the furler line near the drum, and let it unwind (if it will) before doing a drop, or sheet the sail in far enough to steady it and get a spare sheet onto it, ease the working sheets and untie (from either end), then furl the sail either by hand, or by sailing in circles, or a combination of both.

Having had furlers jam a couple of times myself I suspect the trouble may have started when the sail was originally unfurled. If it's let go at a run (without the furler line being controlled), the furler line can over rotate and jam itself. Trying then to refurl without first sorting out the line on the drum just jams every thing up solid. And I agree with the idea of using a low stretch line on the furler. Since putting on Dyneema, I've had no trouble (touch wood).

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[Twister_Ken]

GM IV

Quite a good thread on GM <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.writeforweb.com/twister1>Let's Twist Again

 

[Mirelle]

May an Old Gaffer comment?

Needless to say I don't have a roller reefing headsail of this type.

But to cut the loaded sheet (one sheet, we hope, will be slack!) or the furling line, seems a bit drastic. There are other tricks to try first...

What follows assumes moderate wind strength (up to 6 or 7).

First, either (if you have ample sea room) drop the main and let her run downhill under the jammed headsail. If you don't have loads of room, get the boat more or less hove - to, so everyone can concentrate on the job in hand. She will try to pitch you off the foredeck, of course.

Probably the furling line has jumped off the drum and lovingly entwined itself round something else; less often it has jammed on itself. Lock the drum using a marline spike or screwdriver through the tack shackle and belayed to something with small line, or a small tackle, the cast off the furling line and try to unwind it.

If that does not work, you can free the cockpit end of the lazy sheet, wind that round a couple of times widdershins (against the direction of rolling in), belay it, free the loaded sheet (the lazy sheet will take the load as the sail unrolls two turns) unwind that and repeat the process, and with reasonable luck you will eventually get the whole sail out, without ropes over the side or anything flailing about and still with its sheets on.

At which point you have a sporting chance of lowering it with the halyard.....

Fortunately for me, I don't have one of these dreadful contraptions....

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[Heckler]

Fast Track says it all

thrusting, dynamic, go getter, now now now.
stu

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[Jeremy_W]

Re: The learning curve is what you make it

>>>Let's rephrase Steve Cronin's original question and ask if you would lend your boat out for a cross channel cruise in mid December to anyone????

I think any yacht owner approached by a YM Ocean skipper with a YM mate would lend or hire his vessel. Otherwise, what value has the YM qualification?

>>>IMO, it was not the crew that was irresponsible...

I can't agree - how basic to skippering is assessing the capabilities of your crew in relation to the passage you are undertaking? If in doubt check them (and the yacht!) out with a shorter coastal passage as a warm-up.

Everything else in this story was an occupational hazard of sailing:
Rough weather in the channel in December - go on surprise me!
A charter yacht not being perfectly equiped in every respect - knock me down with a J Class spinnaker pole!
Genoa furling gear causing problems - as ACB suggests this is hardly a once in a lifetime experience and even as a humble Day Skipper I've a couple of techniques in the back of my mind for how to cope with this eventuality.

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[timbowolf]

Despite some postings, let me assure everyone this voyage took place; my eldest son was on board. Indeed, he ended up in a French hospital having a fluids pumped into him, as described (not his real name, by the way). As he was below for much on the on-deck 'drama' he can't verify exactly what went on but it all sounded horribly accurate to me (and I have heard his account). So, no, it wasn't cooked up by Paul or James.
Foolish? Not intrinsically in my view (his mother, needless to say, has a different opinion). The problems are familiar, and the skipper and crew failed to pre-plan enough, particularly with regard to seasickness.
Too young: I don't think they were too young but most were students (and, perhaps, imprudence lies more there than anywhere). But I believe that 'with no risk there is no adventure' and nothing will shift me from that. But risk needs to be controlled - planned for - as far as possible and therein, in this case, lay all the hidden traps.
To put this in context, this same son has just returned from a three week expedition in the Austrian Alps spent surveying a large caving system there using a technique called SRT. Now, that's a different order of risk altogether. In this case, a highly organised and carefully run expedition meant nothing worse than a few bruises.
I was far more worried about the car journey there and back.

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[Twister_Ken]

Beg to disagree.

So it's not foolish to set sail in an unknown boat, with a 'scratch' crew, in December, on a x-channel trip with an F8 forecast?

Sorry, but I'm with his mother on that one.

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[jimi]

Re: Beg to disagree.

In fact right from the start, when they headed back to Portsmouth in thick fog from Bembridge Ledge smacks of foolhardy inexperience. Surely in that situation they woud have been better contour creeping into St Helens and anchoring rather than risking collision by crossing over to, and entering Portsmouth?

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[marki]

Re: Beg to disagree.

I was brought up with the understanding that sailing as youngsters gave us immense freedom but with that freedom a responsibility. The responsibility was to the boats crew, other sailors and the emergency services. In this case were the crew thoroughly humbled and sorry for what they had done that would be one thing. However, to dress this mess up as something that was rooted in bad fortune rather than inadequacy on the part of the crew and subsequently claim that it is all in the spirit of adventure is something else. Imagine if all sailors behaved that way!! Seems to me quite arrogant and thoroughly selfish.

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[claymore]

On the other hand

They will all have learned something. The abject misery of chronic seasickness, the true meaning of responsibility, the value of good decision making and something about themselves and their personal frontiers. As luck would have it no-one died, damage was relatively limited. Yes - rescue services had to be involved but then they seem to get involved when a blasted engine blobs.
Most of us have done something that ended up looking like it might go pear shaped, got lost, got caught out as a consequence of inexperienced reasoning - I think their biggest faux pas was to go public about it - but then its giving us something to pontificate about.

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Claymore
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[Jeremy_W]

I agree with Twister Ken

>>> Foolish? Not intrinsically in my view.... and the skipper and crew failed to pre-plan enough, particularly with regard to seasickness.
>>> But risk needs to be controlled - planned for - as far as possible and therein, in this case, lay all the hidden traps.

But pre-planning is the whole point of being the skipper. If you don't like that, then crew for other people and your entire planning for a North Sea crossing becomes "tell us which train you're on and look for a J-reg Peugoet 205 in the station car park". It doesn't matter if you're a newly-minted Day Skipper (watching weather forecasts all week and programming 20 waypoints into the GPS for a passage from Port Hamble to the Folly Inn) or a rough tough YM who can cross the Channel with, apparently, only the odd glance at the chart and the GPS.

I don't see any of the "traps" as hidden.

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[tcm]

Re: I agree with JeremyW

Fully agree. At its most basic level, being skipper on a cruising boat includes taking along extra sleeping bags in case someone has forgotten theirs. It's all easy stuff -but only if thought thru beforehand.

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