Sea Hustler
Active member
Ok, I should know but I don't and there is a good reason why, which is because I don't know.
The story so far; so I learnt to sail about 55 years ago, or to be more accurate, I did a weekend sailing course on Lake Bala in Wales on an outward bound course sailing a Mirror dinghy. If I say so myself, that weekend was one of the most formative few days of my entire childhood and stirred something in me that I remembered for the next 55 years as I did the work, marry, father , divorce, marry again, work, retire thing. During that time I also served at sea for a couple of years, did a fair bit of Kayaking and raced power boats at National level. So it made perfect sense to me to buy my first proper sail boat when I retired last year.
She is a 24ft 50/50 motor sailer, built 1968, a bit scruffy but I will get to the pretty stuff later, sleeps 6 (yeah right, may sleep 6 but living aboard, no way) still she weighs in at about 3 1/2 tons, draws 2' 6" with encapsulated bilge keels and has a hull speed of 6 knots according to the stats I've been able to find. Roller furling on both genoa and main and would give any America's Cup Race Team a good run for their money, before I awake from my dream and realised that the only foiling that was going on here was in the galley.
I've spent the past 18 months returning her to a seagoing condition after her previous owners turned her into a floating apartment complete with 13 amp ring main, solid fuel stove where the flue came straight out of the starboard deck right in line with the jib car and more Hammerite paint on all the moving parts of the deck fittings than you could shake a nothing works now boat hook at. Eventual I got her ready for sea and recently moved her under diesel wind from Essex to Chichester where I have been going out in her as much as possible to relearn any slight sailing skills I may have retained and highlight the many jobs I still have to do to make both her and I ready for the open ocean - well cruising the south Coast to be more accurate.
So here it is, this weekend I wanted to get her out to sea and hoist the sails to see if I could improve on the 1.5 knots I had previously achieved under sail (in very very light air I may add) and figure out how to trim the sails etc. So armed with my trusted diagrams about close hauled, close reach, beam reach, broad reach and all points south I managed to get her up to 4.9 knots which is 1 knot and a pip off her hull speed. This was in a force 4/5 and I may add some interestingly swelly swells. So as my Mrs 1st Mate said between hurling her breakfast all over the cockpit sole and muttering things like "bloody )(**&^ what's wrong with a solid surface that doesn't rock about the whole damn time and -huwwwweeeee "oh look there's my breakfast again", where I don't have to look at the sausage sandwich I eat a few hours ago again. Then came my problem, after sailing close hauled, backing off to a close reach and then a beam reach, where I achieved my hitherto unimagined speed of 4.9 knots (I previously held the class water speed record whilst racing the power boat of 81.4 mh and also won the Scottish National Championship) But this was 4.9knots using nothing but the wind instead of a 600 horsepower Mercury racing engine turning a prop at stupid revolutions per minute, that was so sharp you would cut you finger off if you were careless enough to slide it down the leading edge, I thought if I ever wanted Mrs 1st Mate to stand on deck doing an impression of Simon Le Bon and Duran Duran singing Rio, I had best turn around and head back to the flat waters of Chichester Harbour.
This is where Rod Stewart and I had a slight disagreement, you see whereas he "was sailing, he was sailing cross the waters, cross the sea" I wasn't. Well to be precise, I was, but not in the direction Mrs 1st Mate wanted me to be. And this is where I need some friendly advice, note I said friendly because there will be a multitude of detractors who will say "listen to your wife, sell it and buy a camper van" So there I am, charging along at breakneck speed, so fast the paint is being stripped from the hull as we leap from crest to crest, assorted molluscs that had clung like limpets (they were actually limpets I think) to the antifouling were dying because we are out of water for so long, wind in my bald head, spray flying so thick it tasted like a salt water smoothie and now I had to turn. So wind is currently on my starboard quarter, main is sheeted in so boom is over the port quarter, Genoa is trimmed so widest part of the sail is just on the rail and I turn to starboard. Wheel to starboard and she begins to come round, I get far enough round so that we are pretty much broadside onto the wind and she stops turning, I release the loaded genoa sheet and prepare to haul in the lazy sheet once her head comes through the wind. but short of letting the entire length run through the block and fly free,she just stops turning. I can see that the wind is now blowing side on straight into the genoa preventing the bow from coming any further into the wind and no chance of going across it and despite having the helm (wheel} hard over, she just will not come round any farther. So I rinse and repeat by falling off the wind and regaining some speed, same thing, every time I get broadside to the wind, the genoa fills and she wont come round any further, She bloody well does when I turn on the engine and drive her through the wind but strangely I think thats call motoring not sailing.
So what am I doing wrong, I know I'm doing something wrong but as a 70 year old who learnt to sail in a little mirror dinghy over half a century ago, my memory isn't that good, or they didn't teach us that bit on Lake Bala, so I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong here. YES I KNOW, go and take a sailing course, but I have sunk virtually every penny I have into this project and I simply cannot afford to do that even though I know it would be super useful, would remove the need for me to embarrass myself by posting this on the YBW forum and avoid any chance of some young kid who has been sailing since he was three, from falling overboard laughing at my pathetic attempts to sail back to my home port. And beside, If I did that it would mean those of you who are going to say, "go and take a sailing course " would not have anything to write about now would you. So its life jack on, life buoy fitted, life sling fitted, radio course done and radio to hand along with grab bag, dinghy towed behind and a few choice words to Poseidon before casting off and hope for the best while learning as you go.
As I said, it would be most helpful if people could not laugh too loudly, but rather offer simple advice as I intend to sail down to Cornwall this summer and that will be rather difficult if a can't turn Westward from Chichester as I will have to amend my destination to wherever Eastward takes me.
Be nice, I know Im setting myself up for a real roasting here but hey ho, go for it if you want, Im old enough and ugly enough to take it but you will get some back believe me.
The story so far; so I learnt to sail about 55 years ago, or to be more accurate, I did a weekend sailing course on Lake Bala in Wales on an outward bound course sailing a Mirror dinghy. If I say so myself, that weekend was one of the most formative few days of my entire childhood and stirred something in me that I remembered for the next 55 years as I did the work, marry, father , divorce, marry again, work, retire thing. During that time I also served at sea for a couple of years, did a fair bit of Kayaking and raced power boats at National level. So it made perfect sense to me to buy my first proper sail boat when I retired last year.
She is a 24ft 50/50 motor sailer, built 1968, a bit scruffy but I will get to the pretty stuff later, sleeps 6 (yeah right, may sleep 6 but living aboard, no way) still she weighs in at about 3 1/2 tons, draws 2' 6" with encapsulated bilge keels and has a hull speed of 6 knots according to the stats I've been able to find. Roller furling on both genoa and main and would give any America's Cup Race Team a good run for their money, before I awake from my dream and realised that the only foiling that was going on here was in the galley.
I've spent the past 18 months returning her to a seagoing condition after her previous owners turned her into a floating apartment complete with 13 amp ring main, solid fuel stove where the flue came straight out of the starboard deck right in line with the jib car and more Hammerite paint on all the moving parts of the deck fittings than you could shake a nothing works now boat hook at. Eventual I got her ready for sea and recently moved her under diesel wind from Essex to Chichester where I have been going out in her as much as possible to relearn any slight sailing skills I may have retained and highlight the many jobs I still have to do to make both her and I ready for the open ocean - well cruising the south Coast to be more accurate.
So here it is, this weekend I wanted to get her out to sea and hoist the sails to see if I could improve on the 1.5 knots I had previously achieved under sail (in very very light air I may add) and figure out how to trim the sails etc. So armed with my trusted diagrams about close hauled, close reach, beam reach, broad reach and all points south I managed to get her up to 4.9 knots which is 1 knot and a pip off her hull speed. This was in a force 4/5 and I may add some interestingly swelly swells. So as my Mrs 1st Mate said between hurling her breakfast all over the cockpit sole and muttering things like "bloody )(**&^ what's wrong with a solid surface that doesn't rock about the whole damn time and -huwwwweeeee "oh look there's my breakfast again", where I don't have to look at the sausage sandwich I eat a few hours ago again. Then came my problem, after sailing close hauled, backing off to a close reach and then a beam reach, where I achieved my hitherto unimagined speed of 4.9 knots (I previously held the class water speed record whilst racing the power boat of 81.4 mh and also won the Scottish National Championship) But this was 4.9knots using nothing but the wind instead of a 600 horsepower Mercury racing engine turning a prop at stupid revolutions per minute, that was so sharp you would cut you finger off if you were careless enough to slide it down the leading edge, I thought if I ever wanted Mrs 1st Mate to stand on deck doing an impression of Simon Le Bon and Duran Duran singing Rio, I had best turn around and head back to the flat waters of Chichester Harbour.
This is where Rod Stewart and I had a slight disagreement, you see whereas he "was sailing, he was sailing cross the waters, cross the sea" I wasn't. Well to be precise, I was, but not in the direction Mrs 1st Mate wanted me to be. And this is where I need some friendly advice, note I said friendly because there will be a multitude of detractors who will say "listen to your wife, sell it and buy a camper van" So there I am, charging along at breakneck speed, so fast the paint is being stripped from the hull as we leap from crest to crest, assorted molluscs that had clung like limpets (they were actually limpets I think) to the antifouling were dying because we are out of water for so long, wind in my bald head, spray flying so thick it tasted like a salt water smoothie and now I had to turn. So wind is currently on my starboard quarter, main is sheeted in so boom is over the port quarter, Genoa is trimmed so widest part of the sail is just on the rail and I turn to starboard. Wheel to starboard and she begins to come round, I get far enough round so that we are pretty much broadside onto the wind and she stops turning, I release the loaded genoa sheet and prepare to haul in the lazy sheet once her head comes through the wind. but short of letting the entire length run through the block and fly free,she just stops turning. I can see that the wind is now blowing side on straight into the genoa preventing the bow from coming any further into the wind and no chance of going across it and despite having the helm (wheel} hard over, she just will not come round any farther. So I rinse and repeat by falling off the wind and regaining some speed, same thing, every time I get broadside to the wind, the genoa fills and she wont come round any further, She bloody well does when I turn on the engine and drive her through the wind but strangely I think thats call motoring not sailing.
So what am I doing wrong, I know I'm doing something wrong but as a 70 year old who learnt to sail in a little mirror dinghy over half a century ago, my memory isn't that good, or they didn't teach us that bit on Lake Bala, so I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong here. YES I KNOW, go and take a sailing course, but I have sunk virtually every penny I have into this project and I simply cannot afford to do that even though I know it would be super useful, would remove the need for me to embarrass myself by posting this on the YBW forum and avoid any chance of some young kid who has been sailing since he was three, from falling overboard laughing at my pathetic attempts to sail back to my home port. And beside, If I did that it would mean those of you who are going to say, "go and take a sailing course " would not have anything to write about now would you. So its life jack on, life buoy fitted, life sling fitted, radio course done and radio to hand along with grab bag, dinghy towed behind and a few choice words to Poseidon before casting off and hope for the best while learning as you go.
As I said, it would be most helpful if people could not laugh too loudly, but rather offer simple advice as I intend to sail down to Cornwall this summer and that will be rather difficult if a can't turn Westward from Chichester as I will have to amend my destination to wherever Eastward takes me.
Be nice, I know Im setting myself up for a real roasting here but hey ho, go for it if you want, Im old enough and ugly enough to take it but you will get some back believe me.
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