Slow_boat
Well-Known Member
Re: rolled part genny .... now look at this ....
My ten-penny-worth;
If you're regularly getting your cabin windows washed you're not sailing, you're capsizing!
It's cold, wet, hard work, uncomfortable and frightening.
That's not my idea of cruising.
It's also inefficient and argueably un-seamanlike.
A dinghy is designed to sail most efficiently upright, a yacht when heeled to within a few inches of the gunwale, any more and not only are you risking a knockdown in the gusts and loosing way fighting weather helm that is designed in for safety anyway, but you are also making a lot more leeway. When heeled to much, the sails are presenting less area to the wind so you may as well not have so much up anyway. Make haste slowly!
You become tired more quickly, can't leave the boat to sail itself while you do something else and if anything does go pear shaped due to the massive stresses and loads involved, there is much less time to react before it goes REALLY pearshaped. Good seamanship says that you should set canvas for the maximum gust expected, not the average wind.
If you find that you are having to beat into the wind for hours on end you've either made a mistake in your sailing plan, mis- read the weather or you're racing.
A deck sweeping genoa may be fine for the racer bods with something to prove but on a cruising boat just gets in the way and obstructs vision, which is pretty important, particularly when short handed.
I sailed a Nijad 34 with a smallish high cut yankee this year. Never had to furl it, could see under it and from a force 3 through to 7 we did a consistant 9 knots in comfort under varying amounts of main.
As a rough rule of thumb, if you can't make a cuppa without risk of spilling it, you've got to much canvas up.
I was in the Fastnet in '79 and we had a hot meal 3 times a day. (Okay, it was a very experienced crew of instructors of whom I was the most junior, we got knocked down inumerable times and we did spill some tea but it says something about the difference between seamenship and racing)
All IMHO, of course.
My ten-penny-worth;
If you're regularly getting your cabin windows washed you're not sailing, you're capsizing!
It's cold, wet, hard work, uncomfortable and frightening.
That's not my idea of cruising.
It's also inefficient and argueably un-seamanlike.
A dinghy is designed to sail most efficiently upright, a yacht when heeled to within a few inches of the gunwale, any more and not only are you risking a knockdown in the gusts and loosing way fighting weather helm that is designed in for safety anyway, but you are also making a lot more leeway. When heeled to much, the sails are presenting less area to the wind so you may as well not have so much up anyway. Make haste slowly!
You become tired more quickly, can't leave the boat to sail itself while you do something else and if anything does go pear shaped due to the massive stresses and loads involved, there is much less time to react before it goes REALLY pearshaped. Good seamanship says that you should set canvas for the maximum gust expected, not the average wind.
If you find that you are having to beat into the wind for hours on end you've either made a mistake in your sailing plan, mis- read the weather or you're racing.
A deck sweeping genoa may be fine for the racer bods with something to prove but on a cruising boat just gets in the way and obstructs vision, which is pretty important, particularly when short handed.
I sailed a Nijad 34 with a smallish high cut yankee this year. Never had to furl it, could see under it and from a force 3 through to 7 we did a consistant 9 knots in comfort under varying amounts of main.
As a rough rule of thumb, if you can't make a cuppa without risk of spilling it, you've got to much canvas up.
I was in the Fastnet in '79 and we had a hot meal 3 times a day. (Okay, it was a very experienced crew of instructors of whom I was the most junior, we got knocked down inumerable times and we did spill some tea but it says something about the difference between seamenship and racing)
All IMHO, of course.
ne right across the cockpit for racing and a shorter one one forward of the hatch for cruising, so as to keep the cockpit clear. Handling, weather helm etc were unchanged regardless of which track we used: only difference was we could get more twist adjustment on the long track.
