Self tacking jibs?

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Neil

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I was just browsing boats and came across a Hanse with a self-tacking jib. How do these work? Is there an arrangement to let the sail out to accommodate a run and conversely, tighten the sheets to flatten the sail when close hauled? Never seen one in the flesh before.......
 
My Hunter 245 has one.
Block travels the width of the boat on a curved track.
This takes care of tacking.
For further off the wind you just let out the jib like you would anyway.

On mine this means the jib is small and the main big.
All the power therefore is in the main.

For me this is a plus cos I can deal with rudder and main in one go whilst my wife does nothing.
 
Neil said:
Ah, now I get it. Can you also lock it at one side, to enable heaving to?
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I can on my boat, but I have rigged a pair of inner/outer haulers (aka barber haulers), use those to adjust the slot and "lock" the sail in a position on the track
 
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Tacking up narrow channels with a self tacker is great, you just put the helm down and everything sorts itself out, so you come out of a tack still doing about 60% of the speed you went in on and you are immediately back on power. You can take advantage of minor wind shifts, or on occasions dodge out of the way of strong gusts. Since the mainsails are the larger sail, you reef this considerably before you think about doing anything with the jib

The slight downside is controlling twist on the tall thin jibs. Many now have vertical battens in the leech, which keeps the jib steady on a reach. I do however have a barber hauler arrangement so I can clip a snatch block onto the sheet and pull it down and out when reaching. As you sail deeper on the run, you gain, because the mainsail is a larger share of the total sail area.
 
I think it is a matter of which boat and what kind of sailing you intend to do. There is nothing new about self-tacking jibs, and I can remember that some boats had them on the broads in the '50s. The loss of performance can be noticeable, and it was to a friend of mine with a Hanse 370, as a result of which he changed to a normal jib, but he, like me, tends to do offshore cruising, when the handiness is seldom needed. On the other hand, I would have been grateful for a self-tacker the other day when I had to put in eighteen tacks in only a few miles tacking out of the Orwell against the tide.
 
There are two basic flavours of self tacker- a boomed one, which works exactly like a mainsail, and the type with a sliding car.
On my boat I have the latter. The sheet runs through a turning block at one side of the self tacker track, just ahead of the mast, then to a block on the car, up to a block on the clew of the sail, back to the car and through one more block then terminates at the other end of the track.
I find it can be excellent when hard on the wind, but the sheet angle gets progressively worse as you bear away.
It was a modification made by a previous owner and to be honest if it had been up to me, I would have upgraded the primary winches to self tailers instead.
 
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We had a travelling car type on our previous boat. Worked effectively for crusing, but means there is no overlap on the headsail so you need a rig with a good sized main. Barber haulers were useful to give a bit of extra control, but only rigged them when needed in light airs. If we had kept the boat - we went to the dark side - then I would have looked at a whisker pole as well.
 
The Hanse 325 was on the short list when buying my new boat, partly because of the selftacking jib as I sail mostly single handed. The advantages have already been discussed (and the disadvantages!). However for sort handed sailing that is only part of the equation for ease of handling. Just as important is the layout of the helm and sail controls and the Hanses of that era have very big wheels and little space behind the wheel, so the helm is effectively trapped with the jib sheet on the coachroof, so not easy to move around the cockpit without climbing on the seats.

The Bavaria 33 that I bought has a similar mainsail orientated rig but with a 110% jib plus plenty of room round the wheel area and two pairs of sheet winches, one aft in easy reach of the wheel. The main sheet is in front of the wheel, so all the controls are to hand. Easy short tacking, and the jib is better off the wind, although not as good as a larger overlapping sail.

There were of course other features that were in the mix - and the Hanse was substantially cheaper as it was the end of the production run, but overall it was the ergonomically poor helm and controls that swayed me.
 
Tranona said:
The Hanse 325 was on the short list when buying my new boat, partly because of the selftacking jib as I sail mostly single handed. The advantages have already been discussed (and the disadvantages!). However for sort handed sailing that is only part of the equation for ease of handling. Just as important is the layout of the helm and sail controls and the Hanses of that era have very big wheels and little space behind the wheel, so the helm is effectively trapped with the jib sheet on the coachroof, so not easy to move around the cockpit without climbing on the seats.

The Bavaria 33 that I bought has a similar mainsail orientated rig but with a 110% jib plus plenty of room round the wheel area and two pairs of sheet winches, one aft in easy reach of the wheel. The main sheet is in front of the wheel, so all the controls are to hand. Easy short tacking, and the jib is better off the wind, although not as good as a larger overlapping sail.

There were of course other features that were in the mix - and the Hanse was substantially cheaper as it was the end of the production run, but overall it was the ergonomically poor helm and controls that swayed me.
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The 370 has grooves that allow the sheets to be taken back to the side winches which can be operated from behind the wheel
 
I'm quite used to tacking SH, using non-tailing winches, and with an oversized genoa, so I'm guessing that the disadvantages might weigh more for me; I won't be tacking up a river, for example.
 
"Jib-booms and bobstays", as the recently revived Mrs Blackett would possibly say...

Very common on Broads cruisers, due to the inevitable short tacking—most of these didn't have a power unit of any sort, other than a quant pole. My grandfather had an embarrassing mishap as a young man single handing one of these: on approaching a swing bridge, upstream, the bridge was opened as he sailed up to it. This put him in wind shadow, and he drifted back; on reaching for the quant pole, he found it wouldn't touch the bottom. After trying twice more, he gave up and went the other way.

Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent...
 
I have been shipmates with 3 different types of self-tacker.

On my 1908 gaff cutter the staysail had a boom with a block at the clew which ran on a bight of sheet, effectively a rope horse which was adjusted from the cockpit. Great for tacking when you were occupied with the jib sheets but lousy for sail set.

On an Island Packet the staysail had a Hoyt boom. It had two controls - one to pull the clew down to the boom and control twist, the other to set the angle of the boom. It worked well enough but definitely isn't a retro-fit as the boom runs in bearings that go down to the keel.

On my own boat I have a curved track and the sheet runs through a block on the track then forward to a turning block near the tack so the tension doesn't change as the traveller moves across the track. The angle is limited by a pair of movable stops. I don't need to adjust it while under way but on a deck-mounted track it would be easy to fit control lines to move the traveller for heaving-to etc. Note that the sheeting angle can't be adjusted as you would with a genoa car so you need a clew board like this:
Clew.jpg
so not practical to make changes under way.
 
Tranona said:
The Hanse 325 was on the short list when buying my new boat, partly because of the selftacking jib as I sail mostly single handed. The advantages have already been discussed (and the disadvantages!). However for sort handed sailing that is only part of the equation for ease of handling. Just as important is the layout of the helm and sail controls and the Hanses of that era have very big wheels and little space behind the wheel, so the helm is effectively trapped with the jib sheet on the coachroof, so not easy to move around the cockpit without climbing on the seats.

The Bavaria 33 that I bought has a similar mainsail orientated rig but with a 110% jib plus plenty of room round the wheel area and two pairs of sheet winches, one aft in easy reach of the wheel. The main sheet is in front of the wheel, so all the controls are to hand. Easy short tacking, and the jib is better off the wind, although not as good as a larger overlapping sail.

There were of course other features that were in the mix - and the Hanse was substantially cheaper as it was the end of the production run, but overall it was the ergonomically poor helm and controls that swayed me.
Click to expand...

Hanse may have inherited the isolated helm from Dehler. My Dehler 36 CWS has the helm aft of the central winch which means acrobatics are required to change driver. We've developed a one way system. The 36 has a vertically battened self taking jib replaced by a furling genacker off the wind. Control of the jib comes back to the helm, so it's great for single handed trips. It's also easier to see under the foresail than with a big genoa which is also helpful short handed.
 
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