Spilling wind and big flappy genoas

[Neil]

Was out for sail yesterday in my new Sadler 25. The wind picked up to a steady F4, but gusting to F6. I have always been of the habit in my old boat, of letting out the mainsheet to spill some wind in a gust. However, with the Sadler, the main is much smaller than the genoa and spilling wind from it has little effect on the angle of heel. On the other hand, with a deep keel, it's not so tender, and perhaps I shouldn't worry about letting it go over a bit? I imagine letting the genoa sheet out would be inconvenient, since needs must it be winched in again when the wind drops.

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

Traveller?

 

[mjcoon]

Was out for sail yesterday in my new Sadler 25. The wind picked up to a steady F4, but gusting to F6. I have always been of the habit in my old boat, of letting out the mainsheet to spill some wind in a gust. However, with the Sadler, the main is much smaller than the genoa and spilling wind from it has little effect on the angle of heel. On the other hand, with a deep keel, it's not so tender, and perhaps I shouldn't worry about letting it go over a bit? I imagine letting the genoa sheet out would be inconvenient, since needs must it be winched in again when the wind drops.

Depending on the duration of the gust, amount of sea-room, destination, etc, a similar effect can be achieved without effort by luffing up. (And getting your granny to suck any eggs lying about!) It's called "luffing in the gusts"...

Mike.

 

[Neil]

Traveller?

Not quite sure of what you mean by this?

 

[Neil]

Depending on the duration of the gust, amount of sea-room, destination, etc, a similar effect can be achieved without effort by luffing up. (And getting your granny to suck any eggs lying about!) It's called "luffing in the gusts"...

Mike.

Yes, definitely a useful stratagem sailing close hauled, but perhaps less useful on a reach?

 

[emsworthy]

Neil, AFAIK the sailplan of the Sadler 25 is almost identical to that of my 26. If we are flying the 150 genoa (we often change down to working jib if it's likely to be a bit gusty) once the main is eased right down on the traveller to the point that it's almost backwinded, we do exactly what Mike suggests in the gusts and simply luff up a bit until it's passed. Not the ideal if you're racing of course but much better than having a cockpit full of water!! . Ideally if you're doing it a lot you're better off taking a few turns on the furler (if you have one) 'cos you'll be fighting a hell of a lot of weather helm each time too and stalling the rudder.

Hope this helps.

 

[st599]

Can you not adjust the car so the Genoa spills wind?

 

[emsworthy]

Yes, definitely a useful stratagem sailing close hauled, but perhaps less useful on a reach?

If you're over pressed on a reach you definitely should be thinking about reducing the size of that stonking great genoa!! On our 26 anything above about 17 knots apparent and in it comes. It really does pay to sail these boats without fighting the helm all the time.

 

[wotayottie]

It really does pay to sail these boats without fighting the helm all the time.

Pays to do that on any boat

 

[johnalison]

While sailing with the main eased off a bit can be prudent, a big flappy sail can induce a lot of drag when going to windward and my experience has led me to believe that it is important to keep boat speed up. If the boat slows, or stalls, it seems much more prone to excessive heeling and control may be lost. In many cases I prefer to harden in the sheets and pinch a bit. This only works well in fairly smooth water, otherwise a wave will stop the boat. When reaching in a small boat, it may be better to bear away through a short squall, when the wind pressure is much reduced. It is often worth doing this to put a few rolls in the jib, if a furler is fitted.

 

[Neil]

Well, I'm still feeling my way with the new boat. I checked the weather station data later, and from no wind, it freshened until it was a steady force 4 most of the time, and the full genoa was driving us along at 6 knots without any drama, but it would suddenly go from F4 to F6 and back down again, which was causing some concern. I did luff up on a close reach, and following some experimental heave-to-ing, in which I found that it was more stable with a few rolls of the genoa furled, which I left in, since the wind was freshening up a bit.

Clearly, in a steady F6, I would have reefed the main as well as furling more of the Genoa. I'm guessing that even a couple of rolls wouldn't have lost us much speed in a F4?

 

[onesea]

Depending on the duration of the gust, amount of sea-room, destination, etc, a similar effect can be achieved without effort by luffing up. (And getting your granny to suck any eggs lying about!) It's called "luffing in the gusts"...

Mike.

Particularly in heavier boats but on any boat its a worth whilst thing for a gust...

Yes, definitely a useful stratagem sailing close hauled, but perhaps less useful on a reach?

Oh no on a reach you grab the tiller with both hands and "power down wind" feeling the force in the sails and tiller cause if you keep pushing it something is going to brake or broach but that's the fun bit

If you're over pressed on a reach you definitely should be thinking about reducing the size of that stonking great genoa!! On our 26 anything above about 17 knots apparent and in it comes. It really does pay to sail these boats without fighting the helm all the time.

Oh but is it really as much fun .

Pays to do that on any boat

Such a spoil sport

 

[mainsail1]

My experience of fixed keel cruising boats, but not your Sadler, is that getting rid of the 150% genoa completely and permanently setting a 100% jib is the way to go. It is so wonderfully relaxing as you can usually hold it up into the mid 20 knots without worry and the loss of speed in 10 knots of wind compared to the 150% is not a lot.
I only discovered this late on in life and I wish I had thought of it sooner!

 

[PeterWright]

Neil,

In your Sadler, until the side deck is awash your key concern about heeling should be that you are slowing the boat down and increasing leeway. the slowing down is principally because the distorted water plane is turning the boat uo to windward which you are counteracting by applying a lot of rudder, otherwise known as brake. Next time you have the rail awash, take a look aft at the amount of rudder you are applying and the turbulence it is leaving astern. the increased leeway is simply because the keel is 30 or more degrees off vertical and therefore able to slide more readily transversely through the water.

If you think you have the right amount of sail up for the steady breeze, you should handle gusts principally through the main- travel down first and then ease the sheet. It really doesn't matter when hard on the wind if the luff of the main is getting backwinded by the genoa - that's the way most IOR racers sailed to weather in the era of your boat. Easing the main first, helps shift the centre of effort forward, reducing the weather helm - this increases speed and restores control if the rudder is getting close to stalling. For the same reason, some masthead rigs prefer to see the first reef in the main before you start taking rolls in the genoa. Try various combinations of mainail reefs and genoa rolls to learn what suits yours best - in each case checking the tiller angle needed to steer a straight course.

Next, take a look at the age and condition of your genoa - this is the powerhouse of your rig, especially on the wind. Most sails will perform in lighter airs, but the deficiencies of a tired sail become apparent in a blow, when the point of maximum draft is blown aft producing leeway rather than headway. If your sail is a bit tired, try to get as much halyard tension as possible when on the wind in a blow - this helps to pull the draft forward. However, the best cure for a tired genoa is a new one. Before you buy, spend an hour or so discussing your needs with your chosen sailmaker, they generally are good sailors with a wealth of knowledge on how to get the most out of a boat. In my experience, a padded luff is a great help in getting a partly rolled genoa to set effectively.

Lastly, if you want to deal with varying wind conditions, you will sometimes be using your genoa partially rolled. Make marks along the foot back from the tack to indicate three reefs. Then, sailing on the wind with the sail reefed to each of these, set the cars to their optimum position and mark this on the track. Towable cars which you can adjust under load help immensely with getting the best out of a roller reefing genoa - all too often you see yachts sailing with the foot of their partly rolled genoa bar taut and the top half of the sail flogging, because they have not adjusted the cars when rolling up.

Hope this helps,

Peter

 

[Neil]

Thanks, a lot to think about there.......awfy complicated, this sailing thing

 

[dunedin]

Yes, definitely a useful stratagem sailing close hauled, but perhaps less useful on a reach?

When beating or nearly so, luff up in the gusts

When broad reaching ease main BEFORE gust hits and bear away downwind (often referred to as "putting the bow down") - the b.igger the gust the bigger the bear away, then as wind eases sail higher to get back to course (usually faster than sailing straight line)

A beam reach can be the trickiest in some boats - and in ours we certainly do need to dump the genoa sheet sometimes to avoid a messy round up

 

[snooks]

Neil,

In your Sadler, until the side deck is awash your key concern about heeling should be that you are slowing the boat down and increasing leeway. the slowing down is principally because the distorted water plane is turning the boat uo to windward which you are counteracting by applying a lot of rudder, otherwise known as brake. Next time you have the rail awash, take a look aft at the amount of rudder you are applying and the turbulence it is leaving astern. the increased leeway is simply because the keel is 30 or more degrees off vertical and therefore able to slide more readily transversely through the water.

If you think you have the right amount of sail up for the steady breeze, you should handle gusts principally through the main- travel down first and then ease the sheet. It really doesn't matter when hard on the wind if the luff of the main is getting backwinded by the genoa - that's the way most IOR racers sailed to weather in the era of your boat. Easing the main first, helps shift the centre of effort forward, reducing the weather helm - this increases speed and restores control if the rudder is getting close to stalling. For the same reason, some masthead rigs prefer to see the first reef in the main before you start taking rolls in the genoa. Try various combinations of mainail reefs and genoa rolls to learn what suits yours best - in each case checking the tiller angle needed to steer a straight course.

Next, take a look at the age and condition of your genoa - this is the powerhouse of your rig, especially on the wind. Most sails will perform in lighter airs, but the deficiencies of a tired sail become apparent in a blow, when the point of maximum draft is blown aft producing leeway rather than headway. If your sail is a bit tired, try to get as much halyard tension as possible when on the wind in a blow - this helps to pull the draft forward. However, the best cure for a tired genoa is a new one. Before you buy, spend an hour or so discussing your needs with your chosen sailmaker, they generally are good sailors with a wealth of knowledge on how to get the most out of a boat. In my experience, a padded luff is a great help in getting a partly rolled genoa to set effectively.

Lastly, if you want to deal with varying wind conditions, you will sometimes be using your genoa partially rolled. Make marks along the foot back from the tack to indicate three reefs. Then, sailing on the wind with the sail reefed to each of these, set the cars to their optimum position and mark this on the track. Towable cars which you can adjust under load help immensely with getting the best out of a roller reefing genoa - all too often you see yachts sailing with the foot of their partly rolled genoa bar taut and the top half of the sail flogging, because they have not adjusted the cars when rolling up.

Hope this helps,

Peter

Best advice so far

 

[Neil]

Neil,

In your Sadler, until the side deck is awash.............

If you think you have the right amount of sail up for the steady breeze, you should handle gusts principally through the main- travel down first and then ease the sheet. It really doesn't matter when hard on the wind if the luff of the main is getting backwinded by the genoa - that's the way most IOR racers sailed to weather in the era of your boat. Easing the main first, helps shift the centre of effort forward, reducing the weather helm - this increases speed and restores control if the rudder is getting close to stalling. For the same reason, some masthead rigs prefer to see the first reef in the main before you start taking rolls in the genoa. Try various combinations of mainail reefs and genoa rolls to learn what suits yours best - in each case checking the tiller angle needed to steer a straight course.

Peter

Well, since I don't have a traveller (yet), I was just easing the main, but it seemed to have little effect - not that the side decks were awash, anyway.

Next, take a look at the age and condition of your genoa - this is the powerhouse of your rig, especially on the wind. Most sails will perform in lighter airs, but the deficiencies of a tired sail become apparent in a blow, when the point of maximum draft is blown aft producing leeway rather than headway. If your sail is a bit tired, try to get as much halyard tension as possible when on the wind in a blow - this helps to pull the draft forward. However, the best cure for a tired genoa is a new one. Before you buy, spend an hour or so discussing your needs with your chosen sailmaker, they generally are good sailors with a wealth of knowledge on how to get the most out of a boat. In my experience, a padded luff is a great help in getting a partly rolled genoa to set effectively.

Peter

I am unable to judge the condition of the genoa; I did post the question of how to determine the condition of a sail quite recently, but most replies relied on knowing the history of the sail's performance. Since it's new to me, I have no historical data. I may seek the opinion of someone who knows his onions, who can actually look at the sail.

Lastly, if you want to deal with varying wind conditions, you will sometimes be using your genoa partially rolled. Make marks along the foot back from the tack to indicate three reefs. Then, sailing on the wind with the sail reefed to each of these, set the cars to their optimum position and mark this on the track. Towable cars which you can adjust under load help immensely with getting the best out of a roller reefing genoa - all too often you see yachts sailing with the foot of their partly rolled genoa bar taut and the top half of the sail flogging, because they have not adjusted the cars when rolling up.

Hope this helps,

Peter

How do you determine where to make the reefing marks on the genoa's foot? How do you determine the car's optimum position? (and by car, do you mean the sheave for the genoa sheet which slides along the track? - do not underestimate the extent of my ignorance!). I'm pretty sure that while the position of mine might be changed, I can't imaging doing it on the fly, under load.

 

[snooks]

There is a book called "sailpower" which would help you a lot.

The easiest way to find out how old your sails are is feel them. If they feel like soft cotton, they're shot! They should have the stiffness nearer to that of a paperback cover. You can also tell by how baggy they are, if the have draft stripes, lines in the sail running fore-aft parallel to the deck, when the sail is set correctly (with correct halyard tension) they should have the shape of a nice aero foil/wing section. If it's too deep or has an uneven look to it, again this is bad. Also look along the leech of the sail, and if this is concave, the tack looks like it's stretched, again a bad sign.

 

[PeterWright]

Some answers

Hi Neil,

Apologies in advance, I've not sussed out yet how to get quotes from other posts in my reply, and I'm struggling with a Czech computer that gets its z's and y's mixed up and needs shift to write numerals, not to mention punctuation marks hiding under keys that bear no resemblance... and I never could type anyway!

If you've no traveller, just forget about it, but make sure you have a powerful purchase on your kicker, with a reasonably low stretch rope. If you ignore bending of the boom, easing the main sheet with a "perfect" kicker is the same as traveller down. You've plenty to think about before looking for mods like adding a traveller on the main sheet.

You've sussed the best way of determining the condition of your genoa - get someone on board who can advise you, if he/she is a sailmaker, better still! Snooks' suggestion to check ther feel is fine if they were made from bog standard Dacron, but there have been plenty of different sailcloths used, with different feel, since your Sadler was built. The first thing I would look at is whether you can get a good luff tension. If you get to the limit of the forestay length or the halyard splice binds in the masthead sheeve before you've got a really tight luff, the sail has no chance in a blow. If you're lucky enough to have camber lines (Snooks called them draft stripes) it will help with the next bit, but it's still possible without them. Look for where the sail is furthest from a straight line from the luff to the leech (this is called the point of maximum draft). It should be around 40% of the luff - leech distance aft of the luff. If it's more than this, try more halyard tension to pull the draft back forward. If you can't get the pt. max. draft less than 50% in a blow, the sail is passed its best. If its over 50%, your biggest sail is providing very little drive and an awful lot of heeling force. The aerodynamics of this are relatively simple, but I won't go into them here.

Roller reefing marks. I use a guide of J/10 for each reefing mark. So on our Moody 425, which has I=15.77m, J=5.03m, we have marks at 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5m along the foot from the tack. But this is not critical, put the first mark at a point you find a useful "first reef" then 2 more at the same spacing.

You have understood what I mean by car. Your boat clearly does not have "towable cars", which make their adjustment under load fairly straightforward; she was not designed with a roller reefing genoa in mind. There are techniqes involving standing firmly on the sheet that make adjustment under load possible, but not easy (especially when the deck's awash - you get wet feet!). You won't be surprised to hear that, after new sails, this was the first rig mod we did on our 20 year old Moody, and it's really worthwhile.

To judge the correct car position, you really need at least 2 rows of tell tales on the genoa (both sides) a high row and a low one. It's important that the aft most ones in each row are at least 500mm away from the roll of sail when it is rolled up to the third mark and the foremost at least 500mm aft of the luff. Now, sailing hard on the wind, start learning to sail by the tell tales. If the windward ones stream nicely aft and the lee ones do anything else (drop, wriggle or even go round in circles) point up a bit more. If the leeward telltales stream aft nicely and the weather ones do someting else (pointing upwards) you're pinching. When all stream aft nicely, you're in the groove.

OK once you've got the hang of that, start looking for whether the top and bottom rows are telling you the same story. If as you ease closer to the wind, the top weather telltales flick up before the lower ones, you need to flatten the head of the sail a bit - move the car forward to increase leech tension. If the lower row is the first to show you're pinching, move the car aft to flatten the foot.

Set and mark your car positions sailing on the wind - depending on the cut of the sail, you may well find they need to change for other points of sail and they almost certainly need to change as you roll up the genoa. Now you know why I like towable cars - with a genoa over 50 sq. m. it's not just to keep my feet dry!

But don't despair if you don't have towable cars. You need to take the load off the sail to roll it anyway. If you have premarked positions for the cars to match the rolls, you can adjust the car position before cranking in the sheet again, and know that it will be right. If it needs varying for other points of sailing, you will soon derive rules of thumb like: "one hole ahead of the mark for a beam reach, two holes ahead for a broad reach."

What it's all about is time sailing your boat to get to know her. In contradiction, time spent sailing other peoples boats is a fast way to learn and bring back ideas to use on yours and, even if you're a dedicated cruiser, some time on a racing yacht is probably the fastest way to learn techniques.