Weather helm

[Fozzy83]

Hi, hopefully I have posted this in the right place.

I have a Bruce Roberts Spray 48 staysail Cutter Rig and have a few questions regarding balancing and weather helm. All information I have read up on says to counter act weather helm I need to shift the CE forward. However to do this and use less than 10% rudder I have to furl In a large proportion of the main upwind.
Going Downwind today with just Genoa set she still wants to turn up to the wind and I’m still using 15 - 20 degrees of rudder to stop her turning into the wind. With winds today around 25 knots I also have rolling seas hitting the stern and trying to turn the bow up to wind. Is this normal or am I missing something?

Any help appreciated

Thanks

 

[Pye_End]

How much rake does your mast have?

Do you have weather helm beating even with the staysail set?

 

[RJJ]

That does sound quite severe. I would start by comparing notes with a sister ship, if you can track down a fellow owner.

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

What condition are the sails in? The baggier they get, the further aft the centre of lift.

 

[Fozzy83]

I still have to get the hang of the Staysail and Yankee set up but I guess that i could push the CE forward if i get the set up right when sailing up wind.

Sailing downwind it collapses anyway so i furl it away. There is very little rake as i have an infurling main so have a very straight rig.

The sails are pretty fresh, none have been excessively used. The Yankee is like new.

Its very difficult to find a 'sister ship' as all the Bruce Roberts Sprays I have found were built from plans and various modifications made to designs meaning each is quite unique. I will keep looking though and if anyone on this forum has anything similiar i would be keen to get in touch.

 

[HissyFit]

Weather helm going upwind: [edit: I mistakenly wrote downwind]
Power up headsail:- staysail may not be enough
Depower main: ease sheet and boom vang/kicker, tension outhaul and cunningham

 

[differentroads]

I feel your pain. I have a relatively heavy underpowered 1970s 10m cruiser and can't get rid of excessive weather helm. I've halved the mast rake, no difference. Someone suggested the decksweeping 120% genoa might be depressing the bow and moving the CLR. I used the opportunity to convert from to Yankee and staysl cutter rig and replace the mainsail. Still 15° or more of weather helm by the time I'm getting 6kn.
I've learned that on my boat, reefing to balance the helm is key. Its a bit of a bugger cos she doesn't get going until 15kn of wind and I'm reefing at 20kn!
My remaining option is to shorten the forestay to make the mast dead upright. I'd need to add an inch to the backstay too cos I'm not sure there's enough thread left at the backstay turnbuckle

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

I should add that if you mean that the boat was being rolled by the quartering waves - that causes a different problem. The tidy little drawings showing sail/keel balance don't apply. Your rig is hanging miles over the side of the boat and now has a much larger lever around the keel with which to round the boat up. Take that to the limit and you get the classic broach when the rudder stalls. Because you've already got bad weather helm the rolled effect will be that much more marked.

You're right about the waves too, but it's not just the stern floating away sideways in response, the whole front face of the wave is rolling downwards disrupting the flow over the rudder - particularly at the top. This means that you need to wind in more helm to get the same effect.

 

[Wansworth]

Hi, hopefully I have posted this in the right place.

I have a Bruce Roberts Spray 48 staysail Cutter Rig and have a few questions regarding balancing and weather helm. All information I have read up on says to counter act weather helm I need to shift the CE forward. However to do this and use less than 10% rudder I have to furl In a large proportion of the main upwind.
Going Downwind today with just Genoa set she still wants to turn up to the wind and I’m still using 15 - 20 degrees of rudder to stop her turning into the wind. With winds today around 25 knots I also have rolling seas hitting the stern and trying to turn the bow up to wind. Is this normal or am I missing something?

Any help appreciated

Thanks

There is a Roberts spray cutter on YouTube,a voyaging couple,might indicate something

 

[Jamie Dundee]

Weather helm going down wind:
Power up headsail:- staysail may not be enough
Depower main: ease sheet and boom vang/kicker, tension outhaul and cunningham

He only had the genny out

 

[Refueler]

My boat is significantly shorter than yours but I have similar problem that Weather Helm is there even with main out of the way ... but I know why !

My Genny adds to the main and causes the WH ... its a trick question I have on the boat ... how to curb the WH and of course its normal people say reduce or let out the main .... fine but it doesn't reduce the WH significantly ... so I roll in a few turns of genny and voila - she's far better and in fact I can improve her speed and general sailing by balancing the reef of both main and genny.

Mast rake makes very little difference if any on my boat ... tried it.

 

[Wansworth]

Went through that awful period where racing created boats with massive Genoa’s and small mains

 

[HissyFit]

He only had the genny out

I was meaning to reply to the upwind . That was a typo. I'll edit, thanks.

 

[Praxinoscope]

I don't think I can help you directly, but the late David Sinnett-Jones who built his Bruce Roberts Spray himself, and then completed a circum-navigation in it (Zane Spray) sailed out of Aberaeron and was a long time member of Aberaeron Yacht Club.
I never sailed with Dave, although like all members of AYC I knew home quite well, but I don't remember him ever commenting on severe weather helm.
Unfortunately most of those who sailed regularly with him are no longer with us, but I will ask down at the club to see if any of the current members did sail with him on Spray, and remember any modifications that Dave may have introduced to reduce WH.
I am trying to remember if he mentions anything in his book 'Not All Plain Sailing', unfortunately I gave my signed copy to the club for a raffle prize ages ago so can't check.
It was a sad end to Zane Spray, she sunk in the Irish Sea and despite attempts to raise her she is still there, Dave said that the reason she sank was he had welded a couple of bilge keels on before the last voyage, and one of these must have been slightly out of alignment as it appears to have ripped away leaving a large hole in the hull.

 

[neil_s]

I think Refueller has it above - it's not so much a problem of balance between the sails as having too much sail up. Shallow draft, wide beam boats tend to not heel very much, so the point at which they become over-canvassed is not obvious - until the tiller is under your ear and she screws up into the wind despite you! Pulling a reef down with 20 knots wind over the deck doesn't sound so bad, though.

 

[CAPTAIN FANTASTIC]

Reducing or dropping the main, the weather helm should have gone; it appears that your genoa must be very big and comes well past the mast. If this is the case, by furling the genoa (and the main if need) you may reduce the weather helm. The other alternative is to consider re-cutting/re-shaping your sails. I had a Bruce Roberts in the early 90's, very seaworthy designs

 

[Catalina36]

Hi, hopefully I have posted this in the right place.

I have a Bruce Roberts Spray 48 staysail Cutter Rig and have a few questions regarding balancing and weather helm. All information I have read up on says to counter act weather helm I need to shift the CE forward. However to do this and use less than 10% rudder I have to furl In a large proportion of the main upwind.
Going Downwind today with just Genoa set she still wants to turn up to the wind and I’m still using 15 - 20 degrees of rudder to stop her turning into the wind. With winds today around 25 knots I also have rolling seas hitting the stern and trying to turn the bow up to wind. Is this normal or am I missing something?

Any help appreciated

Thanks

I had severe rounding-up/broaching under genoa alone about 10 years ago passing Portland 9 miles out, eastbound on a spring ebb with f7 (forecast F5) from astern. I'd made faster time than expected from Brixham and arrived too soon at full ebb. HMCG told another boat it was 2m seas on a 3m swell. 36 ft boat, surfing down bigger waves than I want to see again at 12 knots with a bow wave back to the cockpit and not feeling in control as the stern rose. Eventually I got used to being laid over at silly angles and surviving but I feared trying to gybe it onto port even though we were slowly making offshore. When I eventually did so off Anvil, life was instantly transformed into waves just hissing harmlessly underneath the quarter and we didn't broach again. It suggested to me that I'd kept the wind and thus the waves too much astern because I didn't want to steer so much off the coast and once I'd gybed and started heading in I had a better wind angle which removed the rounding up. It wasn't just the angle of the wind on the sails, I think it was more about the angle of the waves to the stern and the fact that the waves were overtaking the boat making the rudder work the wrong way as if I was going astern. Lifting the stern was making the bow dig in and the boat was pivoting around it. Moral, in big seas don't try to run dead downwind/downsea. A drogue might have helped but I didn't have one.

 

[differentroads]

I think Refueller has it above - it's not so much a problem of balance between the sails as having too much sail up. Shallow draft, wide beam boats tend to not heel very much, so the point at which they become over-canvassed is not obvious - until the tiller is under your ear and she screws up into the wind despite you! Pulling a reef down with 20 knots wind over the deck doesn't sound so bad, though.

Thanks for that insight. My 10m boat is very beamy for her WL length, and very stiff, with an exceptionally low sail area to displacement ratio. Thanks to your comment I realise for the first time that what I see as a great virtue can be masking a little vice - not letting us know its time to reef. My wife is a pretty good at that though. When I notice she's steering with both hands and a set look on her face and saying things like 'its really hard to steer' and 'my shoulders hurt'. I've become aware that I tend to carry full sail for too long since sailing with her!
Bruce Roberts designs are known for their seakindliness and stiffness too.

 

[johnalison]

A sail expert might disagree, but my interpretation of CofE is that it is a more dynamic problem than just the centres of the sail areas of the two or three sails. I think that the slot effect comes into play, which is why it may well be the case as described that reducing the jib will also reduce weather helm. It should be possible to feel on the helm when the boat is being fully driven to windward, and I wouldn't expect a properly set up boat to have more than a modest weather helm at this point. If this level of heel is giving rise to marked weather helm, then something is clearly amiss, assuming the boat has been competently designed.

 

[Pye_End]

I still have to get the hang of the Staysail and Yankee set up but I guess that i could push the CE forward if i get the set up right when sailing up wind.

Sailing downwind it collapses anyway so i furl it away. There is very little rake as i have an infurling main so have a very straight rig.

The sails are pretty fresh, none have been excessively used. The Yankee is like new.

Weather helm with a quartering sea may well not be the same issue as weather helm when hard on the wind.

Tell me if this is 'teaching granny to suck eggs', but I just want to check how much the rake is - ie. this is not the same as having a straight rig - the rake is the distance aft between the top of the mast and the bottom.