My Introduction to the "Whisker Pole"

Downwind sailing is usually a bit of a drag. Flapping sails, a lot slower progress that upwind, and even worse is that not feeling any wind on your face gives the feel that the boat is standing still. Can't do much about apparent wind versus real wind. We don't have a spinnaker, but I found that the best help for gaining speed in a downwind situation is using a whisker pole!

A whisker pole is a light, aluminum pole (ours is stored in the v-berth) that can be attached to the mast and the clew of the headsail (Genoa). The whisker pole allows the sail to keep better shape in light wind usually when running wing and wing (mainsail to one side and Genoa to the other)

A couple tips I got from the Forspar website that I didn't do in my first attempt shown above to help keep the best sail shape: Use a topping lift. Attach a spare halyard to the end of the pole attached to the sail to keep the pole's weight off the sail. Next move the jib sheet block as far forward as possible. If you can get it directly under the clew (bottom corner) of the sail you've gone far enough. Making this line a sharp angle to the bottom of the sail and fairly tight will then stop the sail from "skying" or raising up in puffs of air once again improving sail shape.

The Forspar site made a comment about the position of the whisker pole that isn't possible on my boat.  "The pole should be flown level (Thus the need for mast track and cars!) and at the same relative angle to the wind as the main boom"  Training wheels has a stationary whisker pole attachment so that the pole shouldn't be level.

Any suggestions?

Novel Sunday

Watching the video of the whale crashing on the sailboat made me want to read Moby Dick!  I've never read this classic novel!  I am ashamed to admit it.  Well, I looked in my bookshelf and confirmed what I suspected to be true: I don't own Moby Dick.  But, I do own Mutiny on the Bounty!

So, I started reading this seft-proclaimed "greatest sea story of all time" after making the pate yesterday.  I am only on page 33 and it has pulled me in!  I am enthralled!  It is the story of a young man from Wales who is recruited on a 90 foot boat with 40 other men to travel to Tahiti and collect breadfruit and write a Tahitian-English dictionary.  The story takes place only a couple years after Captain Cook has made his famous journey to the South Seas. 

I'm rivetted!  This is a whole other level of poetry and depth to the sailor's life....well, to the First Mate's life more precisely!  What book will be next?  Old Man and the Sea?  Robinson Crusoe?  There are so many sailing themed classics worth reading!

It is time to make a pot of coffee on this gloomy Sunday morning and hunker down with my book and the Captain's Star Trek Snuggie!

Whichever Way the Wind Blows

“I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

Apparent Wind vs. True Wind Direction

During a sailing race last week we made a couple of bad tacks to the first mark that put us back a bit in the pack. After thinking for a bit, the problem was too much steering correction to "apparent" wind changes nstead of sail tension correction. On the 40 ft Choey Lee, we couldn't adjust the sails as constantly as on a 4 meter daysailor, but we were being really lazy sailors and paid for it.

What is true-wind and apparent-wind?


The true-wind is the apparent wind which you feel when you are not moving, for example at anchor.  The apparent-wind is the wind direction and speed which you feel while the boat is moving. As you speed up the wind on your face seems to come more forward on the the boat and this is really true during gusts as the picture below shows. The best overview I have found is a http://www.answers.com/topic/apparent-wind

We were racing in light wind conditions with frequent gusts. During the gusts instead of pulling in the sails we would "fall off" (steer away from the wind). This would put us farther and farther off our desired point of sail (direction we wanted to go). We were basically making 180 degree tacks, resulting in us just going back and forth making minimal forward progress.

Proof once again that being lazy as usual only serves to create more work.

Morro Bay Yacht Club spring race

Morro Bay Yacht Club ocean fleet had the "spring 2" race today. The second ocean sailing race of the spring was intended to be a Bermuda start 12 mile course race. This may not be an exact definition but a Bermuda start is where the handcaps for all the boats are taken into account at the start of race instead of after the race. A formula is used to determine how long each boat has to wait to start the race based on the boat's handicap. Kiskadee, the boat I crewed on, is supposedly the fasted boat in the fleet and has the lowest handicap. So we started last at 12:38. Unfortunately, light winds turned the race into only a 4 mile race to first marker and back.  Voyager captained by Wayne Ratcliff came in first. Captain Ratcliff got a really nice coffee mug, his 1st place prize!

I crewed for Captain Peter aboard Kiskadee which is a really nice 40ft  Hinkley. We started off strong, but got tired of the flapping sails and slow going after an hour and half into the cruise which we only made about a mile headway. We opened the beers and turned on the motor back to port. On the way in we saw Guyacanna aground hard and being pulled off by the kind harbor patrol.

I got some new ideas for reefing line confinguration from the other crew and how the Hinkley was set up, don't be surprised at a new post about that soon.

Sailing Teamwork and "Divorce Docking"

For a sailor that mostly goes it single handed sailing I found this video on CNN about coaching and teamwork interesting. The second half of the video is where the teamwork becomes the focus. This is has increasingly been a topic of interest since I want to get the first mate more time on the water and also to avoid the weekend sporting event of "Divorce docking". This the time honored event that happens most summer weekends in a harbor near you where a husband steering a boat to dock yells orders to his wife, who has just made a perilous jump to the dock and is currently trying to control a several ton object, yells back. We have already done this a few times and I never questioned the duty assignments. Let's review;  we have one job that requires a gentle touch with a little finesse and another job that requires brut force to man-handle a couple tons with momentum. Hmm.. might want to rethink those assignments.