BOSUN’S BAG
PRACTICAL TIPS FOR THE TRADITIONAL BOATERWORDS TOM CUNLIFFE ORIGINAL DRAWING MARTYN MACKRILLTHE MYSTERY OF THE FORETRIANGLE
SAILING TO WINDWARD
Back in the mid-1990s I was in a pub discussing the spec for
Westernman with Nigel Irens, her designer. Westernman is a
heavy displacement gaff cutter inspired by pilot boats of the
Bristol Channel. No compromise was made in her underwater
profile, but, unlike her progenitors, she has outside ballast. This
allows her to carry a correspondingly high-aspect ratio rig with
gratifying results. As we sketched her out on the back of a menu
card, I asked Nigel how high she might point. The boat was
intended for long-distance cruising, and he was quick to remind
me of what we both knew too well. Nobody who’s been there
wants the unpleasantness of sailing a 40-foot boat at six knots
40 degrees off the true wind with a thousand miles to go, so who
cares? The breeze is bound to shift in due course anyway.
The story is a different one when beating home at the end of
a weekend. That is when we need to point up and foot fast, and
that’s where many a gaffer falls short.
They vary widely, of course, but whether they started life as
race boats, oyster dredgers or glassfibre yachts built last year,
they all share the same issues.
The mainsail and the topsail are important, obviously, but I’m
saving them for another day. The real crunch lies in the
foretriangle. Schooners, ketches, cutters and sloops; none of
them goes upwind without headsails. Setting the genoa on a
closehauled bermudan production cruiser is largely a matter of
grinding it in until the leech is just off the spreaders, while
making sure the sheeting angle is correct. Nothing to it really.
Life on a gaffer is more subtle.
SINGLE HEADSAILS
Persuading a gaff sloop to point and foot is simple, so long as
the luff is kept tight and the sail isn’t over-sheeted. Where the
luff is hanked on to the forestay, as it often is on traditional
American vessels with big single jibs, luff tension shouldn’t be an
issue. If the sail is set flying, however, and the luff is allowed to
sag, the guys in the cockpit will find themselves sheeting it ever
tighter in their hopeless attempts to point up. Instead of lifting
the boat to windward, the sail will be pulled around the back of
the main, figuratively speaking at least, until its output is all drag
and no lift. It will also backwind the main. The net results are
horrid. Either by means of running backstays or by a powerful
jib halyard purchase working against a suitably stiff spar, that
luff absolutely must be as straight as possible.
Given that the jib is setting as it should, the secret of making
good closehauled progress is to bear in mind that most gaffers
will point higher than they can actually sail. If you whack a
single headsail in as though the boat were a modern racing
sloop, she may point up at less than 45° from the true wind, but
she won’t be going anywhere fast. Instead, eyeball the wind
ripples on the water and steer about 50° off these. For a heavy
vessel such as a trawler, the angle may be wider. Whatever it is,
set the headsail by easing it until just before the luff lifts, then let
the main off a notch. The boat will fly. Once you’re making a
speed approaching the square root of your waterline length in a
good breeze, try nudging up towards the wind, sheeting in
carefully until way starts dropping off. This is a sure sign that
you’re up too high; leeway increases and everything goes to hell
in a basket. Keep her footing fast and all will be well.CUTTER FORETRIANGLES
Similar essentials apply to two headsails, but there is, as one
might guess, a little more to it. The secret, as before, is a tight jib
luff. Without this, all else, as the preacher said, is vanity. He
wasn’t referring to pride. What he meant was that any further
efforts will be in vain, and so they will.
A slack jib on a cutter inevitably ends up oversheeted and
stuffs any airstream trying to flow around the staysail. Misery
results. In a future issue we’ll cock an eye at using halyard
purchases. Right now we shall take it as read that there is a
straight jib luff, so we can pile on the magic.
Once the boat is making decent way, start by whacking the
staysail in as hard as it will go. Sailing at around 50° from the
true wind, sheet the jib so that it is as close as you can be
without backwinding the staysail. This may involve actually
easing the jib sheet because if the staysail is suffering any
interference you’re pointing higher than you can sail. As speed
builds, the boat can often work steadily nearer the wind,
bringing in the jib sheet until the staysail won’t allow any more.
And that’s it. Hard on the breeze, going like a train.
Ideal airflow is usually best reached with the jib sheet fairlead
as far outboard as possible. Westernman’s was actually outside
the bulwarks and she flew upwind like a witch on a broomstick.
This permits the sail to be sheeted firmly without messing up the
staysail. As the sheet hardens, the entry of the sail is flattened,
allowing the boat to point higher and still foot. With the lead
inboard, the jib collapses the staysail as it is sheeted and much
can be lost. On many boats, cranking up the jib halyard can
slacken the forestay so that the staysail luff hangs out. The
answer seems to be to ease the jib luff a touch until both sails
adopt a similar curvature. For jib topsails, the same rules apply
as for the jib, but achieving a straight luff without bending the
topmast fid is a challenge to test any bosun.