Poling Out the Headsail with the Boom

[s/v Beth]

The beautiful thing about a twizzle its that is it supost to steer the boat downwind to a degree. Are you saying you can accomplish that with a jib and staysil? Once more thing I am going to have to try!

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

Not our experience.

We were happy/stable sailing as much as 15 degrees by the Lee (but would jybe the sails if we thought that would continue more than a couple hours) and 50 degrees the other way . . . So a 65 degree range.

In light air, with some left over swell/ocean waves, the apparent wind is too low for wing and wing and the sails bang. It is better to reach off in those conditions at perhaps a 130-140 twa. The cross over point for us was often somewhere in the 10-12kt true range . . . But it depended on swell size.

And once again, I can say that our experience is similar to Evans', as are our practices. We prefer to not sail by the lee, but in shifty conditions it does happen, and we will tolerate it for a while. Being senior citizens (old farts in sailor talk) we don't gybe unless really required... it is a energy intensive routine, and as you age, fatigue management assumes as much importance as optimum speed development!l

We can carry the poled out configuration up to around 120 degrees apparent with little sacrifice in performance. Our genoa is 120%, our pole is J and if we want to carry the sail at higher wind angles we furl it a bit to maintain decent shape. Obviously not optimum but useful in changing conditions when continual upping and downing of the pole becomes burdensome.

Oh... in light airs, with angles of ~165 to 130 apparent, we set the Solent jib to leeward. Seems to add a bit of speed for very little effort.

Finally, with respect to the dread crash gybe... well, in our normal DW setup with the boom only out as far as we can get it without a lot of contact between sail and spreaders, and with a preventer rigged, getting the sail gybed while sailing very deep or slightly by the lee isn't a big deal at all. The sail fills on the "wrong" side, the boom does not move at all, let alone crashing across, there is little force on the sail because the angle of attack remains quite small, the boat continues approximately on the original course and shortly the autopilot brings her back onto the correct gybe. If it was a true wind shift, we must either gybe the main or change course, of course, but usually it is just a fluky shift or even just a particularly deep roll that changes the AWA.

Cheers,

JIm

[Symphony]

Great information- thank you all. This thread should a stickie

[captmikem]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

Got to say we loved our pole, loved sailing wing and wing - fast and easy mode. Not just a light air thing - in heavy breeze also - really nicely balanced.

Sometimes our "wing and wing" was two jibs and not the main - like working jib poked to windward and code zero to leeward. Just pulled the boat downwind, both sails easy to set and adjust, no chafe at all.

Probably our favorite passage making rig.

.

I agree, on our 80 footer we had two carbon fiber poles, and we used them well over 50% of the time on a circumnavigation, mostly just the two of us. Being a cutter it made it easier to have two poles, when the wind was up we had the 130 on the pole anytime the wind was abaft the beam, under 20 kts we had the chute up. we sailed thousands of miles with this rig. To me, a pole is a requirement if you are passagemaking.

Even with an asymmetrical chute I use a pole, without it, it just does not present itself to the wind when the wind goes aft. I have a small boat now that I single hand, a KP 46, and I use the pole either with a chute or on the 130 anytime the wind goes aft. I can not imagine sailing efficiently without one. I have tried sheeting the headsail to the end of the boom a few times, but it only worked broad reaching, when the wind goes aft the headsail collapses.

Michael

[Snowpetrel]

I agree completely with what Jim and Evans have said about poling out a headsail. In my experience it is fast, stable and safe way to run down wind on a normal loaded (non planing) cruising boat. Sometimes I come up 10 or 15 degrees to damp the rolling slightly and generate some apparent. In light airs I occasionally deliberately sail slightly by the lee to help the windvane hold a steady course.

My favorite rig is main, poled out yankee to windward and a light drifter/code zero type sail to leeward sheeted off the boom as dockhead describes. This is very fast and well balanced. If I want to minimise chafe and work and think the conditions will last for a while I will drop the main, leaving the boom to leeward to pole out the drifer. I have also run a aysmetric to leeward instead of the drifter.

I like a longer than J pole. Somewhere slightly longer than the LP of the headsail works well, getting the sail flat and well forward, helping with control. Setup right with a small flat sail poled well forward and vanged down properly the rig makes the boat almost immune to broaching, because the main depowers before the headsail backs. And the headsail right forward provides an enormous force pushing the bow downwind. The boat is hard to gybe as the headsail gets into the windshadow of the main at about 20 deg by the lee, and the main helps push her back onto course. The secret is having a pole longer than the LP of the headsail.

Evans (From memory) once wrote an excellent article about using a fixed length set of guys and foreguys for a pole to suit the headsail, this works brilliantly enabling the pole to be set in exactly the right place just by the topping lift. The pole is set and locked into place before the sail is set or unrolled. And its very easy and safe to quickly drop or roll the sail away leaving the pole rigged. Thanks Evans for the great idea.

Telescopic poles can be a hastle, but they can often be the only way to get a pole long enough to pole out a big overlapping sail.

The average cruising boat should be built strong enough to survive dipping the boom in the water as long as you aren't doing stupid speeds. I have done it a few times with no damage, not that I would encourage it, but its pretty hard to do on the most modern designs with high freeboard and high short booms. I suspect you will break the preventer long before the boom goes, as we did once. The exception to this is when you use short vangs/downhauls without a preventer. These can place very high bending loads in the middle of the boom in this case.



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[Snowpetrel]

Here is an old post with some relevant info, and some links to Evans excellent articles.

Originally Posted by Snowpetrel

This here from Beth and Evans is my idea of perfect, and matches well with my experience. Notice they don't use the Asymmetric in this example, and this also matches with totems experience.

Asymmetrics are lots of fun, fast, easy and look good, but the useful wind range and angle is too narrow for the average heavy shorthanded cruising boat. I personally have found a symmetrical spinnaker to be more useful for this kind of fun on a heavy boat, being so much easier to sail dead down wind and gybe in the light airs that we use them in. Both can get dangerous at sea in a big swell, with light airs. In this case they can very easily wrap the rolled up headsail if you aren't careful, then very bad things happen.

For long distance offshore when shorthanded I would go for some type of code zero, drifter, blast reacher or drifter thingy(depending on whose terminology you want to use!) on a removable continuous line furler, or just hanked onto a removable solent stay just inside the rolled up headsail. This is normally used with the poled out headsail, either with or without the main depending on wind angle and chafe. Halyard chafe can be an issue with the removable furlers, it's not so bad with a solent stay, and the solent stay can also be used for a storm jib or working jib.

A good pole setup is the key to making this work, as the key driver is still the poled out headsail. Stowing the pole base up the mast works a treat if it's set up right, with a fixed length bridle (see here) to hold the pole in the right position. Just clip in the headsail sheet, pull down the pole base and the pole is deployed (the topper is preset to the right height), then roll out the headsail. I like to make the pole longer than the J, to hold the headsail out flat and well forward. This helps to stop her rounding up. I used a huge telescopic pole on snowpetrel to spread the 130% genoa effectively.

Snowpetrel on the way to Antarctica, TWA about 165 deg.

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[Stumble]

I may need to rethink my objections to wnw... I'm still not sold, but next time is relavent I'll give it a try.

[knockabout]

the pole is much safer to sail / you can rig an uphaul and downhaul to help control in the inevitable strong gust of wind from opposite direction / free flying the spinaker in intermittent downwind works with most spinaker types/ sheet rope off the foot of a jenniker as well as the clew and let the halyard out so the head can climb works also/ your spinaker pole is slightly shorter than our mast / we don't have a cast iron main so we don't like anything hindering the safe working of our main/ that 1 extra knot sounds like a lot of work for a cruising boat / genoa on a furler with a matching length pole so the pole end is well clear forward of the forestay still connected with the sail furled/ much safer / we probably average 4 1/2 -5 knots an hour and try to sail as easy as we can/ keep the pole and practice rigging it and using it without the sail clipped on/ you won't be able to compare till you try / sounds like fun but all too technical
sailing instructions : pull cloth up adjust till you are going forward = sailing
keep the water on the outside of the hull = floating
arriving at destination = making passage


relax and enjoy your sailing

[barnakiel]

It is interesting to read how many people, and to what extent, will sail her by the lee. Frankly, I, "never". I could, in flat water, as I did in small dinghies at times.

Our hull works too much on the big waves and so something like 15degs by the lee would definitely end up in a crash sooner or later ;-( Let alone the change in how she moves that I immediately notice and do not feel comfortable with.

Every boat crew is different for sure.

b.

[SVTwilight]

Originally Posted by Stumble

Not that it matters to you, but racing rules don't allow it. The other issue is that typically the jib sheet needs to be lower than the boom allows and to far outboard to be controlled by a deck mounted barberhaul.

Fundamentally if the lead is in the right place I don't think it matters much how it gets there. Just so long as it is in the right place.

I don't know your boat, but my guess is that a symetric spinnaker is going to be faster downwind than an asym, because I don't think you are fast enough to pull the apparent wind forward enough. The trade off of course is that a big symetric requires a lot of man power to set and jibe.

But I am not sure you wasted money anyway. You could probably repurpose the pole you have into a sprint pole for an asymmetric easily enough. Refit poles like this are becoming pretty common. The major question is if the pole you have is stiff enough to handle the loads (I am betting yes), and how to mount it (Selden has a great retrofit asym pole system you could crib from).

Edit to add: I despise sailing wing and wing, I think it is dangerous, and makes the boat very hard to control. Leading to far to many crash jibes. I simply will not do it. So I discount the suggestions above, not because it won't work, but because I find it unacceptably dangerous.

Adding a deep runner, with the spinnaker pole would force you to sail higher than wing-on-wing but at higher speeds (maybe not high enough to make up the extra distance). But allow you to be far safer.

Interesting, We tried wing amd wing in a fashion suggested in an article by Robert Perry (and to be fair I think a few things we read from Evan and Beth): foreguy amd Afterguy on the pole wirh topping lift, preventer run from the boom end all the way to the
Bow amd run back to a cleat by
the cockpit. Everything is tied down safely and tight.

We love it, total control and we use it with our 110 jib, aspin and drifter.

So far, completely safe and forgiving ride DDW for us at least up to the 25 knots of wind we have used it in, and even tolerates a little sailing by the lee.

Still I want to try it with the boom as the OP has mentioned.....

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

It is interesting to read how many people, and to what extent, will sail her by the lee. Frankly, I, "never". I could, in flat water, as I did in small dinghies at times.

Our hull works too much on the big waves and so something like 15degs by the lee would definitely end up in a crash sooner or later ;-( Let alone the change in how she moves that I immediately notice and do not feel comfortable with.

Every boat crew is different for sure.

b.

It's a big disadvantage for downwind sailing, if your rig won't tolerate sailing by the lee to some extent. It would mean that you can't sail DDW at all.

Aft-swept spreaders of course make it much worse. But my rig is ok to at least 20 degrees by the lee on the mainsail, with the boom preventered out to the shrouds and the vang on hard. No crash gybe as long as the boom is firmly held between mainsheet and preventer so that there can be no snatching. The main may be backwinded a bit, but you just put the helm up and get it right way around again. There's lots of warning before this happens.

Obviously the stronger the wind, the more careful you have to be about this. But the problem is that sailing wing on wing, one sail MUST be by the lee to some extent, since there's no way to hold a perfect 180 to the wind course. Without poling out the jib, that has to be the main. So I would typically set the pilot to steer at 170 (or 190) to the true wind when sailing this way. With the jib poled out you could steer 180 since it will now also tolerate being sailed by the lee to some extent.

In conditions too strong for this to be safe, get rid of the mainsail, center the boom, and just use the jib. By that time, the jib will give you all the drive you need anyway.