Sailing upwind

[carstenb]

For a daysail yes - it is exhilarating, fun and great.

When you are double-handing, 4 hours on watch, 4 hours off and doing it in 20+ knot winds with 12 - 15 foot swells also from the front it is less fun.

Especially after the first week or so.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by carstenb

For a daysail yes - it is exhilarating, fun and great.



When you are double-handing, 4 hours on watch, 4 hours off and doing it in 20+ knot winds with 12 - 15 foot swells also from the front it is less fun.



Especially after the first week or so.

4 hours on and 4 hours off sounds like the problem, not necessarily the upwind. Have you tried other couple’s watch systems? We’ve had good fortune with the 6 on 6 off overnight and relaxed through the day. With a decent wind vane or autopilot there’s no need to steer.

[wolfgal]

Originally Posted by carstenb

For a daysail yes - it is exhilarating, fun and great.

When you are double-handing, 4 hours on watch, 4 hours off and doing it in 20+ knot winds with 12 - 15 foot swells also from the front it is less fun.

Especially after the first week or so.

so true, especially during first few days if/when one of the two who needs to be on watch gets a bit seasick

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by carstenb

For a daysail yes - it is exhilarating, fun and great.

When you are double-handing, 4 hours on watch, 4 hours off and doing it in 20+ knot winds with 12 - 15 foot swells also from the front it is less fun.

Especially after the first week or so.

I obviously have PTSD , been there done that, never doing it again[emoji1787].

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by fxykty

It all depends. Our boat is perfectly comfortable in most conditions offshore on any point of sail. It helps to have a boat that doesn’t heel much (about 5*) and doesn’t make movement, cooking, toileting and sleeping a PITA.

Gosh, if you’re in New Zealand you’re going to hate heading to the islands (or back down here from there) if you don’t like upwind or close reaching. A lot of those YT “worst sail ever” videos show one of these passages.

Your not trying hard enough [emoji16], we sailed from Seychelles to Mayotte, hard, fast to windward, we had friends on a tpi lagoon 57 (the older one) also did the trip, good sailors, good boat...they were as traumatized as us[emoji1787].....exact words "that's the tuffest passage we've ever done", and they circumnavigated and some.

A Outreamer I believe to be the same as yours (maybe not the light) tried to tighten the angle even more and head to Mauritius, they lost the boat, had to abandon it at sea , they got really beat up.

[JPA Cate]

Never doing that again!? Us neither. i think 6,800 n mi. to windward cured us of that, for a day in and out sort of thing.

Ann

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by daletournier

Your not trying hard enough [emoji16], we sailed from Seychelles to Mayotte, hard, fast to windward, we had friends on a tpi lagoon 57 (the older one) also did the trip, good sailors, good boat...they were as traumatized as us[emoji1787].....exact words "that's the tuffest passage we've ever done", and they circumnavigated and some.

A Outreamer I believe to be the same as yours (maybe not the light) tried to tighten the angle even more and head to Mauritius, they lost the boat, had to abandon it at sea , they got really beat up.

There must be a lot more to that story

[Midwesterner]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Of course you know most boats sail faster with wind on the beam. A close haul is usually a slow point of sail. It may feel more exciting, but if you want speed, put wind on the beam.

I like sailing close to the wind when I'm just doing recreational sailing. But having to sail, beating into the wind, to get to a destination can be very frustrating. If the port you are heading to is directly into the wind, it can take a long time tacking to get there.

If you are sailing in a narrow part of the bay, or up a river, it takes a lot of attention to watch the chart and the depth, sailing as close to the shallows as you can on one side, then turning to tack, until you come too close to the shallows on the other side and doing that all the way up the bay, just to get to your destination.

It's fun to ease off the wind a little and sail on a beam reach to get that speed, but then you have very little angle of tack, and you are just sailing back and forth.

[danstanford]

Part of the allure of sailing for me is the challenge of doing hard things well. We win sometimes and we lose sometimes and the inability to know what it will be each time is the reason I come back.
That preamble is explanation for the reason I enjoy upwind sailing at least as much as any other point of sail. Simply sailing out into Lake Ontario and back I will inevitably choose a good upwind leg and trim the daylights out of her to get that great feeling of being in the groove.
Given the choice to tack upwind for a 50 mile journey up the lake, I am likely to either motor or stay home though.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Midwesterner

I like sailing close to the wind when I'm just doing recreational sailing. But having to sail, beating into the wind, to get to a destination can be very frustrating. If the port you are heading to is directly into the wind, it can take a long time tacking to get there.

If you are sailing in a narrow part of the bay, or up a river, it takes a lot of attention to watch the chart and the depth, sailing as close to the shallows as you can on one side, then turning to tack, until you come too close to the shallows on the other side and doing that all the way up the bay, just to get to your destination.

It's fun to ease off the wind a little and sail on a beam reach to get that speed, but then you have very little angle of tack, and you are just sailing back and forth.

Yes. Sometimes even gentlemen must sail to weather .

As most say, it can be enjoyable and challenging for those just out playing around. But for cruisers who are out there for days or weeks, trying to get somewhere, it's hard to see this kind of sailing as "fun." Necessary sometimes, but not fun.

[hpeer]

Chart a coastal course from St Johns, NL to St Marrten. Look at the prevailing winds. Then try actually doing it.

You will be cured of bashing.

[Rob_P]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Chart a coastal course from St Johns, NL to St Marrten. Look at the prevailing winds. Then try actually doing it.

You will be cured of bashing.

Here, the "Baja Bash" is a very well known phenomenon. The usual weather/ocean conditions combine to make returning home a trip into both wind and current.

To me it's strange to hear that others don't sail into the wind while most of the local cruisers who go to Mexico do it on a regular basis. From here (Channel Islands Harbor), even a (long) day sail to Catalina Island would mean a 70 Nm return trip "upwind" against the current the whole way. People do it all the time. There's even a you tube channel (sailing Tritea) where they leave LA and visit the Channel Islands on a regular basis and they're not alone in doing it.

So I don't get it. It's a "sail" boat. Why are people motoring when sailing into the wind is the second fastest design feature of the boat? Why do they only sail downwind? I'm getting the idea that most sailors only sail to get to the destination (and the grog) as if the trip isn't important at all other than the fact it was "free."

Maybe they're "boaters" and not "sailors"?

[DMF Sailing]

Originally Posted by danstanford

Part of the allure of sailing for me is the challenge of doing hard things well. We win sometimes and we lose sometimes and the inability to know what it will be each time is the reason I come back.
That preamble is explanation for the reason I enjoy upwind sailing at least as much as any other point of sail. Simply sailing out into Lake Ontario and back I will inevitably choose a good upwind leg and trim the daylights out of her to get that great feeling of being in the groove.
Given the choice to tack upwind for a 50 mile journey up the lake, I am likely to either motor or stay home though.

I haven't sailed a J 88 but I've spent plenty of time on j 27s, and I'd say you have one of the better boats for enjoying upwind sailing performance.

[Be Free]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The thing about heel is that beyond a certain point it rapidly becomes counter-productive. People like to talk about "burying the rail," and they think this means they're really going fast or sailing well. But the reason it feels that way is because you've got way more strain on everything than is wise. More likely they're making more leeway than headway at that point.

On my boat, if we're much over 10 degrees, we've likely got too much sail up. Time to reef. The boat will go faster, and be far more comfortable. And we won't be putting all that unnecessary strain on sails and rigging.

Anything past 15 degrees is just wasting wind on my boat. I'll go much faster with one or even two reefs if I keep the heel at or below 15 degrees. YMMV


Getting back on topic: being a coastal, river, and lake sailor I do enjoy sailing upwind. It is a little more work and can be uncomfortable at times but I find it to be more fun. While I've never experienced a long, upwind passage offshore I can understand that it would much less fun than a few hours of the same conditions where I sail. In a Florida summer there is also a significant difference in the temperature in the cockpit. Even thought I'm faster running downwind it can feel much hotter.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Never doing that again!? Us neither. i think 6,800 n mi. to windward cured us of that, for a day in and out sort of thing.

Ann

Wow, yep, that's too much fun