Sailing advice - mainsail lying on shrouds?

[2Hulls]

Originally Posted by paxfish

The trick is just to go faster! Turn up wind a bit, get your speed up with sail trimmed for a reach and then fall off downwind as your boat speed comes up.

Notice around the 20 second mark, the sails are trimmed well off the shrouds, but the waves reveal we are heading nearly downwind....

Again, that works only on very light boats. Typical cruising cats can't do it.

Dave

[beiland]

Originally Posted by paxfish

The trick is just to go faster! Turn up wind a bit, get your speed up with sail trimmed for a reach and then fall off downwind as your boat speed comes up.

Notice around the 20 second mark, the sails are trimmed well off the shrouds, but the waves reveal we are heading nearly downwind....

That might be fine in those conditions in your video, BUT it can also lead to situations were you then feel that you should have reefed earlier. A number of sailors, even experienced ones, have made that mistake of delaying the reefing of sails.

Then the wind strength doubles and the pressures (forces) quadruple, and they find themselves in a bit of a pickle,...not wanting to steer up even a little bit for fear of the side forces on that tall mainsail. Its surprising sometimes how quickly things can escalate.

I can recall a time when I was cruising back up the Chesapeake Bay from the Governor's Cup race that took us down the bay. I'm on a 37' catamaran with a crew of 3 old friends who were not experienced sailors at all (the racing crew had driven back). We were have a delightful sail up the bay with reaching/running conditions, and even flying my new code reacher sail. The wind began increasing from the south, then suddenly I noticed a few monohulls that were a fair distance behind us drastically heeling over and rounding-up under their spins. There motion was so abrupt I was having trouble telling from what direction this big burst of air was coming from.

I can recall wishing I had that full mainsail of mine down, but there was no way I wanted to hand the tiller over to one of my inexperienced guest. And I began to think about my brand new code reacher sail,...damage or overpowering. I direct my guest to re-position its leads so it squared off with our forward direction and waited for the burst of wind. Yes, going dead down wind was the solution,...we had a sleigh ride. But I was still nervous about that full mainsail.

BTW, there are often some folks that state that headsails don't impart any lift to a vessel, but rather there COE promote a down moment force to the bows. that is what the force diagrams tell us, but believe me I have experience LIFT on more than this occasion.

[barnakiel]

You do not want the sail to push on the spreaders either.

b.

[paxfish]

Originally Posted by beiland

I can recall wishing I had that full mainsail of mine down, but there was no way I wanted to hand the tiller over to one of my inexperienced guest. And I began to think about my brand new code reacher sail,...damage or overpowering. I direct my guest to re-position its leads so it squared off with our forward direction and waited for the burst of wind. Yes, going dead down wind was the solution,...we had a sleigh ride. But I was still nervous about that full mainsail.

I was sort of being a smart Alec and showing off with the video. But I know what you mean about feeling overpowered and unable to to do anything about it. Been there, and lemme find a hardpoint to hook in to!

All that said, after learning to scallop on a Hobie 16 back in the early 80's, I have always done better, even on my big Pearson monohull years ago, heading up a bit, getting the hull speed up and then coming down until speed started to fall. Heck even our 1 meter RC displacement hull benefits from this technique.