[Rhodes22-list] Higher winds

[Mark Kaynor]

I'd be interested to learn how other Rhodies w/ IMF and furling head sail set their sails in windy, gusty conditions.

We had our second regatta of the year last Saturday. At the start the wind was 18 gusting to 25. an hour later it was 23 gusting to 32, finishing up at 17 to 23, gusting to 38. Friends who have been sailing on the lake for many years say they've never seen winds like these on the lake. Going from 17 to a gust of 38 with a 20 degree shift will wake you right up!

Five out of the fifteen boats that started finished the course. Three boats capsized (dinghies all - one Laser actually went over 6 times, but persevered and went on to finish - the other two were towed in), a J/22 lost a crew member overboard (he was recovered safely in about 10 seconds by a nerarby coastguard auxiliary boat), a Seafarer 22's tiller snapped, a Catalina 22 broached pretty dramatically on a spinnaker jibe in the first downwind leg, then continued on to finish. Two 1"x1/8" stainless straps that connect their tiller to their rudder cracked but did not fail completely, though they will require replacement. A homemade canoe rig got swamped before the first mark and had to be towed in. One boat's headstay broke, and several other smaller failures also occurred on other boats.

We didn't break anything on Raven. Julie and I completed the first leg (an exciting wing-on-wing downwind sleighride) and part the second windward leg before deciding to drop out. We had the 135% genoa fully deployed for the downwind run to the first mark, then furled it and the main to slightly more than 1/2 full just before rounding the first mark. We did okay, but the gusts were making the main flog pretty badly, and it wasn't worth it to us to continue if it meant ripping sails or breaking equipment. Several other boats dropped out at this point, so we decided to quit and see if we could help some of the boats that were having real problems. 

We'd never sailed in winds much over about 20 mph. We knew the boat would handle them - we were the weak link, so we went home and studied up on it. Then we went back out again yesterday (17 gusting to 29) to experiment and mess around. We started w/ the 135% genoa about 2/3 out and no main. We gradually deployed more genoa until we had it fully out, and got the main out to about 1/4. On a beam reach the gusts heeled us a bit, but at no time was the boat out of control. It was a bit trickier on a close reach but still manageable, much more so than when the main was out 1/2 way or more. 

We were surprised to find that we were able to tack on just the jib from close reach to close reach in about 110-115 degrees. With the main fully deployed we're generally able to do it in 90-100 degrees. The wind died a down bit (to 12-15 or so) and we fully deployed the main. While we had the main fully out on a beam reach one of the highter gusts laid us down pretty well. We headed up, furled the main most of the way, fell off and continued. Succeeding gusts powered us up well, but we didn't bury the rail again. When we came in, we had a nice talk w/ the winner of Saturday's race. He suggested that we also try fully deploying the main, but raise the boom a bit with the topping lift to loosen the leech and let the main twist off up high. We're going to give that a try next time we get a chance.

Mark Kaynor