Sailing in Waves - Finally a Video Which Brought it Together for Me!

Finally
This Vid' is really kind of the Holy Grail for me and I am very grateful to "Dan Self Sailing" This is in Lasers, - hey, why is the relevant for my keel boat ? Well the principles really scale up with the waves for day keelers, sports boats and so on. THe bigger the boat, the bigger the sea before you are actively helming, bearing away at or just before the top of the wave is met when sailing upwind. Now in my next blog I will look at prepartion and boat set up " for the race" , or for the leg of the race. In relation to this short blog and the laser video, you can set the boat up to have enough power to punch through waves and hold a line until the waves are too big. So what you are doing is keeping the power on, while reducing the heeling. Sails deep on the foot, running maybe a nice "hollow cut" no 2 if you have one ( a genoa which has a long foot, but is curved to a thin triangular top, thus keeping the CoE low down, power with less heeling). Probably looking at a flattener with cunningham on ( or a mini reef with these hauled down to the boom if your sail tolerates this) and depending on the boat this type of " punching on" would maybe be to wind and waves relative for a first full reef. Steering is most likely a little low, going for an angle or groove where the boat keeps a consistent speed and acceptable VMG. Pointing higher and rocking the boat may look good but you will be shaking flow off the keel and hull and in fact making less VMG. ( Velocity Made Good) Eventually for the size and to some extent the hull shape of your boat, this means of making progress reaches a limit. To keep speed on in the boat you end up sailing so low that you aren't making good progress to windward, you are more or less reaching, or using such a large distance that in fact you are risking sailing towards a lee shore for example, or just tiring everyone out. The boat may become difficult to handle due to the hull being lifted sideways and more or less of the bow and stern being exposed. So that is the point in cruising when you would definetly steer actively in waves. In racing you will find from experience with your boat, especially in one design or in very similar HC classes like the RC 35 in IRC, that active sailing pays off with optimal VMG much earlier than you may have anticipated. Generally speaking, the heavier the boat, the less well it pays off and vice versa. So in the Bene 25 " schplatu" the helm found that even in a relatively small chop, the boat benefited from a little nudge up as the cres was approached, and a little down as the bow went over. The principles of this are as follows: you maintain waterline contact more of the hull. This means you avoid the drag caused by shaking off your two generated waves ie your wake, which causes drag. Also it means the stern isnt digging in as it reaches the top of the wave , causing the " washing machine" drag at the transom. Furthermore, the water at the top of the wave when you are beating is going against you at its highest velocity. Finally you then avoid the bow slamming down into the trough, the boat slowing, and the next wave stopping the boat further- especially prominent in small, heavy boats or conversely light sporty boats with 'plumb bows' where the volume is low in the bow and they can bury themselves in the next wave. If you run a sports boat, it may even pay to actively trim the mainsail for these very small luffs and bear aways. In steering you want to find out the optimum time to head up, which uses a smooth motion on the helm usually, and then when to bear away, which is a somewhat more aggressive , almost jerky pull on the tiller to put the bow down. The aim as said is to keep the point at the bow the waterline usually in contact for the reasons above. That is your guideline . if you can see the bow. Maybe a Go Pro is a way of recording what happens otherwise, or a crew commentary. Bearing off at the crest might be too late or in some boats a little early, depending too on the wave size and wave-legnth. On the Clyde and Solent we quite typically get a big tide running against wind which compresses the waves, shortening them and making for deep troughs, so the transition from punching a line to sailing actively is really important to appreciate. It may be quite a large wave size before it pays to steer over the top with short, deep troughs making steering high and bearing away not so effective. Finally a comment on swell. This is the very opposite, when sailing into a swell on a beat. Here the boat, any boat, has a long old hill to climb and is fighting gravity possibly as much as water resistance! Here you have to actually do the revers, begin a bear away as you are say half way up to keep speed on, then take the advantage of "falling" to harden the boat up and maintain VMG. When you have the delight of beating in a following swell, and this is a wonderful feeling especially at night, in a fast boat you often sail faster than the wave train so begin to surf down waves and catch the back of the next one. Here you have to bear away or sheet in as you accelerate down the wave - also the rudder may well become dead when if the water speed exceeds the boat speed as a wave picks you up verticat near the crest if it is rolling under you and you should be aware a boat with weather helm or too much sail up can actually broach to windward unexpectedly while on such a beat. This also happens in fast seas, like down in the roaring forties where the boat momentarily surfs then the wave escapes them , leaving the rudder dead as they come off the surf, which is a heart in throat moment expecially if the sea is piling up ontop of an underlying swell and a "sub" wave may roll in over and broach you by lifiting the stern. You can also experience this in dinghies in much smaller waves, and the only thing to do is center the rudder and use the trim of the sails and heel / hull contact side to steer a little to avoid rounding up or a chinese gybe.