Winter Ahead Oh Yee Salty Sea Dog

Winter is really upon us here in Norway by soft southern standards and now is a time for all of us in the Northern Hemisphere to reflect on the outgoing season and look forward to new adventures and racing podium chances next year.

Short of doing a winter series, which is a cold and damp affaire, what can we get up to in the winter? Boat prep - well it is essential to 'winterise' your boat and double check that no water can gather, seap in or condense in awkwards parts of the boat and pipes or hollow hull fittings such that any hard frost, so a feature of our more northerly winters here, does not create expansion damage. Osmosis and any delamination with ingress of water should be seen to before the winter is upon you as even a couple of days of frost can exacerbate problems in GRP a yacht or dinghy.

Working outdoors or in a cold shed is not much pleasure until the mercury hits 14 degrees again, and as many expoxies, paints, polyester, etc etc don't work well with either cold temnperature setting and with any chance of condensation while they are drying, then I would say, sod it. If it can't be stripped off and taken in doors then best left for spring IMHO.

However there are plenty of things which can be done in doors and others which should be sorted by prof's if you are not very skilled or short on free time. For example, you can pay for sail wash, minor repairs and 'lofting' for the winter with many local sail makers - just check they have experience in your sail material. Loose threads, delamination, leechline tears etc are all small things which are cheap to get right in the winter, but will cost you dear in a spring gale when you first are tested in the next season. Sheets and halyards are a good thing to also wash in fresh water, dry out while the sun is still up, and  go over and really think about cropping, repairing or finding hand-me-down uses for such as wharps or smaller lines on board if they are very worn at an end or usually turning block/winch length. Blocks are often quite easy to reseat the bearings on yourself also. New ropes can also be 'sand papered in' to make them less slippy and they can be cut, eyed, spliced and knotted exactly as the old ones while memory of the rigging is still fresh as a daisy

Now one thing I hate is masts left up all winter. They create a lot of leaverage in the worst winter storms, and in fact your insurance may stipulate that the mast should be down for this very reason. Also they vibrate which can damage the step. Winter here means 7 or 8 months for many, with the worst  storm weather of course. Taking it down also allows you to handle halyard removal and checking them better to see where they are being worn so you can choose to cut and splice, reverse and splice or use as a.n.other rope on board. It is easier to run lines through without losing them to some extent, and of course you get to check and repair all mast head and foot appendages like turning blocks, Cables, glands and connections can be checked, cleaned and replaced if damaged and instruments and lights can be dismounted to be stored indoors once they are rinsed with fresh water.  Teak should be oiled when dry and before it gets below 10'c. I have heard of people rubbing candles over teak decks as a form of extra winter protection which helps stop algae, but don't know if it is effective or easy to get off in spring.

Oops, Did I Say Repair and Improvements Strategy Yet ?

Coming back round on ourselves in a chicken gybe here, I should mention that a lot of getting things fixed right for the next season depends on remembering that they went wrong in the last season!! Here a racing log and perhaps repair book are useful to keep every time the boat is raced, cruised, delivered or taken up on the hard. It may be that something is not actually broken, just not functioning optimally, and it is a good thing to ask other boat owners of your class or set up what they do, to for example, make the kicker easy to release and rejam. An early winter cleaning party can be accompanied by a trip to the boozer or tea total cafe, with notepad in hand, to ask if they crew found any equipment a real pain in the neck, or that it had failed, or that it might wear out soon and then fail, or that it could just operate better, with less friction, more purchase, stiffer material, thinner line and so on and so on.

Armed with a list of jobs in hand, then it is best to organise yourself around your own valuable fee time, the need to remember how things were fitted or should be fitted after repair, and your budget. There are plenty small jobs which can be done at home or on milder days in the winter. You should also try to get a better price on an engine service before the season rears its head next spring. North Sails and probably quite a few lofts if asked in October, offer a winter pricing for sail making and delivery such that you get a benefit of having sails booked and taken home on their quiet season.

Courses and Networking

Ah, the long winter evenings. Well maybe your club shuts its doors October first or maybe you just didn't read the winter seminar and talks schedule. It can be worth going to lectures and often the best are run at a regional level, such as with the RORC or the CCC and can be worth travelling to the big smoke for. Maybe you would like to arrange some lectures and 'workshops' were self appointed club experts and class afficionados can give a talk, answer questions and everyone can share information and stories. Also if you don't have say a current, valid VHF certifiacate for examplke, many colleges and out door centres offer winter evning or weekend courses, This includes for some lucky, day skipper and yacht master theory. Some of the lower level courses can be very worth going to as a skipper in need of crew for next season, because they are often full of bright young things keen on turning up and without  middle aged familky commitments. As crew you may want to do the reverse, and in fact the biggest 'promotion' I ever got was meeting some owners in pubs in land locked Mancherster area by chance and a bit of networking. Depsite being at the infamous  Leigh and Lowton SC during the frostbite season, I got no offers to crew with folk on the briney as many did from there.

Quite a few things are decided in the winter. For example not being invited to the christmas do for the crew is perhaps a sign that you are maybe not being invited back, or are firmly on the B list for that boat. The same is true of a skipper who ends up with two of his seven regulars turning up for boat wash, pint and pie in November. He may struggle to get the eight folk or more he needs on his crew list to cover all the events in the coming season. So you may want to advetise, invite and network your way to new crew and ask what events and type of sailing they want to do. The ideal team work on boat prep together and build a new rapport in the off season. Here it is quite common for them to go ski weekend together as well as boat winterise and set up sessions.

The bigger, more prof' run events and nationals advertise atleast 9 months in advance, so you have time to build a crew spreadsheet or get yourself on someones. Networking means also career moves and perhaps just getting some experience on the boat ahead of yours in the fleet as crew or skipper by booking a seat with them early season. Many skippers allow for a drop out and hence back up of one crew per about 8 people, and at events like nationals where folk travel in yachts from all over, it is very likely the a spare man or even two can find both a sail and a berth on another boat if everyone actually happens to turn up.  Some events may then look borderline for crew numbers and you can decide where best to concentrate your holidays and training efforts with the core team.

You may choose a new highlight for your season to breath new enthusiasm into your round the cans crew, such as a first national championship or say the Fastnet Race, The North Sea Race, The Round Mull Race or the new and exotically remote, St. Kilda Race. This requires quite a lot of planning for the entry and compliance to safety, as well as it should entail training in foul weather rigging and safety on board, MOB, navigation and so on. For Solenters you are lucky enough to have a series of very good channel races which run by the RORC and the JOG, and some clubs do flotilla runs to Guernsey and so on. Metereology for the yachtsman is a big deal for the Fastnet as bitter experience has shown so that is another area to use the winter to learn up on.

Bookworm Winter

The mention of Navigation and Metereology bring me to winter reading.  There are somne very good books of course on some of the more detailed aspects of sailing as well as those mini encyclopedias which often have some learning to be extracted from for even the seasoned sea dog. Libraries in the most land lubbed stretches of darkest inland oxford and yorkshire have often a good little selection of general texts on sailing and some good wee boilers on navigation, day skipper or metereology at sea. These are often getting a wee bit pricey as the volume of books sold declines with the internet, and really apart from better graphics, metereology books haven't changed much in the last thirty years.

On line courses are available, but you know, youtube and the RYA have an amazing amount of on line videos which can help you understand how to do a manoevre or develop a strategy for the day or whatever. I find it really best to read some theory and then try and find it on youtube.

Coming soon then, the Damp Freddy reading list and jump station links to the worlds best vids on how to get that wee bitty better next season.


Why , jings, crivens, help-ma-boab , there's also my blog to read of a winter eve!

Pointy Angle Things and Real Heavy Stuff Man

To point or not to point, that is the question......well I have blogged before on the topic of getting your boat to point, but is it always a good idea?

Another thing, how many crew are actually optimal for your boat?

The two are inter-related you can say, or really bang up to each other in the equation of getting your boat to go that little faster than the one next to you, be that off a start line in a dinghy or over an ocean leg in a swing keel speed machine.

If sailing (keel)  boats didn't heel over then we could really just look at the principles of payload. Payload does a few negative things of course - it introduces more mass for the force of the sails to propel, and it introduces a degree more drag on both the hull, and some air drag by volume of those bodies above deck. It does a few positive things though, firstly if we did not want heeling as in a dinghy, we can move the ballast nicely about ie crew payload, to counteract the heeling forces. Also it helps the boat actually reduce the drag and reach design speed by achieving optimal water line- in displacement mode.

When planing, weight is a negative factor for firstly overcoming the bump in the drag curve, which means in reality climbing up the bow wave and releasing the quarter wave. Secondly it creates more drag and this may reduce the speed or make the boat fall off the plane quicker. In some boats of course an optimal amount of payload weight will secure a large and more stable planing area, or hold the darn thing stern down on the water so it doesn't cork screw out or nose dive. forward.

We could look at some equations here, but let us not do that!

Water line is crucial for all keel boats when heeling upwind, with most having quite a small latitude in which the hull is at maximum water line, and hence can be propelled to max displacement speed possible, while also providing righting lever which helps convert more sail power in to forward motion. However you have to go back to Tonne designs to find many boats which don't achieve a near full legnth waterline with even quite a light payload while heeled. Tonners had a LWL measure in there, which was cheated around a little by allowing the sugar-scoop stern to actually be in the water when 'larded' up on the rail. Some sports boats though are also quite critical to this these days, however any 22 -26 foot sports boat you choose to name, will almost definitely reach full water line with 3 large men on board! Once we have reached full length water line, upwind we cannot get any faster in terms of the hull being driven, however we can apply more power to get to that speed and that usually entails resisting more heel from either larger sails or sails sheeted-on more.

Now on a 35 foot boat a couple of hundred kilos extra above that waterline  will make a couple of centimeters difference max. This could be rather critical depending on the hull shape, introducing perhaps exponential drag or unwanted weather helm effects for example. Some boats particularly need to heel at an optimal amount in order to have best water length, like the venerable Hunter Sonata which seems to truck along with its gunwale in the water and its crews knees in the heavens.

Another big issue is that a lighter boat will accelerate quicker to its maximum achievable speed for its current water length - and in light winds for instance the amount of total power from the wind available may not equate to reaching hull speed anyway, while in heavy winds the forces on the sails have grown on the cube, and thus even reefed sails generate more power and heeling moment, and the boat will heel in a heavy gust quicker than it ever will accelerate when resolving the forces, such is a sail boat's wish.

Most boats have a minimum amount of skilled hands to maneuverer them also, relative to other boats in a fleet, there is a disadvantage in too few, and perhaps too many too.

So there is a balance between the following :

a) payload to power ratio
b) achieving optimal water line
c) not introducing more drag on the hull than we gain in resisting more heeling moment on the rail
d) Accelerating and decelerating
e) Handling the boat

In a typical cruiser racer there will be a lot of general equipment which is not needed for the average, inshore race. When we took a sigma 33 to the nationals at Cork Week in 1996, there was a container hired for the class and I bet we had the biggest deposit going. We were down to minimum class stipulated stuff, and probably a deal less water and diesel to be honest given we had done a good few hundred nautical to get there from the Clyde. Our 'boatswain' and erstwhile coach, reckons we took over a metric tonne off the boat, and our water line was around the same we noticed, as the top competitive boats, mostly also from the Clyde at that time, like Phoenix, St.Joan and Vendeval. For once, our midfleeter was at the heels of the best boats going in a fleet of 77.

Another weary lesson the Sigma 33 fleet and probably a good few other fleets too, don't ever seem to learn, is that being over-sailed messes up both your optimal water line and the 'bite' of the keel. The fleet all look at each other and want to be smothered in the gusts and powered right in the lulls, and hence tool up with number 1 genoas, rated for 18knts true, and go sail in 22knts gusting 26. The thing is if everyone does this, then all the boats heel over and make lots of leeway in the gusts, and everyone then settles down to seemingly break neck speed in the lulls again. The Sobstad Genesis No. 2 was the least used sail in the wardrobe due to this effect, that actually blowing top of 5, 24 knots true, is enough for a working jib while in fact 16 to 22 knts true works nicely with a powered up #2 (a small genoa in this boat)

As the wind increases the forces go up by the cube so there is 8 times more 'pressure' every time you go up 2 knts of the puffy stuff. You notice this most on days in fact when the wind is very broken up, and the lulls are just enough to drive the boat, or around the top of force 5 upwards when the inshore gusts get really very violent. The boat heels suddenly a heck of a lot more than it has in the lull, and often catches you by surprise if you aren't looking up on the water "above" you. It goes off sometimes on an heel like you have been hit by canon fire, and in effect your boat has done a good job in converting wind energy to heel energy.

Pointing to the Stars ?

In a fleet as mentioned above, there is a kind of flock behaviour - if everyone as above, is oversailed, then no one dares be first to believe their instruments on the TWS. Also if everyone is pointing high and in the 'high groove' then you must follow suit it seems, in order not to get smothered by windward boat shadow, or start getting luffed by irate leeward boaters, especially coming off the start line. However this is often a case of the blind leading the blind- Trust several things and experiment is my advice.

For instance I sailed an otherwise unremarkable hunter 707 over on the Firth of Forth as crew for a season. We often sailed three up, in fact most often, and the owner liked that in fact. We were up at about 300 kg it has to be said all up. The boat had to be sailed with a lot more twist upwind in any weight of it. However we never lost touch with the fleet and more over, we often came over the infamous tide and current there quicker and got ourselves going fast in the shadow of the bridge pillars and banks. When we 'turned the corner' and got the spinnaker up, we left a lot of other boats standing while they caffaffled about who was pulling what and where the weight needed to be, we were planing and standing on the transom enjoying 14 knts boat speed.  Also a very well sailed j29 over on the west coast used to perform as well on wednesday nights when she was light crewed. They relaxed, took in a reef and footed off a little.

The fact is though that not all boats have a 'low fast groove', however you would be surprised how many do, below 44' bow to wind angle, and how many benefit from being sailed lighter, lower and much faster. Low and fast has also the advantage of eeking out even more acceleration in pure forward motion in unstable conditions. Big, old displacement boats may not benefit from this approach per se, but as in the example above, there is a deal of psychology in what best-pointing for VMG in a fleet actually is, and discretion when the wind is up, is often the better form of valour.

How to Get There ?

Knowing the characteristics of your boat is key here. What was the intended net and gross weight for sailing? What crew on rail ballast was envisaged ? How do you see when the optimal waterline and heel is achieved? What is the design wind for the boat with its design payload? ( the wind speed where the sail area is optimal for speed and pointing up wind, beyond which you begin to de-power the sails and rig) Some boats have no such data available now and perhaps class chairmen keep them closely guarded secrets, locked away from the internet's hoi palloi, other naval architects will be glad to send a table of these details over.

It is worth experimenting with if you sail in a one design fleet, but more so then if you can sail alone or with a canny comrade who can keep schtuhm, to go out with a good GPS set up and define what your leeway is, COG and SOG, thus VMG actually are to see if there are chinks in the armour in the above equation.

In fleet racing then also, given that you have a fast start and space to bear away a little, see how your VMG fairs sailing lower than you usually would. You may find the boat makes markedly less leeway, and hence the high looking bows or other boats are irrelevant.

All fleets evolve from the first day a couple of OD boats or similar designs sail against each other. Some of this evolution is to do with what is best out of the physical characteristics and performance parameters of the boat, while others can be just plain old flock behaviour. Those who find a key to break ahead of the fleet by a little neck length, then move the fleet into a new evolution.