First of all, apparently yesterday’s post was truncated right before I got to the utterly useless response I got from Furuno and my ensuing rant at their customer service. My apologies, I will repost the restor perhaps and edited with the cool clarity of time version which does not vent my spleen quite so heavily.

Wind Shifts

As the forecast models have predicted the wind has both started to light and turn to the East. Unfortunately this came a little earlier than we expected, or perhaps our boat was a bit slower than expected getting to the spot on our weather routed course! We’ve had to start turning a bit earlier than we wanted to but we are fighting it tooth and nail.

The Spinnaker

One way to fight the wind shift is with our cruising asymmetrical spinnaker. This light nylon sail gives us more options when the wind goes light and behind us and today we broke it out.

I should preface this by stating that Kathy really hates the spinnaker. A lot. The only time she has apparently a documented four letter word in anyone’s hearing and this includes birthing two children was in dealing with the spinnaker.

To be truthful we’ve had our share of mishaps as we’ve been building our skills and Kathy actually bears a couple of scars from them. But we’ve gotten better with it, and even she will grudgingly admit there are times when it is the Right Sail to Use.

On a day like today we still wanted to travel as much West as we could while giving up Southward travel grudgingly. With the wind shifting from Southeast to almost East we have to point Evenstar more South to keep sailing on the same fast sail trim. Or we could go slow.

Orwe could put up the kite, another sailor pet name for the spinnaker.

With its giant sail area of more than twice that of our Genoa it pulls in a lot more air. Made of parachute like nylon instead of canvas like white sail cloth (in our case a high tech cloth called Hydranet), it fills and bellows like a balloon.

The kite does two things for us. First, it gathers more aira lot more airand helps us more more quickly in lighter more favorable conditions. Secondly because it helps us move faster it makes the Apparent wind, what the wind feels like on the boat, move forward. This in turn allows us to sail the boat a little more down wind.

The net effect this morning we were sailing with Genoa and Main, struggling to maintain 6 to 6.5 knots at a course of around 235-240 degrees. With the spinnaker up we’ve been maintaining over eight knots pretty easily and surfing on waves at 10+, while sailing a course closer to 255 degrees or deeper (less South, more West!).

That is a pretty huge impact on our day.

The downside is we don’t want to keep this sail up 24 x 7. Racers do that, but they have a lot more people and they are racing, not sailing their houses. We prefer to keep kite flying to a daytime activity.

Two reasons for this the first being it is easier to keep the sail full when you can see it and the waves around you well. The sail CAN collapse if you sail to deep and blanket it with the main sail, and you have to steer up to refill it which can be rough on gear if you do it to much. But the real reason is that this setup is more tender than the white sails and is much more likely to get messed up.

And when a spinnaker gets messed up, the mess can get big and ugly very fast. You can wrap the spinnaker around the headstay so tight you can’t get it down (done that), suck it into the rig and get it caught in the rigging (that too) or tear it on the bird spikes (yup) or rip off and destroy hardware like the loudhailer speaker (yeahthat was with the bird spike incident), lose the controlling lines, tangle up the dousing sock, etc. etc. So if you are going to DO these things it is better to do them when it is light out.

We try to avoid sending people on deck in the dark on long passages, it is just more dangerous and we see it as a an unnecessary risk if we can avoid it with care and forethought. And the spinnaker is an unruly enough beast in the daylight on a sunny day, we do NOT want to take any chance of getting caught in a surprise squall or having some other problem in the dark.

So tonight before dinner it comes down, and will probably be up again shortly after sunrise tomorrow.

Driving with the Kite

It should also be noted that driving with the spinnaker is also more challenging. Because we are hand steering the boat still everyone will get some spinnaker time. This does not make 50% of the crew happy (I’ll let you guess who is wearing the grumpy faces when it is their turn at the helm).

But even if we weren’t hand steering the boat we WOULD likely had steer with the spinnaker up. It is a tricky sail to keep full and fast and I am in no way convinced the autopilot could handle it. But this nowwell it isn’t really any extra hand steering, is it?