Bull Sails. Sailmakers

Sailing downwind in strong wind and waves is definitely the most challenging time for a helmsman. Incorrect technique or lack of concentration can have catastrophic consequences for the boat and is downright dangerous for the crew. Those readers old enough to remember the halcyon days of IOR boats with their masthead rigs and pinched in sterns will all have tales of horrendous broaches and involuntary gybes. It was a welcome relief when Bruce Farr and other New Zealand designers came along with fractional rigs on lighter boats with wider sterns. Today's IRC racers are a delight to steer and a welcome relief to all of us sufferers of "IOR back", incurred while wrestling those huge lumps of boats downwind. Heavy air running is probably the aspect of steering that requires the most natural ability of the steerer. A lot of sailors can be taught to steer by looking at the telltails, waves, angle of heel, etc, and after a while become quite competent, but only a rare few instin...

Everyone knows the helmsman is the driver of a yacht; he or she is the person who actually points the boat in the (hopefully) right direction and turns the corners when tacking, gybing or mark rounding. But imagine how hard it would be to drive a car with little or limited control over the accelerator. This is the vitally important role of the mainsheet trimmer on a keelboat; he is as important to the steerer as his right leg would be if he were driving a car. If he does his job correctly he can make the world of difference to the helm and in fact the actual setting up of the whole boat begins with what he does. He is the barometer of the boats performance. It is a cruel fact that when a mainsheet hand does a good job no-one notices them, but do a bad job the whole crew knows about it. So being on the mainsail is a tough gig, as most main trimmers need to be very competent and knowledgeable sailors in their own right. It is always an advantage if they personally have a fair bit of helm...

The start of a boat race is where you can set up your whole race, get into clear air and going the right way initially and the rest of the day can fall into place fairly easy. A good start preparation begins a long time before the race commences. We need to develop a plan and in order to implement that plan we need to accumulate as much pre start data as possible. Begin by reading the starting instructions, look at the mark descriptions, the starting sequence, the recall procedures and the appropriate division flags. Out on the water we need to look at the bigger picture and what we think will eventuate on the first leg as this will have the biggest bearing on our starting strategy. Is one side of the course favoured by breeze, land mass or tide, is the wind building or dying, is the wind direction fairly regular or oscillating? These are all factors we need to consider when putting our start process together. To my way of thinking the definition of a successful start is not where or h...

Pros Vs Amateurs In these current times there can be a lot of top level sailing in the course of calendar year, there are a myriad of sensational regattas to be sailed in, if one was to atttempt to sail most of them it would require a herculean logistical as well as expensive exercise. We also have the club racing scenario, the weekend warriors who go out each week and battle around the course on a Saturday afternoon and make it home for dinner and have Sunday off to mow the lawns. The truth is that most serious yacht racers are some sort of compromise between the two, on one hand we will have the gung-ho racers who will target quite a few regattas or ocean races as their primary goals for the year, but will also squeeze in as many local club races as they can. For them the local scene is a training opportunity to trial out crew techniques, sailtrim experimentation and data collating in a racing enviroment. On the other end of the spectrum we have the sailors who actively pursue the lo...

Turbo sailing, using your staysail More and more on the race course we are seeing staysails becoming increasingly prevalent again. Once upon a time the staysail was a very popular sail. In the days of the RORC rule in the late 60’s it was commonplace for every serious racer to have a reaching rig of overlapping staysail and a series of yankee’s for different wind conditions. In the IOR days that followed there spawned a whole range of “under the spinnaker” style staysails, mostly sporting ridiculous names; Tall Boys, Lazy Boy’s, Golden Dazy Staysails and even the ubiquitous Blooper and numerous others as all sorts of combinations and rigs were tried. As the IMS and later the IRC rules came along, the staysails narrowed down to two main groups, sensibly called the Spinnaker Staysail for off wind work and the Genoa Staysail as the name implies for closer to the wind. The use of these sails requires a lot of thought and attention, if not used correctly they can slow a boat down drasticall...

Life in pit lane. It is generally acknowledged that sailing fast is all about developing and drawing on innate sensory skills, to be able to “feel” the boat and retrim or react to ever changing conditions, ensuring that the yacht is performing to her absolute maximum at all times with the helmsman, trimmers and tactician all focused on the fine nuances to squeeze every single fraction of speed from the boat. This is all well and good but before we can even contemplate the development and practise of all these sensory skills, it is of little value if the mechanical side of the crew is not functioning. The base level of sailing around a course fast is the boat handling; if this does not function then the whole operation will fall apart. The best steerers and trimmers in the world would find it hard to sail around towing a spinnaker in the water behind them. All crews need to be able to carry out all the manouvers in a race in a competent and precise fashion before we can even think of sa...

It is believed that the first recorded use of the word spinnaker was in 1866, it was a reference to a downwind sail specially built for the yacht “Sphinx” in 1865. Being a very large lightweight sail it was referred to by the yachts owner Herbert Maudslay as “Sphinx’s half acre”; which soon became abbreviated to spinnaker. Other possible origins could be a derivative of the obsolete word spoon or speen which meant to run before the wind (as in spindrift). Also a small fore and aft sail on the mizzen mast of a tall ship was called a Spanker and could possibly be a source Regardless of the starting point the word spinnaker has become a large part of the yachting vernacular and probably that one word is the cause of the most angst amongst club level and beginning sailors. We have all seen a myriad of pictures and videos of yachts wiping out in sensational style and the most common feature of these is they are nearly all under spinnaker when it happens. All yachties have a vast recollectio...

One of the most frustrating parts of owning a yacht is finding and keeping a regular crew. It is not uncommon for skippers every week to be making numerous phone calls and sending emails out desperately searching for people to make up the numbers. It is an ongoing and very onerous task; remember we all sail for recreational purposes so who needs this hassle every week? There are two facets to this dilemma, firstly how do we find the crew we need and secondly how do we keep them? It is fairly well documented that a lot of sailors leave the sport in their late teens and tend to return again in the early to mid forties. Some of the reasons for this are obvious, as part of early adulthood most people are faced with quite a drastic lifestyle change, they are thrust out into the workplace or tertiary education takes over, for many of them they have their first pay packet in hand and have expendable income for partying and spending on themselves, not to mention the lure of the opposite s...