Bella Barchetta in Santa Cruz

[aviatorjames]

First sail of the year for me...yay!
A pretty brisk day on the Monterey Bay!

Reefed and ripping in 20kts of wind...

A little calmer in close to the wharf where we were watching sea lions jump up onto the lower wharf structure...

You know you want one of these T-shirts...

 

[aviatorjames]

Some sailing video from Saturday on Vimeo...
You need to right click menu and choose Open link in new Tab

Bella Barchetta

 

[aviatorjames]

Put away for the evening after a good day sailing!
"Bella Barchetta" Italian for... Beautiful Little Boat
...and she certainly is!!

 

[shnool]

watch your halyard tension for your reefs, if it scallops it adds drag, and increases heel.

 

[aviatorjames]

...thanks!
I need practice at reefing in general.
I've pulled too much on the luff and forced the two lower sail slugs out of the slot.
Wondering if a reefing hook would be better for securing the luff?

 

[HERSH]

I notice that your forward running light is 1/2 way down the bow pulpit. I wounder if that was cut in with the rest of the MK II "improvements".

Hersh

 

[shnool]

another option rather than the reefing hook is to use a cunningham... I think its a severely underutilized control... It doesn't need to be a 6:1 super purchase either, a simple 4:1 with 1/4" line works great even on my boat, and you can then "set" then luff tension as you like on the fly without screwing with the halyard...

Now keep in mind the reef lines in the middle of the sail are cosmetic only don't put tension on them, if there is tension on them, something is wrong. You'd be amazed how many people get that wrong. I don't even instal them in my sail, IF I reef (and its rare these days), I leave the extra sail hang down... it may LOOK ugly, but at least I know I'm not ripping the reef line gromets out of my sail (which I TOO have almost done before, when my reef cringle popped outta the reef hook while I was re-hoisting - UGH that could have been expensive).