Sunday was a windy day! My wife and I were out on our 27' Starwind with the 110 jib and a single reefed main and still feathering the main in the strong gusts. So before going home while the wind was building even stronger in advance of a possible storm I thought it would be a good time to practice a heave to. My wife had no idea what I was trying to accomplish and she was ready to go in since the skys were getting increasingly threatening and she didn't want to be out in the rain, so we didn't take much time, but here's what happened. We closed hauled the jib on port tack and tacked over to stbd without releasing the jib. Once we were thru the wind I turned the wheel back to port and held it all the way over and locked it. Sue released the main, but now that I think of it, she probably waited until I said something which may have been a bit later than it should have been released. We heeled over quickly and initially it nearly broached us to the point where water was right at the rail. This rattled Sue pretty much because the wind was blowing strong, and while she is used to sailing on a heeled angle of up to 30 degrees before getting nervous, this was an unusual maneuver for her and she thought I didn't know what I was doing. The boat righted and started scalloping into the wind(and we released the main further so it was luffing). As we stabilized, I noted that we were moving forward since the slick was off our stbd aft quarter. I didn't anticipate so much forward motion. Also, with the 110 jib, it was hard against the shrouds, which I wasn't happy with, but since we have a hank-on jib, there is nothing more I can do about that. I thought that there was more belly in the jib than I wanted which means that maybe I didn't sheet in hard enough before heaving to. What made me nervous was that the wind pushed the boat over more than I anticipated, and if we were in conditions with large waves, it would have made me extremely nervous, especially on the initial broach. If we had a large wave coming on to our beam, it could have been really scary. As it was, Sue was not happy with the experiment, so we didn't hold it long and sailed home before we had any rain. Any comments?
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Try main alone
I have had similar disappointing trials with heaving to. What has worked for me is to roll up the jib and let the main out, then turn the rudder so the boat goes to the wind but will not tack through with the main out. This may be called fore-reaching instead of heaving to, but it calms the boat down and makes eating lunch easier.
I have had similar disappointing trials with heaving to. What has worked for me is to roll up the jib and let the main out, then turn the rudder so the boat goes to the wind but will not tack through with the main out. This may be called fore-reaching instead of heaving to, but it calms the boat down and makes eating lunch easier.
For me - same thing happens when I
hoist up the mainsail while my job is up. Therefore I my practice is to hoist up the mainsail first. I also don't heave-to with a job out, only the main. With not enough forward motion, the jib if cleated makes me heel, as you said 20-30 degrees. Also my wife stopped going years ago because of all those practice runs that she should never have been on. She is a true white knockeld sailer.
hoist up the mainsail while my job is up. Therefore I my practice is to hoist up the mainsail first. I also don't heave-to with a job out, only the main. With not enough forward motion, the jib if cleated makes me heel, as you said 20-30 degrees. Also my wife stopped going years ago because of all those practice runs that she should never have been on. She is a true white knockeld sailer.
As I read it...
If I'm reading this correctly, it appears that the only thing you did wrong was to release the main. You should leave the main sheeted in.
If I'm reading this correctly, it appears that the only thing you did wrong was to release the main. You should leave the main sheeted in.
My boat won't stay there...
I've tried heaving to many, many times and even though she's a frac rigged boat, the backwinded jib pushes the bow around eventually. She just won't stay in place. I have better luck sheeting the Main and letting the Jib sheets fly so both luff.
I've tried heaving to many, many times and even though she's a frac rigged boat, the backwinded jib pushes the bow around eventually. She just won't stay in place. I have better luck sheeting the Main and letting the Jib sheets fly so both luff.
Practice different combinations.
Every boat is different and different wind speeds and sea conditions may require different adjustments. You may have lacked information of how your boat responds when you attempted to heave to in gusty pre-storm conditions. Start with 5 knot winds and calm seas and see and record what sail combination and adjustments work, on another occassion do the same on a 10 knot and 2-3 ft seas. Move on to 15-20 knots and 3-5 seas and lastly do 25+ knots and 5-7 seas. With the knowledge of these practiced combinations in hands you should be ready to heave to at a moments notice in whatever the prevalent conditions may be. Heaving to in light air is a great way to stop the boat for lunch. Also heaving to in stiffening conditions allows you to stop the boat to put on a reef on the main. Also heaving to allows you to ride out a storm without loosing much headway to your destination. Start with both sails up in light air then drop the jib in stronger air and finally reef your main, check sheet adjustments and rudder positions. Your Starwind 27 may be a little tender to heave to with the jib up in strong winds but I bet it will heave to just fine once you get the hang of it.
Every boat is different and different wind speeds and sea conditions may require different adjustments. You may have lacked information of how your boat responds when you attempted to heave to in gusty pre-storm conditions. Start with 5 knot winds and calm seas and see and record what sail combination and adjustments work, on another occassion do the same on a 10 knot and 2-3 ft seas. Move on to 15-20 knots and 3-5 seas and lastly do 25+ knots and 5-7 seas. With the knowledge of these practiced combinations in hands you should be ready to heave to at a moments notice in whatever the prevalent conditions may be. Heaving to in light air is a great way to stop the boat for lunch. Also heaving to in stiffening conditions allows you to stop the boat to put on a reef on the main. Also heaving to allows you to ride out a storm without loosing much headway to your destination. Start with both sails up in light air then drop the jib in stronger air and finally reef your main, check sheet adjustments and rudder positions. Your Starwind 27 may be a little tender to heave to with the jib up in strong winds but I bet it will heave to just fine once you get the hang of it.
Good job Scott.
Scott...you noticed something that many don't...the direction. A real heave-to is very hard to do with a fin keel boat. One many get it right the first or second time by luck and then never pay attention to the direction after that. Now if you are in protected waters and running into something isn't a concern, then the direction doesn't matter. Just get the thing to steer itself at a knot or so and go below while keeping lookout through hatches or portholes. This is how I do it: 1) When you tack, tack slowly. You want to almost come to a dead stop before you complete the tack. 2) During the tack, real in the jib sheet. Get it as tight as possible...much tighter then what you had it at a close haul. You want the jib to overlap as much of the main as possible and not have much belly. 3) After you have the jib backwinded, then turn the rudder over. How fast you turn it over will depend and after practicing you will get a feel for it. Key is to try to keep the boat just slightly off wind until your forward motion stops. Once it stops, move it hard over. 4) Time to play with the sails. This is how you turn it into a real heave-to. First play with the main first. Don't mess with the jib until you are absolutely possitive that you can't get a true heave-to by adjusting the main sail sheet/travelier. Why: because once you start letting the jib sheet out, it's very hard to bring it back in. When do you have a true heave-to...as you already know, by the slick. It should be off your beam, not aft. If you have a stretched jib it may make it impossible because you can't get the belly out of the jib and the jib is making headway. You want the jib to push the bow one way and the main to push another. The rudder shouldn't be effective at all because you shouldn't be going forward at all...just sideways. I think the reason you were going forward is because the main was too far windward and the jib had too much belly. You don't want the wind flowing over the main, but you also want the main to push the stern windward. You also don't want wind flowing over your jib and also want it to push the bow windward. In high winds you are going to heel a lot. The higher the winds, the more you have to reef before hand (including the jib). The slick going off the beam towards the waves is the key. That is the reason to do a real heave-to, so that the slick will mellow out the wave before it reaches the hull. I've done this with 6' waves before but nothing larger so I don't know how effective it is with 10+ (the ones that are dangerous). I do agree that it is much easier to heave-to with just main alone but even that can be tempermental and many who do it will actually be feathering...heading 30 degrees off wind slowly which actually may be better then a real heave-to because a boat is much more stable 30 degrees into the waves then 70-80 degrees. A feathering will not work though at a certain wind speed. That wind speed will be determined by the freeboard of the boat. As wind picks up, we reduce sail. At some point, the wind will have a much stronger force pushed backwards against that freeboard then the sails will be able to create going forward. At that point, you loose forward progress and you loose rudder control. If you start to feel that, turn on the iron genny and keep you going forward until you can figure out what to try next (heave-to, sea anchor, run with it in bare polls and a drogue). If you decide on a heave-to, you will definately want to reduce sail as much as possible. I don't know what wind speed that is for my boat and I hope to never find out, but I have a feeling if I ever do find out, I will choose a sea anchor over heaving-to because I think I will be too scared to try a heave-to in those winds. In a true blue water boat it may not be a problem. So go practice some more in light winds to get a feel for how your boat handles the backwinded sails.
Scott...you noticed something that many don't...the direction. A real heave-to is very hard to do with a fin keel boat. One many get it right the first or second time by luck and then never pay attention to the direction after that. Now if you are in protected waters and running into something isn't a concern, then the direction doesn't matter. Just get the thing to steer itself at a knot or so and go below while keeping lookout through hatches or portholes. This is how I do it: 1) When you tack, tack slowly. You want to almost come to a dead stop before you complete the tack. 2) During the tack, real in the jib sheet. Get it as tight as possible...much tighter then what you had it at a close haul. You want the jib to overlap as much of the main as possible and not have much belly. 3) After you have the jib backwinded, then turn the rudder over. How fast you turn it over will depend and after practicing you will get a feel for it. Key is to try to keep the boat just slightly off wind until your forward motion stops. Once it stops, move it hard over. 4) Time to play with the sails. This is how you turn it into a real heave-to. First play with the main first. Don't mess with the jib until you are absolutely possitive that you can't get a true heave-to by adjusting the main sail sheet/travelier. Why: because once you start letting the jib sheet out, it's very hard to bring it back in. When do you have a true heave-to...as you already know, by the slick. It should be off your beam, not aft. If you have a stretched jib it may make it impossible because you can't get the belly out of the jib and the jib is making headway. You want the jib to push the bow one way and the main to push another. The rudder shouldn't be effective at all because you shouldn't be going forward at all...just sideways. I think the reason you were going forward is because the main was too far windward and the jib had too much belly. You don't want the wind flowing over the main, but you also want the main to push the stern windward. You also don't want wind flowing over your jib and also want it to push the bow windward. In high winds you are going to heel a lot. The higher the winds, the more you have to reef before hand (including the jib). The slick going off the beam towards the waves is the key. That is the reason to do a real heave-to, so that the slick will mellow out the wave before it reaches the hull. I've done this with 6' waves before but nothing larger so I don't know how effective it is with 10+ (the ones that are dangerous). I do agree that it is much easier to heave-to with just main alone but even that can be tempermental and many who do it will actually be feathering...heading 30 degrees off wind slowly which actually may be better then a real heave-to because a boat is much more stable 30 degrees into the waves then 70-80 degrees. A feathering will not work though at a certain wind speed. That wind speed will be determined by the freeboard of the boat. As wind picks up, we reduce sail. At some point, the wind will have a much stronger force pushed backwards against that freeboard then the sails will be able to create going forward. At that point, you loose forward progress and you loose rudder control. If you start to feel that, turn on the iron genny and keep you going forward until you can figure out what to try next (heave-to, sea anchor, run with it in bare polls and a drogue). If you decide on a heave-to, you will definately want to reduce sail as much as possible. I don't know what wind speed that is for my boat and I hope to never find out, but I have a feeling if I ever do find out, I will choose a sea anchor over heaving-to because I think I will be too scared to try a heave-to in those winds. In a true blue water boat it may not be a problem. So go practice some more in light winds to get a feel for how your boat handles the backwinded sails.
The point is...
...to stop dead in the water, most notably to prepare for returning to MOB. Heave-to provides precisou minutes to regroup, after which the boat will chug along even with jib locked back. But by then you will have figured out a strategy for returning. If you want to remain fixed, drop all the sails to preclude windage and start motoring.
...to stop dead in the water, most notably to prepare for returning to MOB. Heave-to provides precisou minutes to regroup, after which the boat will chug along even with jib locked back. But by then you will have figured out a strategy for returning. If you want to remain fixed, drop all the sails to preclude windage and start motoring.
Try this reference
http://c34.org/bbs/index.php?topic=3172.0 Contrary to popular opinion, heaving to does not make you go completely sideways, there is forward movement, as noted by your knotmeter. In heavy winds, we can go 1 to 3 knots. The slick is on the side and to the aft quarter. Franklin's explanation was very good, although, as noted in the link above, we can't get our mastehad boat to do that. Read on, and keep practicing, you'll eventually get it.
http://c34.org/bbs/index.php?topic=3172.0 Contrary to popular opinion, heaving to does not make you go completely sideways, there is forward movement, as noted by your knotmeter. In heavy winds, we can go 1 to 3 knots. The slick is on the side and to the aft quarter. Franklin's explanation was very good, although, as noted in the link above, we can't get our mastehad boat to do that. Read on, and keep practicing, you'll eventually get it.
A few things to add ...
Franklin had it right that the sail is probably 20 years old and like an old bag. Like Stu, we have a masthead rig, so this and the old sail probably account for the forward movement and the excessive heeling. Although I'm not sure why that is???? I think we luffed the mainsail because it was contributing to the heeling (or so I thought). Now I remember that sheeting it in helps balance the motion. One of the problems we were having was definitely too much sail area for the conditions. We could have been more comfortable as the wind was increasing with a double reef and reduced headsail area. What was happening was that as the wind pushed the bow off the wind, the boat heeled excessively, and then we rounded up into the wind and the pattern repeated as we scalloped thru the water. I knew she wasn't going over, but my wife thought we were going to if the wind gusted enough so she just wanted to forget the whole thing and drop the sails. *yks We weren't in any jeopardy (the water is still warm enough to swim to shore
)but I kept thinking that if there were some large waves hitting our beam and we were a few miles offshore, my whole outlook would be a lot different! I think this is another good reason for a furling/reefing headsail, so we can reduce size for this technique since I also wasn't happy about the sail pressed against the shrouds. We have done this in light air when I had this sail up, but normally I have our new 150 genny out when we are in optimal sailing conditions and then I don't want to do it. Sunday was windy day as I'm sure most LIS sailors know. My daughter was in Newport on her boyfriend's father's boat for the weekend and they did not venture home to Connecticut because of the Small Craft Alert.
Franklin had it right that the sail is probably 20 years old and like an old bag. Like Stu, we have a masthead rig, so this and the old sail probably account for the forward movement and the excessive heeling. Although I'm not sure why that is???? I think we luffed the mainsail because it was contributing to the heeling (or so I thought). Now I remember that sheeting it in helps balance the motion. One of the problems we were having was definitely too much sail area for the conditions. We could have been more comfortable as the wind was increasing with a double reef and reduced headsail area. What was happening was that as the wind pushed the bow off the wind, the boat heeled excessively, and then we rounded up into the wind and the pattern repeated as we scalloped thru the water. I knew she wasn't going over, but my wife thought we were going to if the wind gusted enough so she just wanted to forget the whole thing and drop the sails. *yks We weren't in any jeopardy (the water is still warm enough to swim to shore
)but I kept thinking that if there were some large waves hitting our beam and we were a few miles offshore, my whole outlook would be a lot different! I think this is another good reason for a furling/reefing headsail, so we can reduce size for this technique since I also wasn't happy about the sail pressed against the shrouds. We have done this in light air when I had this sail up, but normally I have our new 150 genny out when we are in optimal sailing conditions and then I don't want to do it. Sunday was windy day as I'm sure most LIS sailors know. My daughter was in Newport on her boyfriend's father's boat for the weekend and they did not venture home to Connecticut because of the Small Craft Alert.Heave -to question
None of the replies to Scott's question (except Stu Jacktion's) had any info on the writer's boat i.e. MFGR; hull length; Jib overlap, type; keel type; main sail type (big roach, fractional rig,) etc. It is great that you guys are trying to help out Scott. But how do you expect Scott, or any other reader to evaluate the applicability of your experience to their boat without some more info about your boat? It really would be helpfull if, as a minimum, every poster would furnish his boat info (mfgr, and length) up front, along with any other details pertinent to the question asked, or to your answer.
None of the replies to Scott's question (except Stu Jacktion's) had any info on the writer's boat i.e. MFGR; hull length; Jib overlap, type; keel type; main sail type (big roach, fractional rig,) etc. It is great that you guys are trying to help out Scott. But how do you expect Scott, or any other reader to evaluate the applicability of your experience to their boat without some more info about your boat? It really would be helpfull if, as a minimum, every poster would furnish his boat info (mfgr, and length) up front, along with any other details pertinent to the question asked, or to your answer.
Type of Boat
Thanks, wjssr. I've been asking folks to do this for the past five years and seem to have been banging my head against the wall. I recommended that people add it to their automatic sign-in so they don't have to type it in all the time. Amazing how this basic type of info keeps getting ignored, in addition to things like motor and transmission type in those kind of posts. I guess they just like to keep us in suspense. It's not that hard to type your boat type and/or size in your profile. Thanks again for noting this important issue. Stu
Thanks, wjssr. I've been asking folks to do this for the past five years and seem to have been banging my head against the wall. I recommended that people add it to their automatic sign-in so they don't have to type it in all the time. Amazing how this basic type of info keeps getting ignored, in addition to things like motor and transmission type in those kind of posts. I guess they just like to keep us in suspense. It's not that hard to type your boat type and/or size in your profile. Thanks again for noting this important issue. Stu
A little more practice this afternoon ...
before the rain comes so a few questions have arisen. How does a masthead rig such as ours affect the technique vs a fractional? We have over 5200 pounds displacement in our 27' Starwind with 2000 pounds ballast in the shoal draft keel. How does this differ from the response you would have with fin or a wing keel? Is it critical to shorten the jib to the point that it doesn't press against the shrouds and if so, then is it assumed that the technique can't be used if our hank-on jib can't be shortened?
before the rain comes so a few questions have arisen. How does a masthead rig such as ours affect the technique vs a fractional? We have over 5200 pounds displacement in our 27' Starwind with 2000 pounds ballast in the shoal draft keel. How does this differ from the response you would have with fin or a wing keel? Is it critical to shorten the jib to the point that it doesn't press against the shrouds and if so, then is it assumed that the technique can't be used if our hank-on jib can't be shortened?
Hey Scott
You've answered your own question. Through practice, you will figure out what works for YOUR boat. The truth is that while there are many aspects of sailing that are common to all boats, each boat design is unique and the sea and wind conditions on any given day are also unique. Consequently, what worked fine one day may not work as well the next, so you have to spend time on the water learning how to adjust until you get the response you want. Now, if THAT'S not a perfect excuse to go sailing, I don't know what is. Good luck. Peter H23 "Raven"
You've answered your own question. Through practice, you will figure out what works for YOUR boat. The truth is that while there are many aspects of sailing that are common to all boats, each boat design is unique and the sea and wind conditions on any given day are also unique. Consequently, what worked fine one day may not work as well the next, so you have to spend time on the water learning how to adjust until you get the response you want. Now, if THAT'S not a perfect excuse to go sailing, I don't know what is. Good luck. Peter H23 "Raven"
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