Complexity

When selecting a cruising yacht, you might think that bigger is better! Bigger boat means more space which means more room and more comfort, it's a no brainer. The problem is, as the size of the yacht increases, so does the complexity of everything on board.

At the 2016 Annapolis Sailboat Show, I boarded a 70 foot Hylas which the owners had purchased the previous year to go cruising. The owners then became ill and are no longer able to cruise due to health issues.

The yacht is certainly outfitted for ease of handling. All the winches in the cockpit are electronic, meaning you don't need to grind a winch handle but rather just push a button. This makes sail trimming very easy, as you simply need to coordinate which button to push next.

At this point, a 70 foot yacht is sounding pretty good! The yacht is so large it feels like a condominium apartment with sails and a keel! Then you start to look at the little details that begin to shine through. 

The headsails are both roller furling, which keeps the deck clear and makes reducing sail as easy as pushing a button. The thing is these headsails are so big that a regular furling line would not be able to power the furler. Instead, the furlers are powered by hydraulic fluid which is powered by a central hydraulic pump. Should a problem develop in the hydraulic system, a manual winch backup is present at the furler. That is not the place I would want to need to go with that massive headsail flogging around!

The other striking leap in complexity came when I inspected the traveler and mainsheet system. Most travelers have a pulley system that leads to a cam cleat where it is locked off. If you need to adjust the traveler's position, all you need to do is grab the line and pull it in. The traveler can be pulled in by hand with a bit of force, but nothing drastic. On this 70 foot yacht, the traveler has its own dedicated winch!

The winch is a subtle way of telling you that the sail is so large and forceful that you need a winch to adjust the traveler. Now imagine jibing that massive sail in a safe and controlled manner? I'm sure it can be done but it will require a lot of winches and planning to execute in a safe and predictable manner.

While it may seem like a dream to cruise on the biggest yacht possible, keep in mind that the size of the rigging and complexity of the systems increases exponentially with the size of the yacht. As the complexity increases, so does the headache of maintaining all of these systems, as breakdowns will occur and the more you have, the more you have to break.

The moral of the story is go on the smallest comfortable-boat you can and go while you are young and healthy!

Roller Furling Halyard Clutter

Roller furling is wonderful! At the end of the day, you can roll up your sails and be done with them! There are no sails to flake and bag, and the sheets are carried up to the clew where they can be kept clear of the deck. The deck of a sailboat with roller furling can be quickly transformed from a sailboat to a private escape in just a few short moments!

While roller furling does provide a clear deck, the clutter is typically transferred to the mast. The halyards of the roller furling sails are coiled up and hung from any available winch or cleat horn. The clean crisp mast soon becomes a rope storage area! These coils will soon collect dirt from the air and rain and begin to look less attractive as time passes. Worst yet is the fact that these halyards will not be touched for a long time, as the sails are raised once per season! Soon these coiled lines will become stiff and unwieldy. 

This system works beautifully to maintain the clean look of a roller furling yacht. The halyards are merely small lines that run the needed length and terminate with an eye splice. When the sail is removed, a messenger line can be attached to the halyard and the sail can be lowered as the halyard runs into the mast. When the sail is going to be re-installed, the messenger line will feed the halyard through the shiv, mast, and out the side of the mast where it can be tensioned. 

The cars on the mast allow easy tensioning of the halyards as well. Once the eye splice has exited the mast, the loop can be installed on the car and another line can be attached to the bottom of the car. The lower line can be set up on a winch to achieve the desired luff tension. Once the ideal setup is reached, the car can be locked off and the tensioning line removed. This leaves you with a very clean and crisp look at your mast to match the clean and clear look of the deck.

It can be argued that this setup will not allow you to adjust your luff tension as easily, but lets be honest about who would want this setup! I am certain that someone who wants this look is not concerned about moving the draft fore or aft in the sail to adjust the angle of attach of the luff of the sail while beating or reaching. They simply want a cleaner deck with less clutter and more open space, and this delivers exactly that while still providing the necessary equipment to properly tune the sails.

Un-cluttering the Deck

We currently have 5 sails on the deck: Drifter, Jib, Staysail, Mainsail, Trysail; and we can't take them off the deck of the boat. We keep the sails flaked and/ or bagged on the deck to keep them out of the way, but we can't escape the fact that all of these sails are always on the deck.

Maddie has told me that we can't have any more sails on the boat if they are all going to live on the deck. While the sails are put away, they still take up our limited deck space, and she wants as much space as possible for living and relaxing.

The solution is simple: The working sails can stay on the deck but the light air sails need to be stored in a locker. The storm trysail will remain on the mast, as it needs to be ready to hoist at a moments notice should a squall develop quickly.

The reason all of these sails needed to remain on the deck is the way the sheets are tied to the clew. I used a larks head knot, which offers a very secure attachment to the clew while keeping bulk to a minimum. This means the sheets won't foul on the rigging as we tack and the sails have to slide through the forward stays slot. The problem is a larks head knot can not be untied without removing the sheets from the deck. I would have to pull the sheets out of their leads and coil them up to store the sail off the deck. To set the sail up, I would also have to run the sheets through all their leads and back to the cockpit. This seems like a lot of effort in my opinion, so the drifter lives in a bag with the sheets permanently run to it. 

The solution to our clutter problem is simple, change the knot we use to attach the sheets from a larks head to a bowline. A bowline is a very strong and secure knot which is a standard for sheet attachment with a little bulk that can get caught on the rigging. Being how we have synthetic standing rigging, we won't let a fouled sheet stay fouled for long because it could saw into the rigging as the sail flogs around in a blow. 

With bowlines, we can easily untie the sheets from the clew and store the sails that are not in use in a locker. The sheets can be left tied to the lifelines forward of the shrouds and ready to attach to the clew of the sail we want to raise. This also helps make it easier to reef the jib, as we just need to lower the sail, tie the sheets to the new clew, and re-hoist the sail.

The sheets are out of the way attached to the lifelines with the excess coiled up on the lifelines by the cockpit.

Double Braid Backsplice

Back splices work exceptionally well at preventing the end of a rope from unraveling. It secures the end of the rope into itself and makes sure that none of the strands can work their way loose and fray. A back splice is simply a splice where the end of the line is doubled back on the line itself, tucking its ends back into the line.

An alternative way to finish the end of the line is to whip it, but whipping is not as strong as a back splice. If the end of the line will be subjected to a lot of abuse, whippings can become chafed and break, leaving the tail free and able to unravel. In these situations, a back splice is much more secure and will hold up over the years, even with the frequent abuse.

For this example, I will be putting back splices in the ends of our jib sheets. We will be working with New England Ropes VPC, but the methods are the same with any double braid line.

The first step is to place a pin through the cover and core several feet back into the line. This will prevent the core from sliding too far out of the cover and will make your life easier later on in the process.

Next, open the threads of the cover to expose the core further back and pull the core out of the cover.

Pass a fid through the core in the opposite direction of the line. The fid should enter the core a few inches back from the end of the line and exit just before the core re-enters the cover.

Feed the end of the cover back through the core. This will create a loop where the cover turns back on the core and runs in the opposite direction to the rest of the line.

Pull the cover through the core and well out the other side, allowing the core to bunch up over the cover. Then taper the cover by selectively cutting the threads. VPC is covered in groups of four threads that are woven together. By selecting and removing three of the four threads of each grouping, the cover can be neatly reduced in a systematic and organized manner. This allows you to reduce the bulk of the cover and produce a consistent taper that will still maintain itself neatly woven.

With the cover tapered, milk it back into the core. As you work it back into the core, the cover will disappear into the core and the transition from cover entering the core to pure core should be seamless.

Cover follows the blue arrows. Core follows the orange arrows. They move in opposite directions forming a loop with one another.

The core splits out of the cover and goes to the left, doubling back and exiting to the right. The cover splits off the core and goes to the right entering the core as it passes by. The core and cover are going in opposite directions and form a loop with a tail. The tail should be longer than the amount of cover buried in the core, otherwise the back splice won't work out in the end.

The excess core is removed, leaving what looks like an eye splice. The cover will be very loose over the core leading all the way back up to the pin that is holding the two in a static position relative to each other.

Secure the line to a strong anchor. I use one of the secondary winches in the cockpit, winding the line around the drum so that I can pull against it with a great amount of force to milk the cover over the core and complete the back splice.

Pulling hard on the cover and milking the cover over the core will allow the core to slip back into the line. The cover that is now inside the line will be pulled by the core back into the line, making the end of the rope double back on itself.

Whipping the end will ensure that nothing works itself loose. It was stated earlier that back splicing is better than whipping, yet back splicing uses whipping! The whipping in a back splice is not as critical to hold the line together. If the whipping chafed away and fell out, the splice would still hold and keep the end of the line together until a new whipping could be installed. A line that was only whipped would begin to unravel as soon as the whipping had come out.

Topping Lift

To most people the Topping Lift is the rope on the side of the mast that hasn't been touched the entire time they have owned the boat and is currently covered over with algae growth! That mossy green line actually serves many purposes and should be adjusted frequently.

The main purpose of the Topping Lift is to hold the boom up when the sail is not raised. Most people set this line once when the boat is new and never adjust it again. This is why the topping lift is often forgotten for the life of the boat, allowing the line to rot away on the cleat. 

The problem with "setting and forgetting" the topping lift is as the sail is raised, the topping lift will become slack and begin to bow out. The topping lift can even wrap around the backstay which can sometimes foul on a backstay adjuster. When the sail is raised, the topping lift should be adjusted to take out any slack in it while taking care to not over-tighten it.

When the mainsail is reefed, the boom will rise to meet the new clew, this will also induce a lot of slack into the topping lift. Once again, it should be adjusted, taking out the slack line.

Lastly, the topping lift can be used to delay reefing by tensioning it a bit to raise the boom. This will induce a twist into the sail, causing the top of the sail to spill air and reduce its efficiency. Releasing the mainsheet will also induce a twist in the main, spilling air, but only when the boom is eased out. Using the topping lift to induce a twist will allow you to spill air while close hauled with the main sheeted in tight.

One last reason the topping lift shouldn't be ignored is this line can serve as a spare halyard for the main. The topping lift doesn't really undergo much stress, and could be rigged with a very small and weak line. If something were to happen to the main halyard, it would be awfully nice to simply hook the topping lift to the head of the mainsail and raise the sail up to continue sailing onward. For this reason, the topping lift should be greatly oversized and made to the same specifications of the main halyard.

Next time you look at your rigging, dust off the topping lift and inspect it with the same scrutiny that you give your other halyards.