Raising Anchor Under Sail

Anchoring instructions all seem to involve the use of the motor. This is how I do it under sail without the use of the motor.

"Raising the anchor" instructions tend to involve motoring up to the anchor while someone brings in the rode, once the anchor is in the roller, then motor out of the anchorage and then begin sailing.

You don't actually need a motor to raise the anchor on a sailboat. 

Light Airs

If in light airs, raise a double reefed main and then begin raising the anchor with the windlass. The main will keep the boat pointed into the wind while the anchor comes up. 

As the anchor comes up, the bow will be into the wind and the reefed mainsail will stall, keeping the boat relatively in the same place.

Once the anchor is up, quickly raise the staysail to balance the sailplan and begin powering up the yacht.

With the sails up, fall off the wind a bit and begin sailing out of the anchorage. 

Once into clear waters, shake out the reefs and sail away.

In Heavy Airs

If it is blowing rather hard, you will begin drifting as soon as the hook comes off the ground. Make sure you are far enough off the lee shore before you begin raising the anchor. 

If you have a lot of leeway, raise the anchor and then raise the staysail to get the vessel moving through the water. Begin traveling on a broad reach as you then raise the reefed mainsail.

After you get all the sails up and set, then set your course and begin sailing towards your destination.

If you don't have much leeway, it may be best to wait until the winds become more favorable. If you have to raise the hook immediately due to deteriorating weather and have little leeway, you will first raise the anchor immediately followed by the reefed main and staysail. Then set the sails and begin working off the lee shore in a hurry before you find yourself on the lee shore. 

Halyard Safety

In the event of a Man Over Board emergency, you will want to have as many tools to aid in recovery of the crew member as possible. Once the person is alongside the vessel, it can be a distinct challenge to pull the person back on deck. This is where the halyard comes into play.

You want to have at least one halyard that is long enough to reach the water to allow for crew retrieval. On board Wisdom, all the halyards are long enough to reach into the water alongside of the boat. 

The reason I have all the halyards able to reach the water is simple: What if you are using the retrieval halyard when someone falls over? Freeing the halyard simply adds one more step to the retrieval process. For this reason, all my halyards are long enough to reach the water so that any free halyard will work during the emergency situation.

When purchasing new halyards, be sure to add enough length for them to reach the water.

Lines Left at Mast

The alternative to leading lines aft to the cockpit is to leave the lines at the mast. This means that you need to go up to the mast to raise or lower the sails, set or shake a reef, tension the Cunningham, or adjust the topping lift.

Once again, we should look at the pros and cons of lines left at the mast

The pros:

You can see what you are doing while working on the sails
Fewer turns in the lines
If something jams, you are there to fix it and can see what happened
There is less spaghetti in the cockpit
It keeps the halyards and downhauls separated from the sheets
Dedicated winches
You can buy shorter lines

The cons:

You have to go forward to the mast
You need more winches

While going forward to the mast is inconvenient, it isn't the end of the world. When I sail alone, I lock the wheel and then go forward; when sailing with Maddie, she stays at the helm while I go forward. 

Once you are up there, you can see exactly what you are doing on the sails while raising, lowering, or reefing.You are there, looking right up your mast to see how everything is going. If a batten gets hooked on the rigging, or a line gets kinked and jammed, you are there and able to fix the problem.

The lines left at the mast also means that you will have a winch for each halyard. This does equate to more cost, but you can control the luff tension of each sail at any time. The advantage of having the halyards stay at the mast is that the halyards stay at the mast and do not join all the other lines and sheets that are dumped in the cockpit. This helps to keep the number of lines that have to terminate in the cockpit down.

The final advantages of leaving the lines at the mast is the reduced resistance and the need to buy shorter lines. The halyards come down straight with no bends or turns as it reaches the winch. Since the journey to the winch is shorter, you don't need to buy the extra feet of line to reach the cockpit. This makes it cheaper to replace the running rigging when the time comes.

Lines led aft and lines kept at the mast all have their ideal situations. Lines led aft shines on coastal cruisers that will be used in protected waters and on short trips. Lines left at the mast are found on bluewater cruisers because it has fewer places for failure to show up. 

Do you prefer your lines led aft or left at the mast?

Lines Led Aft

There is a trend these days to lead all lines aft to the cockpit. I think we should look at the pros and cons of leading lines to the cockpit vs keeping them at the mast.

The Pros are:

You never need to leave the cockpit
You need less winches

Never needing to leave the cockpit is nice! I sailed on a ketch with roller main and mizzen, and was so excited to tell Maddie that I was able to reef all the sails without stepping foot out of the cockpit and it was completed really fast! 

The other advantage is there are less winches needed to manage the vessel. On board Wisdom, we have 6 winches in the cockpit, 3 winches at the mast, and 1 winch on the boom. That's 10 winches to work all the lines involved in running the boat! If I needed to replace them, it would certainly be an expensive endeavor!

On sailboats with the lines led aft, they can run on much fewer winches. In theory, all the halyards and mainsheet could be managed by a single winch! This is because they work on a bank of clutches that lead to a single winch. Clutches are much less expensive as compared to a two speed self tailing winch! Clutches hold the lines in place, allowing you to take it off the winch to then put another line on the winch. This frees up the winch, allowing it to work all the lines led to it one at a time!

I have a friend who is up in years and still able to cruise singlehanded because his winch on the cockpit combing is electric. For the cost of one electric winch, he can easily manage his entire vessel! He doesn't have to climb up on deck in the dark during a storm to bring the sails in. Instead he stands behind the dodger and pushes a button to trim, set, or reduce his sails.

The Cons are:

Cockpit spaghetti
Increased line resistance
More deck hardware and turning blocks
Additional length of all lines
Upward stress on deck
Trouble shooting jams

 A creative way to organize the cockpit spaghetti

When all the lines are led into the cockpit, all the tail ends of the lines end up in the cockpit. This can lead to what is known as Spaghetti. On a very simple sloop rig, you would have:

Main Halyard
Jib Halyard
Vang
Spinnaker Halyard
Mainsheet
Outhaul
Cunningham
Jib Furling Line
Reefing Tack Line
Reefing Clew Line

Imagine all of these lines led to a single winch through a massive clutch bank, then dumping into the cockpit! This is why they sell organization bags along with many other systems to try and tame the mess that forms in the cockpit. If you do not manage these lines well, knots and kinks can form which would then impair the operation of all of these lines! My older friend who cruises is very methodical and keeps his lines in pristine organization! He never lets a mess develop so he never has to worry about a mess impairing his ability to control his vessel. If you are not organized like that, this could quickly become a problem!

Increased resistance is another problem with leading the lines aft. Each turn the line makes adds resistance to the system. When you think about the turns involved to run a halyard, or worse, an outhaul; resistance quickly escalates! A line that could be easily manhandled now needs a winch due to all the turn induced resistance!

In addition to the resistance, you need to have all of the hardware to cause these turns. All of these turning blocks and shivs need to be maintained, which adds to the work involved in keeping a cruising boat operational. There is already enough work and cost involved in keeping a sailboat in working order, why add more to the equation?

In order to reach the cockpit, each and every line needs the distance from the area of work to the cockpit added to it. When the lines cost several dollars per foot, adding several yards of rope to each line can become a very expensive addition. This makes the cost of replacing the running rigging significantly higher. In our example of 10 lines led aft, if the distance from the cockpit to the mast were 10 feet and the lines cost $1 per foot, that would be an additional $100 added to the cost of the running rigging.

All of these lines pull upwards at their turning blocks near the mast. Deck stepped boats have the force of the mast pushing down to help counteract this upward pull, but keel stepped boats do not. Properly engineered keel stepped boats will have a turnbuckle mounted inside the cabin attaching the deck to the mast. This fitting will help transfer some of the upward pull on the deck to the mast. If this fitting were to part, the deck would be ripped up by the force of the turning blocks. If you do have one of these fittings, be sure to inspect it regularly.

The last issue with leading lines aft is in the case of trouble shooting. If a line gets stuck, there are many potential offenders that could have caused the problem. The line could be stuck in the clutch, or stuck in any of the many turning blocks on the deck, as well as the normal locations for a jam located on the mast. When trying to trouble shoot, you need someone in the cockpit at the winch to pull or slack the line and another person up at the mast to figure out what went wrong. 

Some boat manufactures don't like the look of all the lines running aft on the deck and have encased the lines in a fiberglass tunnel. While this clears the decks for lounging, it makes them much harder to inspect and maintain the lines. If a jam occurs inside the tunnel, an extra level of complexity just got added to the problem.

I personally feel that lines led to the cockpit are wonderful on coastal cruisers with in-mast furling and make sailing much easier as all the lines are within close reach. They work great for coastal sailors who will be doing day trips and maybe a weekend sail. For longer voyages, I feel that it presents more instances for failures to occur and makes fixing the gear failures more complex. With all the winches I have in my cockpit, I have sometimes wanted an extra winch to pull on the random line that needs to be pulled. Imagine having a situation like this with a very limited number of winches. 

How do you feel about the modern trend of all the lines being led to the cockpit?

Battens

I have a love hate relationship with my battens. When I bought Wisdom, she came with 20 year old sails. They were stretched and baggy, and in need of being replaced.

The Mainsail was a batten-less sail that had a hollow leech. This sail was roughly 400 square feet. I decided that I should increase the amount of sail area since I was planning on not being able to motor any significant distances. This prompted my decision to switch to a full batten main (522 square feet) with a as large of a roach as possible.

The sail works fine, and the battens help hold the sail out in light airs, giving as much push as we can get out of the sail. In heavy airs, the battens help control sail shape and aid in trimming the sail. They do their job wonderfully!

Everything I love and hate about the new main involves the battens. 

I love:

The added sail area
The way it holds its shape in light airs
The way it holds the sail while reefing

I hate:

When the battens get hooked on the lazy jacks
When the battens get hooked on the shrouds
When the battens get hooked on the flag halyards
When the battens get hooked on the topping lift
When the battens get hooked on the clew reefing lines
When the battens fall before the luff and prop the sail up rather than letting it all fall on the boom
When the battens rub on the shrouds

The old sail was 20+ years old and never had a hole chafed into it. The new sail is only 2 years old and has chafed in 4 areas, all along the batten pockets!

I never worried about the lazy jacks with the old sail either, it went up and it came down; never hooking on anything in the rigging. Now, I have to make sure everything is clear of the sail before raising it because the battens will hook on everything! 

As much as I dislike the headache that the battens bring to sailing, they are certainly a necessary evil. You have to be much more aware of what is around them to avoid getting them hooked on something or chafing in areas. 

I do not regret battens because I knew from the beginning that they would be the cause of all my problems, and I was willing to make that sacrifice for the extra sail area.

How do you guys feel about battens? Do you have them? Would you get them again? Let me know in the comments down below.