How to Position Your Masthead Aft of the Mast Step

The fore-aft position of your mast plays a very large roll in the handling of your yacht. Too far aft, and the yacht will exhibit a lot of weather helm; too far forward and your yacht will exhibit a lot of lee helm. As you can see, you can use this feature to tune your yachts handling and create a balanced machine that will glide through the water effortlessly.

Masts all look straight, but they actually bend back just a bit. Cruising yachts tend to rake aft less, racing yachts rake aft more.

If this is the first time you are setting your rigging, and you have no idea if the yacht has weather helm or lee helm, you are best to start at a happy medium. A good starting point is 12 inches aft for every 50 feet of mast height. You can calculate your aft rake by multiplying your mast height from the deck by 0.24. This number will be the number of inches your mast head will be located aft of your mast at the deck.

You might be thinking "How can you figure out how to set your masthead 12 inches aft of your deck junction when it is 50 feet into the air?"

The answer is very simple, you use a plumb line!

Attaching a gallon jug of water to the main halyard, will provide you with a very ideal measuring device for setting the mast rake. The gallon jug weighs around 8 pounds when full, which ensures that it will pull the halyard straight and taught.

The jug will act as the plumb weight and will transfer the position of the masthead down to the deck. Using this, you can easily adjust the headstay and backstay to move the jug of water to the ideal placement on the deck. When the jug is positioned at the correct distance aft of the aft side of the mast, you know that the mast head is also in the correct position fore-aft.

After this step is completed, your next step will be to sail test the yacht and see how it responds.

If you feel that you are not able to balance the sails properly, it might not be an issue with your sail trimming, but instead that your mast needs to be moved a bit more. If you have too much weather helm, your mast is too far aft and needs to be moved forward. If you have too much lee helm, your mast is too far forward and needs to be moved aft.

If you have a backstay adjuster, these adjustments can be made while sailing to further improve your yachts performance. When sailing upwind, you can tighten your backstay and pull the mast back a bit. This will tighten your headstay and grant you better pointing ability while also pulling the mast aft, giving you beneficial weather helm.

When reaching, you can ease the backstay adjuster to move the mast a bit forward and reduce your weather helm. This will also cause the headstay to sag and create more of a belly in the luff of the headsail, greatly increasing your sails power.

On a run, you can ease the backstay even further and push the masthead forward to induce lots of lee helm that will help you power along downwind. The headstay will also sag a lot and that will cause the sail's luff to bulge out like the luff of a spinnaker. This will create a lot of power and pull your yacht downwind with speed!

Dangers of Roller Furling in Ocean Sailing

When heading out on an ocean voyage, safety becomes paramount and a lot of preparation will be taken to ensure that the boat is in tip top order. Extra safety gear, such as flares, life rafts, EPIRBS, and the such are considered vital pieces of equipment to carry on board while crossing oceans. Most everyone thinks about what to add to their yacht to improve safety, and sadly only few think about what to remove to improve safety.

Roller furling is a wonderful invention that allows the captain to sail short handed. Working a single line, the furler line, a single sailor is able to set as well as retrieve a massive 180% genoa without ever leaving the cockpit. Roller furling also makes it very easy to get out sailing quicker, as there are no sails to hank on. Best of all, when you arrive at port, it is very quick and easy to put away the sails as the headsail will simply furl up on the headstay in a neat and concise package.

All of these facets make roller furling a wonderful feature on a coastal cruiser, but coastal cruising is far from ocean cruising. Out in the ocean, there is no safe harbor to run to as a storm approaches. If gear fails, there are no repair facilities nearby. No, you are alone in a huge ocean and need to be completely self sufficient and storm ready.

The most dangerous thing to have during a storm is too much sail up. If your furler jams as a storm approaches, you could find yourself in a horrible predicament! This huge massive sail now needs to come down but your gear is failing you when you need it most! If the sail is partially furled when it jams, you will be unable to lower the sail by releasing the halyard since the luff will be tight against the foil.

If you do manage to get the sail to come down, you will now have to deal with a massive sail that is being blown around on the deck with no attachment to the luff. Being how furling headsails tend to be massive, this will further complicate the situation. To add fuel to the fire that is raging out of control at this point, you must also contend with the fact that you are out of practice at removing, flaking, and stowing your headsail being how you never need to do it. In the midst of a storm is not the ideal time to practice something you are rusty at!

Just because your furler is working well as the storm approaches and you can safely and successfully roll up your sail doesn't mean you are safe as the storm rages on. A furled sail will only remain that way as long as the furling line is present and made fast. Should the furling line slip off its cleat, or worse, chafe through and break, the entire sail will come out at the worst possible time.

A rapidly unfurled sail in a storm will quickly overpower your yacht and pull you along violently at the mercy of the winds. Worse yet, the flogging sail will quickly destroy everything involved due to the repeated forceful cyclic loads. The flogging sail will quickly destroy the sail as the leech beats back and forth in the wind, meanwhile, the headstay which holds the sail will also be abused. The repeated loads will stress and strain the headstay and its fittings. If any of the numerous parts of the headstay fail, the entire mast can come crashing down onto the deck in a violent de-masting.

Headstays are more likely to fail inside of a roller furler because the furler itself constantly impacts the headstay, leading to work hardening of the metals involved. Secondly, the furler covers the entire headstay assembly, making it hard to inspect. Being out of sight, also puts it out of mind. If a cotter pin were missing, no one would know. The force of a flogging headsail will take swift advantage of any weaknesses and bring your mast crashing down in the storm.

While this may sound like furlers are a horrible thing to have on a sailboat, and that ocean sailing is dangerous, this is far from the truth. Furlers are wonderful contraptions for coastal cruisers and day sailors. They make headsail management a breeze and are very convenient. Ocean sailing is not dangerous if you have the right equipment, and one of the best setups for a headsail on an ocean voyaging yacht is a hank on headsail.

Hank on sails are attached to the bare stay, allowing you ease of inspection. They are raised and lowered with a halyard, so in a horrible blow, they can always be dropped in a hurry and lashed onto the deck. When they are lowered, they offer less air resistance up high as compared to a bulky furled sail. Lastly, if the sail is tied down onto the deck, or even better, removed from the stay entirely, it will not present any risk of bursting into the wind during a gale.

A hank on sail does what you want it to do. When you want to set it, you raise it up. When you need to reduce sail area, it will come down. They are reliable and trustworthy sails on an ocean yacht, but they are a lot more work and require you to go forward to the headstay while out at sea. This necessitates extra care to make all the crew members safe during foredeck work, but at the same time, provides the reliability needed to keep everyone safe and ensure you arrive at your next shore.

Cleaning Eisenglass

Eisenglass is the clear window sections of your dodger and cockpit enclosure. Isinglass is a substance derived from fish swim bladders.

Aside from similar pronunciation, they also have another common characteristic: cloudiness. Isinglass is a powder, and Eisenglass will become opaque as dust and grim build up on its surface. Most people fear general maintenance around Eisenglass because they fear damaging it. It is common knowledge that if you rub dirt off Eisenglass, you can accidentally scratch it! This leads a lot of people to sit back and squint through the opaque windows in their dodger instead of doing something about it to restore its clarity.

You shouldn't be afraid of cleaning your Eisenglass, all you need to do is take special steps as you work. The most important thing to remember is that you need to always work with wet Eisenglass. If it is dry, dust and dirt can scratch the surface. By wetting the surface with a wet rag, all the dust is moistened and turns into a soft mud that can be easily wiped away. This will reduce the bulk of the grime that is obscuring your vision.

After this step is completed and the Eisenglass is now much better, but still dirty, it is time to take to professional cleaning products!

It was recommended to me, and I am now passing on the information to you, the use of RX cleaner.

This spray cleaner works wonders at removing the leftover grime and polishing the surface of the Eisenglass, leaving behind a crystal clear result.

All you need to do is wipe the surface with a wet rag to remove the majority of the loose grime, then dry with a dry rag. Next you spray the cleaner over the surface of the Eisenglass. I prefer to spray around the border and an X across the middle part.

Then I wipe in a circular motion the surface of the Eisenglass to spread around the cleaner. Once the cleaner has dried a bit, I switch to a new dry rag and buff the surface one more time.

The results are spectacular! I had not cleaned my Eisenglass in 6 years and it was scuzzy! The whole process took only a few minutes and brought the Eisenglass back to life! Now we can see out through the dodger as we sail.

Sea Sickness

Yeah...I get sea sick.

Luckily there are two things that help me through it: Herby is very understanding, and I know the cause. The problem is, sometimes the cause can't be avoided. When the waves are even slightly choppy, I can't go down into the cabin for more than about one minute without running back out and adjusting my breathing so as not to puke all over the place. It's definitely a handicap when it's raining...or night time. I've tried taking Bonine, which supposedly makes people less drowsy than Dramamine, but I was a useless blob for an entire day after taking it. True, I wasn't throwing up, but I also wasn't any sort of help whatsoever. It just wasn't worth it.

I know that if I stay outside, I'll be completely fine. The problem is, the cozy bed, the food, and the bathroom are all inside. It's not the most comfortable situation, but so far, it's been worth it. Herby fetches food for me when I'm hungry. He built a middle insert in the cockpit so that we could sleep outside during rough nights. I even got these rubber tubes to help me pee over the side so that I don't have to go down into the cabin every couple hours to relieve myself. It's a handicap for sure while sailing long distances, but honestly, I view it as completely worth it.

Sometimes I casually throw up over the side or into a plastic bag, but at least I'm cognitively present when we need to reef or drop a sail. So far on this trip, we've made an effort to always anchor in protected waters, but it won't be like that in the ocean. I sincerely hope that the rumors about adjusting to the rolling waves after a few days at sea are true, but if they're not, I know I'll be able to sleep outside and have an understanding husband who will cook and grab me snacks.

The Importance of a Dry Run

It may seem boring for us to spend the first three months of our journey in the Chesapeake bay, but there's a very important reason that we are doing so.  We needed a dry run.  It's helping us figure out the important things before we cross an ocean, so that we know that when we do set out, we are as prepared as we can possibly be.  I have only gone on one sailing journey in which I actually helped sail and it was two years ago.  It was extremely important for me to have this time in the Chesapeake to relearn all the skills that have been laying dormant for the past two years.  I am also gaining practice with things that I didn't even learn the first time around such as attaching hank on sails and putting in a triple reef.  As I do these things for the first time, I'm not only learning how to do them, but I'm also gaining a better idea of how the boat works as a whole.  This knowledge then helps me control it more effectively when we are at sea.

Besides the technical knowledge, however, this trial run has also given us important practice with things like rowing to shore and provisioning. We have learned how much fruit we consume in a week versus how long it will remain edible and we have also learned that we suck at keeping our garden alive while detached from shore hoses. Along those lines, we have also gained an understanding of how much water we tend to use in a given week, allowing us to ration appropriately when showering and doing dishes. 

That brings us to our rain water collected. We have had plenty of weather while away so far, which has shown us that we can collect more than 60 gallons of rain water in a single down poor. We learned the hard way that we can't sit on our flexible solar panels, but we were able to replace them with new ones within a couple of days since we were still in Easton, Maryland. It is far better that we figure these things out while still in familiar territory rather than discovering that something isn't working the way we had planned in the middle of our trek to Bermuda. Though it might not be as fun to follow along with or watch on YouTube, this trial run was completely necessary for us to prepare for the year of travel ahead.