Just for accuracy, please note that my labelling on the 3 diagrams at 16.27, 17.45 and 18.01 were labelled wrong and should be Red for PFR and Grey for racing gennaker.... Apologies for the inaccuracy! How many of you spotted that? Clearly above my pay grade too....
Great info on the sails and I totally agree with your choice! 😊 The staysail is going to function admirably and look beautiful too. I’m no expertise when it comes to sails but your explanations are so clearly presented John that I enjoy offering my opinion! Thank you for including us in the discussion. I’m anxiously looking forward to the next onsite visit for updates of your Portofino. 👏👏👏🥰
I am not educated enough on sailing to comment on the topic, but I did just want to say hello, I hope you are safe & having a good time. Can’t wait to see your boat.❤
Very kind of you to say and thanks for the support! It's when folk send messages do we know that the effort in making them is worthwhile - so THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
Thanks for posting guys. I'm gonna go 1 step further on the sail plan. Removable stay sail so you don't have to furl when jibing or tacking....but....an electric furler for your head sail when forestay is up. That'll really make sailing press button easy. Whilst I'm busy spending your money, get a electric line hauler for your mainsail traveller as well.
HI Ahmin, surprisingly the stay sail stay is removable as we will have a self taking jib, Raffa has shared how great it is to have an Furler on the forestay (so no lines) and Raffa wants to have the traveller on a continuous line that is also electric. So clearly Raffaele has already spent all my money!!! We obviously think alike!
We have a 43' monohull. We carry 5 sails. Main, stay sail, storm jib, heavy genoa and light genoa. When we replaced our sails we spec'd the stay sail to a heavier cloth than the existing storm jib. We only carry the storm jib for event compliance purposes. Sailing double handed, the idea that we would drop our over spec'd staystay for a lighterweight storm jib when the wind is up, doesn't make sense. Being cruisers we generally furl the genoa at dusk and sail on staysail and reefed main. This is good to 35 knots. If the brreze getsup we simply reef the stay sail and worst case further reef the main (boom furler). This keeps the sails in balance and centre of gravity down. We've sailed in some pretty extreme breezes but always stay upright.
For what it's worth on our new 526, after having the luxury of sailing 7,000+ open ocean miles on various friend's nearly identical catamarans, we chose to go with a furling Staysail and did not choose a storm jib. I have to say the staysail was brilliant and an absolute must IMO. Never once considered getting out the storm jib because if you are doing proper passage planning and weather routing the odds are extremely low that you'd need to. Only 1 of the 5 performance cats we crewed on had the strorm jib and it had never been used. But, it's not all that expensive, bulky, or heavy so I'd not be opposed to dragging it along.
Kirk, you are correct infall those matters - the main trouble with getting storm jib on the P52 is how to run the sheets because it would be a slightly complex process to rerun the jib sheets onto the storm jib in awful conditions. So yes it is small and cheap (relatively) but tricky to rig each time so we opted not to have it...
There's nothing wrong with having dreams John! Hi John and Eli! Great episode this week - I enjoyed your tour around Eloundra. You do the small ports tours so well! You mention the red dust hitting and settling on the boat and it reminded me of a friends experience long ago. His car windscreen was sand blasted for a number of days and it eventually 'crazed' the glass so bad that he could drive with it. I know a lot of boat have screens they use at anchor or at port. Does the 45 have something similar for it? I know you're selling the boat soon (probably already underway) so it may not make a difference now but might I suggest looking at a ceramic coating for the forward windows of the 52 before sea trails as it may be hard to apply after it leaves the factory. Salt as you know can also be very abrasive. The company I work for has do this to all their cars and have achieved great results. That water around Spinalonga look heavenly Eli. Get the wetsuit out and get to work on those hulls! LOL Fair 💨's and following 🌊's!
Thanks Garth. The red dust is not abrasive when it just falls on the boat, its just really hard to clean off... We did have wetsuits but they burnt in the fire and we have not had the need to replace them yet. When we start scuba diving again, we will get new ones. Fortunately now the weather has heated up ;and we are swimming to get cool... Quite a change!
I trust E had a lovely birthday. Like you my understanding of (often) hanked on staysail's is that they will spend their time in a sail locker, being too much faff to deploy. E, I am curious having looked at both of your med quals' what your doctorate is in? Particularly, given you both approach the lesser sideof medicine on the mental health side, whilst a G.P. (UK trained?) will encounter the gamut of medicine, where did you sit in the med sys? Is Aussie different in this respect?
Hi Mark, thanks for birthday wishes for Eli and the sails that never come out the lockers.... Eli PhD is in Philosophy and Metaphysics including counselling, hypnosis and she is also a yoga and meditation teacher. Yes, I trained in the UK and specialised in internal medicine (MRCP) first and then went into GP work for the independence (MRCGP). Emigrated to Australia for a better life and the medicine was very similar but better rewards and easier access to do tests, CT, US and MRIs etc. So much more personally rewarding than in the UK...
On my sailplane for my 49 footer I have 7 total sails. 2 of which are storm sails. I have no furled rollers except for the continuous fuller that is used by both the screacher and the asymmetrical sail. My sail plan is designed to be single handed and cover all 360 degrees angles from 40 onward and from apparent wind from 5 knots to 50 knots. It also has a custom made DIY series drouge and a sea anchor. So total 7 sails and 2 drouges.
Hi Carlos, clearly you are doing things to the perfection levels! Well done! We have not chosen those finer details yet. I did have a sea anchor on my 42 foot cat which I never used and it eventually just rotted away.... Hover when you are in the really bad weather, you really want to have it - like a life raft - hope you never use but need it anyway!
@@barefootdoctorssailing8567 with a Cat a sea anchor is only used in a very special case. Only used when heading straight upwind into a storm. Dead upwind for a monohull you heave to the sea anchor for a cat is different. Series drogue is the opposite as it only works when the wind is aft of the vessel either a cat or monohull. For me 95% of the time I will be single handling the boat so I needed to design the running rigging to be specific to be single handed. With my final design all sailing maneuvers are handled from one location except for switching to the storm sails which are always reading in place in a sail-bag. need to hank on as they are always ready to be deployed. Dropping the main and switching to storm trysail should happed in about 30 seconds.
Regarding your staysail options, I would have thought for your new cat that you would want both a staysail and a stormsail. A performance cat without a staysail often has an unbalanced sailplan in higher winds, and this removes the ability to forereach upwind if you need to, eg. lee shore. But a robust staysail still will be too large for storm conditions above 47 knots in a multihull, so a smaller stormsail set as far back to the mast as you can get it, is just good seamanship. What separation would you have between your jib and staysail shrouds? If they are too close, like in a slutter rig as opposed to a real cutter, the flexibility of the staysail for bluewater cruising will be very restricted. I think motoring into 55 knots with your cat will not be a good option, for several reasons. Remember wind force increases by the square of the wind speed, and with a cat it is diabolical!
HI Rob, great points but even in 60 knots from Brisbane to New Caledonia we just used a foot of jib and sailed with the storm. Ability to motor upwind will probably be more dependent on the wave state (degree of breaking tops) and it would be in open ocean where you should have space to run or go sideways ( I hope)... If you were motoring upwind to a harbour, the sea state should not be as bad as out in open ocean so hopefully the engines should be able to advance against 55knots... We do have 80Hp engines x2. It seems that the staysail here is only being used for support of the gennaker / PFR but I did have the expectation to use it as a high wind sail that is set in the mid foredeck area so nice and close to the mast. I presume the staysail will be at least or about 1/3 of the distance between the forestay and the mast - 1.5m but Walter below disagrees with this. I have not measured the exact distance on the plans as yet so cannot confirm one way or the other.
High cut strong staysail , High cut so the sheet angle doesn't change when shortened , By the time your ready for a stormsail your streaming a drogue over the stern & changing your undies . Oh if its on a self tacking track forard of the mast its nice to use to windward in heavy air tacking even in medium wind 20+
This weather's been horrible this year it's flicking around like a mares Tail but it's pretty much across Europe. Drought or drenched with winds pushing it through each time. People have been going abroad from the UK and running into it and also the anti tourism protests in the traditional hot spots ... A large part of the problem seems to be the new giant cruise ships they disgorge so many passengers ...who don't really engage or spend that much in those places. Interestingly Hubbs Vlogg a Dutch guy in the Caribbean with his Columbian girlfriend was walking round the Hurricane hit boat yards .. the monohulls had been extensively toppled .. The cats ..one had been flipped on its side some had broken keels, one or both but most despite being bare masted had, had their masts snapped. Take a look your experience might be of value. He also points to the boats in the bay helping the locals.. They rode out the full force by going deep into the Mangroves. Definitely pause for thought and recognition as to their Climate protection and ecological values.
Thanks Clive- this year certainly does not seem to be the weather we expected and the storms every 3 days lasted at least a month.... I will check out the vlog you mention - thanks very much, interesting stuff!!!
Clearly there's a lot of opinion and different ideas about what a stay sail is. Storm Jib? We have on board but never used it for the last 10 years. But a staysail for us means a smaller self turning jib on Furler as an inner sail for nights, and higher windspeeds, where as a furled genoa is out of shape and a code zero way to large. We will have a new discussion about the topic later on, but I personally like the idea that a baby stay is a double up for if the forestay was to break. and its not 2 meters behind the genoa, but 1 meter max.
Thanks again Walter. Likewise with our storm sails in the past... Certainly those concepts as you state were what I considered a staysail - smaller sail on an inner stay, good for conservative sail plan and high winds. Clearly this "stay sail" is more for the support of the gennaker / PFR. But is certainly is on its own stay and can be used if the jib is damaged or non-functional. Not sure about the exact distance of the staysail behind the forestay but we will need to find out to confirm what it actually is...
We all need to make our own decisions and having sailed on both over 50 years / 40,000nm+, we choose the comfort and safety of a cat. However sailing into the extreme latitudes would make a mono a good choice too so it's personal choice and what you are doing with it.Many wives leave mono sailors because it is not so "civilised"... Each to their own and we should not judge each other's decision.
