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.

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.

Chopping Off My Hair

Sailing with long hair is a pain; plain and simple. 

I'm sorry, but these pirates with sexy long hair that we see in movies are doing it wrong. When we did our sailing trip to Kitty Hawk, my hair was far past shoulder length. It was a tangly mess for most of the time and this could be attributed to the hours of being outside in constant winds.

I could combat that a little bit by wearing a hat or pulling it back into a tight ponytail, but when I took my hair tie out to sleep at night, it was still a tangle rat's nest of a mess. This, however, was not nearly as bad as the fact that I couldn't wash it. One thing movies do tend to get right is the smell of a pirate. When you're on the boat for extended periods of time, you just don't shower very often. This is for a combination of reasons ranging from conservation of water and simply not having to because you're not in civilization. 

Conserving water is perhaps the most important thing about sailing, so having long hair means that it will get oily and gross very fast, but also that it will take much more water to wash it when you finally do. Therefore, chopping my hair off for this trip was the best decision I could have made. It's easy to maintain, looks great even if I don't brush it, and doesn't whip me in the face every time the wind picks up. It takes about a tenth of the water I used to need to get the shampoo out, and it dries in minutes instead of hours WITHOUT a hairdryer!

Ladies (and dudes), if you were planning to have that sexy surfer look while sailing, I'm sorry to burst your bubble. Everything about those long flowing locks are a giant pain in the butt when you actually get going.

Impulse Shopping

Advertising and marketing have really figured out how to make you buy their products. When you are constantly surrounded by advertisements and signs, you will become numb to them and they may even loose their effectiveness on you. When you are anchored out away from civilization, you are also removed from advertisements. Your defenses are lowered as you relax and enjoy the world around you for what it really is. 

Then you take a trip on your bicycle and explore a new town with plans to pick up a few provisions that you are running low on. All of a sudden you enter the commercial district in this new town and you are bombarded by advertisements! The sheer need to give them money in return for whatever they are selling is compelling and powerful! We went to pick up hair dye at Rite-Aid and along the way we saw a sign for a pizza place. I am allergic to wheat (a horrible allergy to have because breads are delicious and their memory will live on with me forever!) yet I felt compelled to eat there. The dreams of cheese and Italian spices filled my head and my heart desired nothing else than to eat there.  Maddie had to pull me away and keep me on task to go to Rite-Aid, but I just wanted a super cheesy pizza. 

To prevent impulse shopping, Maddie and I make a list of things that we need. When we go to shore, we look at the list and figure out how much cash to bring for these items. We only take the cash we are willing to spend at that moment and only buy the items that we see on the list.  

Having that simple rule will keep me from buying every cheese I see and clogging my arteries as I drain our cruising fund. I am good at following the rules, which means that I can keep on task at the last moment when I would have to let go of our cruising money in exchange for something that wasn't on the list. 

Advertisements can't seem to break that simple rule in my head, but they can yank on my heart all the way up to the wall in my head that is that rule.