Beauty of a Ketch

For full disclosure, I am very partial towards multi-mast vessels. In my opinion, schooners are the most beautiful rig, followed by ketches and yawls.

This Morgan 41 Out Island is a wonderful example of a cruising ketch. They were designed as charter boats in the islands, and they are truely purpose built. They have a shallow draft, allowing them to creep into perfect anchorages, and plenty of beam to house their paying clientele in comfort. They are also designed to cruise in waters where they will always be on a beam reach, where a ketch will excel! The split sail plan means that each sail is smaller and more easily managed than it would on a sloop with the same sail area. This gives you great comfort and control while maintaining speed and drive through the water.

Best of all, a ketch is gorgeous to see under full sail!

Nighttime Sailplan for Innexperienced Crew

When you have new crew on board, you are never certain about their abilities and judgement. Some will talk a big talk to make you think that they know what they are doing, but these kinds are all talk; and totally clueless at the helm. 

There is a huge difference between "knowing how to make a sailboat move" and "knowing how to sail". When you have new crew who can move a sailboat and will talk it up a whole bunch, you will want to try them out and see what they really know before putting them in charge of a watch cycle on their own. 

Some of the issues that will come up during nighttime watches is the need to reef, and the ability to hold a course. Sure, when you are inland, you can sail all you want until the weather turns and just drop the sails at that point. In the ocean, it is not that simple and storms can produce much more powerful waves out at sea. 

High winds and tall waves will make it harder to put in a reef, especially in the dark on a moonless night. To avoid this problem it is prudent to reef down at sunset so that if something comes up unexpectedly, you are already reefed and ready for it. 

Reefing is great because it makes the mainsail smaller, but it still involves the boom. If you have inattentive crew at the helm, they might not notice that they have veered from course and about to jibe until the boom comes crashing over. Repeated powerful jibes can damage and destroy your traveler as well as damage the metal of your spars. It is best not to do this! 

To avoid this problem, at night, we simply fly the trysail. It is small, our smallest sail and sail of choice for powerful storms; so we couldn't possibly reef down any further. It also negates the use of the boom. This means that if your new crew, or tired crew is not paying attention, a jibe is merely the flopping of a tiny sail with little load on it to the other side. No loud crashing or stress on your gear involved. 

Running with No Boom

Downwind sailing is always easy, the wind and waves are at your back, the apparent wind feels lighter, and you can go directly towards your destination. The only headache in the system is the mainsail's boom. 

One trick we have found to get around the booming issue is to not use the boom at all! When sailing on a dead run, we will set the headsails and the trysail. This gives us a few advantages. 

First, there is no boom to worry about with accidental jibes. 

Second, there is less weather helm since you have a small sail flying.  

The combination of the two means that you can point downwind towards your destination and not worry about a thing. If you jibe, the trysail will flop over as effortlessly and un-dramatically as the headsails. 

Beating or Heaving To

Optimal weather to exit an inlet isn't always optimal weather to make it to your destination. When we left the Fort Pierce Inlet, the winds were light and we were able to slip out with the current. Once out there, the winds were blowing from the South, directly where we wanted to go.

That night, the winds were forecasted to switch and start blowing out of the North, allowing us to run towards our destination.

We started out tacking close to the shore, but the Gulf Stream is pretty close to shore in this area, so we were forced to hang out near the shoreline. Short tacking proved pointless, as we were working hard to make any windward progress and still in sight of the inlet from which we started. This is the little zig zag that we did when we first exited.

So instead of fighting the wind, we just hove to and let it drift us along to the North. We made dinner, relaxed, and took it easy as we drifted through the water. When the winds shifted, we covered all the miles we had lost in about an hour! This means that we could have fought and started the voyage tired when the winds arrived, or relax and wait for the right winds to take us where we need to go. 

Sail Balance when Running

The goal with sail balance is to have your sails steer the boat, and the rudder simply help hold the course. 

In balanced sails will pull the yacht hard upwind or down, meaning that if the sails are not set to the course, your rudder will have to fight them the whole way there. 

When running, it feels pretty tempting to ease the mainsail all the way out. This will present the most sail area to the wind, pushing you downwind, but it also does something unwanted.  

The mainsail will become a large area of sail to one side of the boat, and will try to act as a lever arm, pushing the boat to turn in the opposite direction. If the main is on the port side, the boat will try to turn to starboard. If the main is to starboard, the boat will twist to port. 

This problem is called weather helm, and usually corrected by easing the main, or reducing its area. Since the main has been eased as much as possible at this point, the only option left is to reduce its area.  

As the main comes down, the desire for the yacht to veer upwind will minimize and the downwind pull of the headsail will keep the yacht right on course.  

Yes, this yacht could go faster if it were also flying the mainsail, but it would have to work on keeping the helm straight as it traveled. Sometimes, slowing down and reducing sail area will make the entire journey easier and more pleasant. 

Next time you are setting your sails, consider which direction you want to go and set the sails that would be most advantageous in reaching that goal, strike any sail that will make your life harder and enjoy your voyage!