Hoisting Your Dinhy onto the Deck

It is a well understood fact that the safest way to transport your dinghy long distances is on your deck. The trouble with this is "How do you get it on the deck?"

While davits are wonderful creations to get your dinghy out of the water, it doesn't help get it on your deck. Instead it just lifts your dinghy up and presents it to any boarding waves.

Getting a dinghy on the deck is very easy, and doesn't require the purchase of fancy gadgets because every sailboat comes equipped with a massive crane system: the mast and boom!

You can raise your dinghy by attaching it to a halyard, but this will drag it into your top sides and bang up your yacht. To keep the dinghy off your yacht as you raise it, you can use the boom to help pull it off your boat. For this, you simply need an outhaul attached to the end of the boom that can be used to pull the dinghy along the boom and keep it in position.

Using the mast and boom as your massive dinghy davit, you can easily raise a dinghy above the lifelines, slide it towards the mast, and then swing the boom in to bring the dinghy over the deck. Winches will allow you to raise heavy dinghies with ease as you are able to use all your sail handling lines.

To carry this procedure out, you will only need two additional lines on hand. One will be the outhaul, the other will be a preventer.

The outhaul will be run from the mast (or wherever your main halyard winch is located) to the end of the boom and back towards the halyard that is doing the lifting. It helps to splice a thimble to the outhaul line that is large enough to slip the halyard shackle through it. This outhaul can be adjusted to control the position of the halyard along the boom, granting you the ability to slide the hanging dinghy in and out on the boom.

The preventer will pull the boom forward while the mainsheet will pull the boom aft. With these two control lines, you can position the boom out over the side of the boat without worrying about it swinging back and forth as the dinghy is raised.

These two lines are easy to manufacture and stow on the boat, making a cabin top dinghy easy to manage, launch, and retrieve.

Making Adjustments to our Plans

Cruising is all about compromise. It will be a rare day when everything goes perfectly all day long. At some point, something less than ideal will occur and you will be forced to make a decision about how to proceed. You could either let this little hiccup bring you down or you could find a solution and keep your spirits up as you continue cruising along.

One such incident that could have rained on our parade was when we pulled into a marina to leave the boat for a few weeks while we did an excursion inland. We arrived with empty water tanks and depleted battery banks. Our first priority was to get the battery chargers plugged in to bring them up to speed again. Then we made a huge mistake.

We were tired from sailing into the river and marina, along with the ordeal of trying to bring a full keel sailboat along the end of a T head with the wind blowing us away from the pier. After we got the battery chargers hooked up, we were tired and put off the water tank filling until later. Later ended up being two weeks later, when we finally got back to the boat and still had empty water tanks.

We were making final preparations to leave the marina and needed to fill the water tanks before we left. Come to find out, there is no water on the pier. The well pump to the marina had gone out and the entire marina was now without water. This small run-down marina has long been neglected, and this was just another time when the neglect would continue. The marina owner got a quote to fix the water pump, $5,000, and with that he decided that the marina would no longer have water.

This is a problem because our water tanks are still empty and we no longer have access to a hose!

At this point, we could dwell on the fact that we have no water in our tanks, and no water in the marina. We also had to contend with the fact that we now have empty tanks because we put off filling our water tanks as soon as we got there.

Instead of dwelling on the problems, we simply filled our bladder tanks with drinking water and decided to set off!

We chose to keep positive and keep sailing anyways. Somewhere along the line, we will be able to fill our water tanks either with rain water or a hose we find along the way. Keeping a positive attitude will keep your spirits up as you continue sailing.

One very important lesson that we learned was to always fill our water tanks as soon as we arrive in port. This way, should the water go out in the marina, we already have full tanks!

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!

How Tight Should Your Stays Be?

It is easy to think of standing rigging and running rigging as two different parts on a sailboat, but in fact, they both share the same goal: Allow your yacht to sail.

Running rigging is thought of more often with sailing as sailors use them to set, trim and adjust the sails. The standing rigging, on the other hand is left standing there.

The truth is, your standing rigging is only there to hold the mast in the proper position to achieve better sail shape. If the mast is too far forwards or backwards, it will lead to poor handling and sailing performance will suffer.

Back to the original question about tightness of stays. The answer is very simple, the stays need to be tight enough to hold the mast in the proper position. I know this sounds vague and ridiculous, but bare with me for a moment.

If your stays are at the proper tension, then the mast will remain in its ideal position on all points of sail.

The reason that the correct tension is not a number is because no two stays are the same. If the boat builder placed the chainplates at slightly different spots, then the tensions in each stay will differ to maintain the mast in the proper position.

Now that we have moved your mind away from a set number, lets look at the actual tightness of the stays.

If you don't want the mast to move, then all the stays would need to be bar tight! This would hold your mast still, but it would also stress the heck out of all your fittings and fasteners. Your mast might stay perfect for a few sails, but before long you will be cracking mast tangs and ripping chainplates through your deck!

You actually want your rigging to be a bit on the looser side of life, in fact, the ideal would be to have your standing rigging as slack as possible while still able to hold the mast in position.

Higher aspect ratio rigs will require higher static tensions to keep the mast in place as compared to lower aspect ratio rigs. This is easy to remember because you can switch out "aspect ratio" with "strung" and just imagine that the people on fancy race yachts are high strung while those on low aspect ratio cruisers are not high strung.

On a massive triple spreader race yacht, the shrouds will be tight as banjo strings to keep the mast from deflecting too much as the wind builds. On a gaff rig yacht with a short mast and no spreaders, the stays might wobble around a bit as they are rather loose without the sails set.

Once sailing, the force of the wind on the sails will pull the mast over and the stays will all tighten on the windward side and loosen on the leeward side. It is common to see, even on high aspect ratio rigs, that the leeward shrouds will dangle around loosely while sailing in a blow. This doesn't mean that the stays are too loose, simply that the mast is deflecting a bit to leeward, and that is just fine.

While you might want your mast to remain perfectly centered as you sail, which would make you want to tighten your rigging until something breaks, your sail maker doesn't want you to tighten them that much. The sailmaker is planning on your mast deflecting a bit, and builds your sails expecting this to occur. If you rigging is too tight, your sails will remain too flat and will not provide you with sufficient power; thus leading to poor sail performance.

Instead of thinking of your standing rigging as a static line that is set once and forgotten, it is better to think of your standing rigging as another line on your yacht that should be adjusted to improve sail shape.

To answer the original question of "How tight should the rigging be?" The cap shrouds will be the tightest, the intermediates (if present) will be a bit looser, the forward lowers will be a bit lower again, and the aft lowers will be the loosest. The tension of the cap shrouds is set to be "tight enough" that the spreaders don't rattle, and the mast doesn't pull hard to the side when you yank on the cap shrouds. A good starting point is where you push on it with a good yank and the stay only moves about half an inch.

Once you have this stay set, you then can feel its tightness and go setting all the other stays along the way. As you set the tension on the stays, you will want to sight the mast repeatedly to make sure the mast remains in column and centered over the yacht.

You also want to be certain to start at the top and work your way down the mast. This will make dock tuning the mast a one time thing, as you will set it roughly perfect on your first attempt.

Once you have the shrouds set, it is time to set the headstay and backstay. These stays share the same load of keeping the mast in position, fore-aft. The headstay is best set first, positioning the masthead slightly aft of the mast base as it meets the deck. This will make your mast rake aft just a bit. A good starting point is to look up your yachts design plans and see where the designer wants the mast head to be. If plans are not available, a good rule of thumb is to set the masthead aft the mast base 12 inches for every 50 feet. How to find this position will be discussed in a future post.

The tension of the headstay will be determined by the backstay, which pulls on the headstay via the mast head. Ideally, you want to have a backstay adjuster present that way you can adjust your headstay tension while you sail along.

Headstay tension is the last stay that should be thought of as a static setting. Windward performance depends on headstay tension. The tighter the headstay (to a point) the better your ability to point will be. The looser the headstay (to a point) the more power your headsail will be able to produce. As you bear off the wind, a looser headstay will power up your headsail and provide you more lee helm which will help to pull your boat downwind with speed.

Completing the dockside rigging tune is only the beginning of the rig tune, once this is completed, the next step will be the sail tuning. Sail tuning involves taking the yacht out for a test sail where you will tune the rigging as you sail to maximize your sail shape and performance.

At the end of your dockside tuning, you will never need to know a "number value" for the tension in your stays, instead, you will position the mast to a rough ideal and set the stays to a "good enough" setting that will allow you to safely go out sailing and do the fine tuning of your rigging.

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.