The Truth about Ocean Crossing

Yes, crossing an ocean is a long endevour. It takes time to prepare your yacht for the journey, as well as time to prepare yourself mentally for what is to come. You are ready to eat all of your food, read all your books, and repair everything that breaks along the way! But, are you ready for what your boat will look like when you finally make landfall?

When you coastal sail, you will heel over as your sails fill and you move along, then you reach a destination and the yacht will come to rest in an upright position. The topsides remain out of the water and the bottom paint in the water. 

When you are blue water sailing, you will be heeled over for days. Not only will you be sailing the whole way, but you will probably be on the same tack for most of the journey! When we left Bermuda, we were on starboard tack for the first 12 days. This meant that our topsides with no antifouling paint was submerged for almost two weeks straight. 

The fouling growth formed on the old topsides paint, staining the white a hideous dark smear.  

The stern overhang really grew some lovely slime, as this area of the boat was perpetually bathed by the stern wave. 

Between being heeled over an average of 10 degrees for the entire trip, the constant following seas we had the whole way across, or surfing down our stern wave indefinitely; our stern definitely grew the most life on our voyage. It is interesting to note how well the antifouling worked, as the blue bottom paint is completely clear while the white topside paint above it is covered in layers of slime and growth. 

When we hauled out in the Azores, we did not have the boat power washed, as we were going to be sanding the paint away shortly in preparation for the next project. The growth that is visible is untouched and undisturbed in its locations and intensity.

When you make it to the other side of the ocean, don't expect your topsides to look as pretty as you feel. You will have some scrubbing to do when you get there! 

Ocean Sailing Personalities

Everyone has heard of Type A, and Type B personalities. Type A people are high strung go-getters who live their lives by a rigid schedule and everything must be kept at its highest level of performance.

Type B people are laid back and relaxed. If something needs to get done, they will get it done eventually, but it probably won't happen by the deadline. Schedules, to them, are those things that some people talk about, but they don't really know much about them.

A seldom known third type of personality, known as Type C, also exists. Type C people are those that can switch between being Type A and Type B. These people are the true leaders in ocean sailing.

Ocean sailing requires you to earn enough money to buy or build a boat capable of crossing the ocean. This means that you need to get stuff done to hold down a job that will pay enough to do such a feat. Type A people excel at this, as their dream is to work in the fast paced and competitive world of business. They will earn their money and work hard towards getting to their dream. Type B people may dream of sailing across an ocean, but they can never seem to get their act together. This financial roadblock keeps most of them from ever getting the opportunity to go out to sea.

The sad truth is, the best personality to have when out at sea is Type B. Ocean sailing is slow and boring. When there is no wind, there is no forward movement! You simply sit there bobbing around as you wait for winds to come. A Type B person will use this time to relax and enjoy the view, while a Type A person will go absolutely stir crazy! They will see the slow speed and factor it out for the duration of the journey and calculate that they will never make it in time! They set out to sea with a mental arrival date because they need a schedule, and seeing that this calm and relaxing day will lead them to be late; a term that is unacceptable to be used to describe them.

The best personality type for such a crossing is going to be a Type C person. This person can be Type A in the professional world, achieving great accolades and earning enough to purchase a bluewater boat, and then switch to Type B so that they can enjoy the ocean crossing.

Speed While Crossing an Ocean

We picked up a third crew member to cross the Atlantic with us. This is his first ocean crossing and something that he has always wanted to do. He is a very competent sailor who knows his stuff (a huge improvement over the previous crew member). His background is in racing, meaning that he can trim and squeak out every last knot available. When he is approaching hull speed, he will imagine that there is still more power available and continue to trim. He obsesses over every tenth of a knot, making the boat sail as fast as possible.

This makes for fun and spirited sails over short distances, but this philosophy is very different from ocean crossing.

In ocean crossing, the goal is to get to the other side of the ocean with everything still working and as comfortably as possible. This means sitting back and relaxing as the sails and wind carry you from Point A to Point B. You are not going to be moving as fast as possible, but you are moving comfortably. This comfortable moving is what ocean cruising is all about. The trip is going to be several weeks, and if we wear ourselves out in the first day, we will be dead from exhaustion by the time we make our distant landfall. Instead, sailing comfortably is our goal, that way we arrive at the next destination rested and ready to explore!

This difference in philosophy came up when I saw a storm system forming. A massive thunderhead had been billowing up behind us with massive clouds climbing high into the sky. At this point, the system was only developing but I knew to keep my eye on it as it could start to come our way with devastating consequences.

All of a sudden, the massive cloud formation turned into an anvil cloud with the horn extending right over our boat. The cloud became so thick that it blocked out the sun! Instantly, I knew it was time to reef down. We were full sail with our Main, Staysail, and Jib flying; soon we would be only the staysail and trysail.

The concept of putting up the trysail in light airs perplexed our racing friend. "The winds are light, we can just switch the sail when the winds get here." I responded with, when the winds hit, no one wants to go up to the mast and wrestle with sails. The day was drawing to an end and the sun would be setting soon. Changing from full-sail to storm-sails is one thing, but doing it in the dark on a moonless night is completely different! To be safe, we simply set the storm sails and waited for the weather to reach us.

Our speed went from 5 knots to 4 knots. This meant that for every hour that we waited as the storm approached, we would theoretically lose 1 nautical mile of travel. That may sound like a significant loss in distance made good in a short course, but we are traveling 2800+ miles! 1 mile is 0.000357% of the journey, so not a significant issue to me, who is a comfortable cruiser and not a racer.

Late that night, the winds finally came, and we may have lost a theoretical 5 or so miles, but who cares! When the winds hit late at night, we were ready and relaxed. There was no drama caused by the boat pitching and rolling, instead the off-watch crew didn't even know it occurred.

Downwind Sail Plans

While most sail plans include the obvious sails such as a mainsail and a jib or genoa, there are other sails to consider! Some of these sails will end up being useless and others more useful than expected.

By far, the most useless sail to invest in is the spinnaker while the most useful sail is the trysail. The spinnaker is a large unruly downwind sail that no one ever flies. It takes a competent crew to set and douse it, and if anything goes awry, it happens quickly and severely. Out of fear or laziness, there is always an excuse not to fly the spinnaker.

Now for the most useful sail: the trysail! This little sail is sold as a storm sail, but it has so much more potential than that. We use our trysail whenever we are sailing downwind, light or heavy airs. The trysail doesn't use the boom, so accidental jibes go from a fear to a nuisance. Being such a small sail, it won't produce sufficient weather helm to bring the boat up into the wind when paired with a well sized headsail, such as a 100% Jib, Genoa, or Drifter. Best of all, the trysail keeps its forces on the boat within the deck.

What I mean here is the trysail is set on the mast and sheeted to the aft toe rail. As you ease the sheets while going downwind, the sail will fill up its belly next to the mast within the spreaders. The clew will simply move forward and not outboard. This means that the Center of Effort (CE) is kept midship and merely moves forward, not out.

A third reefed main is about the same size as a trysail, but set on the boom. As you ease the reefed main, the boom will move the clew very far outboard of the rigging and deck. The result is a long lever arm aft of the mast that is pushing the yacht to weather. This will create a lot of weather helm and may begin to struggle against the headsails lee helm.

When sailing downwind, the last thing you want is weather helm. You want to go downwind, and so should your sails. Instead of spending money on a downwind spinnaker you will never use, consider buying a trysail and adding it to your downwind sail plan.

One last point, you might be wondering why even fly the trysail since it is such a small scrap of cloth. The answer is simple, it adds sail area. Albeit not very much, but more than you had before you hoisted it up!

Easy Headsail Change with Staysail

I would say that the staysail on a cutter is the most useful sail aboard. Not only does it help balance the sailplan, but it also facilitates headsail changes.

If the wind picks up and you need to lower your jib, genoa, or drifter onto the deck, having a staysail set will make your life easier.

Without a staysail, the wind will pull the sail off the deck and into the water. Now you have to wrestle with a wet sail in building winds!

With a staysail present, all you need to do is pull the headsails lazy sheet under the foot of the staysail as you lower the halyard.

The headsail will be pulled up against the staysail and get sucked to the leeward side of it, completely de-powering the sail as it is lowered. As you pull the sail down and under the foot, the sail will come to rest on the deck. Once you have enough of the sail under the staysail's foot, you can drop the rest of the sail with ease and it will fall squarely on the deck and be ready to be tied and bagged.