Help, I can't shake out my reef.

[BOAT]

Wow, there is a lot to absorb and process here.
All of it is really good information.

It sounds like most folks are telling me 'Do what you can (let her hold the sheet, steer etc) to make your wife comfortable and if her comfort level means leaving the reef in then leave the reef in.'

Can't really argue with that.

Yup darren, you summed it up way better than I did.

[sailboatmike]

We have several dinghies (i could open my own yacht club LoL ) which I use to teach my kids how to sail in.

We get regular MOB training when a hat flies off and we have to go around to pick it up, the kids now know their jobs, One keeps pointing at the object in the water, another helps me brig the boat around, while the third (he is only 6) knows to keep out of the way. Of course with a dinghy we dont have a motor so we have to sail back which can take a few minutes.

We have picked up many hats over time and to date have not lost one.

This season I will get them to do it on their own while I float along in the inflatable just to make sure all is good.

Rule 1 - Happy wife / partner, happy life, if she gets scared even once then thats the end of you sailing, so take it very easy, get them to take the helm or main sheet on a nice still day with only a little sail up, a good distraction is if you can get them to look at the windex or the tell tales and explain (not to in depth) about keeping the boat pointing outside the "no sail zone" and how the tell tales should fly, its a great distraction and you will find they start bringing on the sails to try and get them flying just right, and before they notice the boat is heeling and the wind is rushing through their hair and they wont care

[BOAT]

It's worth your while to take the time to train the crew so that you can push your boat when needed without a lot of backtalk or paralysis from the crew.
I got this shot yesterday just for your guys, normally I would move the traveler to lee and push the jib eye forward to let air spill out the bottom of the sails to stop the heeling but on this day I was thinking of you guys here on this post and decided to get some photographic evidence for you guys on how comfortable your crew should be at 45 degrees. As I said, the most important thing is that YOU look comfortable and un-worried, (because really, there is no reason to be concerned at even 55 degrees, the boat is not gonna tip over - trust me):

https://vimeo.com/176823065

One note about the autopilot in the video - note the black strip of tape in the wheel - that is the rudder amidships mark - when that tape is at the top the rudders ar dead ahead. See how when the boat heels the AP is turning the boat AWAY from, the wind?? You see? (go back and look). You see, the weather helm on the boat it trying to turn the boat INTO the wind but the AP will not let it - I gave the auto pilot strict orders to keep the boat on a heading of 313 because I wanted to sail that same tack right into the mouth of the harbor. If you look on the plotter you can see that the AP is so accurate at course holding that the 3 mile rhumb line on my plotter is not moving a bit. That is when the AP is in performance mode. That's the cool thing about these pilots with muti-axis electronic gyros - If I put the AP in cruising mode it will let the boat turn up into the wind a little on a gust so the boat will not heel as much and then it will turn back to correct when the heel is not so excessive - but in performance mode it holds course like a rock. If you get hit with a gust - your gonna ride it.

[kadet]

Boat you sure all that heel was not pizza induced that wind does not look all that strong

In performance mode has the AP ever stalled the rudders? Mine has split my mounting block on hard heeling and had to epoxy in a new one
That ram can put out a lot of force.

[sailboatmike]

Not sure about those grey and white striped boat shoes in the other video

[BOAT]

Boat you sure all that heel was not pizza induced that wind does not look all that strong

In performance mode has the AP ever stalled the rudders? Mine has split my mounting block on hard heeling and had to epoxy in a new one
That ram can put out a lot of force.

Kadet Man!

Winds were about 14 knots - gusts to 18 - it was perfect.

My pizza butt can only account for about one degree. I also have photographic evidence for that too because I also took some video when i was sitting up on the high side with the wife. It made only a very slight difference of about 2 degrees. Not even enough to notice at those angles. Don't make me post that video too, trust me. But if you don't believe me I can post it.

Also, I have never had any stalls or drop outs with the pilot in ANY mode, at ANY angle. If you look at the video you can see that the pilot is only adding an occasional 1/4 turn on the wheel to compensate for the weather helm I get in a gust. In cruising mode the AP will allow the boat to nose up a little before is starts to bring it back on course but in performance mode the pilot will already start adding rudder before the boat even starts to nose up because it's a learning machine. As our boats start to heel they turn upwind and the software records that and starts to compensate. Once it learns your boats characteristics it can react faster than you can - it already knows what the boat will do before the boat does based on it's angle, pitch, and yaw. It's a great sensor pack.

I really think that extending the rudder arm to accommodate the leverage as RayMarine recommends is the answer to all the issues of drop outs. Because I have the ram connected directly to one of the rudder arms and I have that rudder arm extended to the full length RayMarine specifies. Simply put: with a longer rudder arm the pilot has more leverage on the rudder so it can move it with less force. The pilot is not over worked and in my case has performed flawlessly.

Not sure about those grey and white striped boat shoes in the other video

DUDE! Those are my Tony Hawks man!! Are there no skater guys in Australia??? You guys surf, right??

[sailboatmike]

OMG Tony Hawk!!

Isnt he the sad old bloke that still tries to be a teenager by riding a skateboard?

Skateboarding made a quick comeback a couple of years ago as a RETRO thing, but its now long dead again, even the teenagers have moved on

[BOAT]

OMG Tony Hawk!!

Isnt he the sad old bloke that still tries to be a teenager by riding a skateboard?

That's the one.

He still hangs out over here from time to time. He's too fat and old to surf anymore so now he has a shoe factory that makes cheap shoes in China. I guess it made him a bunch of money - the shoes are really comfortable!

[sailboatmike]

Thats reminds me I saw a pair of Henri LLoyd boat runners for sale the other day, $159 and made in China

Didnt buy them, sceptical about paying huge money for things made in China that have a brand name tag, both the quality and them being genuine

[kadet]

Only dropouts I have suffered is trying to steer to wind angle. My wind sensor is on rear arch and gets turbulence from the mainsail every now and then. Found steering to a bearing much easier

Is that a 150 Genny? I hardly use mine now gone to a 110 and an asym on a furler, makes single handing easier, because even with crew I am sailing on my own

[BOAT]

Only dropouts I have suffered is trying to steer to wind angle. My wind sensor is on rear arch and gets turbulence from the mainsail every now and then. Found steering to a bearing much easier

Is that a 150 Genny? I hardly use mine now gone to a 110 and an asym on a furler, makes single handing easier, because even with crew I am sailing on my own

Oh yeah, that's a 150 plus - it's huge - when I put that thing out I have horsepower to spare - I can tow a truck behind the boat with that thing. That's also why we are heeled over so much - I have it all the way out and the bottom closed - it's venting to the top so the air has only one way to go: up. I can push the jib eye forward and open a nice hole in the bottom and that would force the air down and take about 5 degrees off the boat but I wanted to get the pictures for you guys to show how comfortable the wife is at 45 degrees. It makes for a much better day when you have the wife dialed in.

I am old fashioned so I always tend to steer to a bearing - even worse I use magnetic bearing so the heading on the Chartplotter (GPS) is always about 5 degrees off the heading on the AP - but I don't mind. In the old days magnetic was all you had so it's what I am used to. I have my AP set to magnetic compass bearings. Are there any places out in the oceans where there is no GPS? (Beats me), but the north pole magnetic is always there.

I also took some other videos that day - one is showing how I can monitor the chartplotter from below deck on an ipad - it's pretty cool if you guys are interested I can post it.

[kadet]

Always interest in vids, my son has been diagnosed with a chronic illness so last 6 months have been pretty much sailing free here

[Starscream]

Boat: POST THEM. Love the vids. More please.

[Whipsyjac]

Hi Darren,

Sorry to hear your admiral wants to keep things on an even keel at all times. I'm not sure I have any remedies but next time you're at a club event try starting conversations about how far over people have been. I'm sure no one in MYCBC has been capsized

The weekend in 2014 when we meet up with you and the rest of the club at Thetis we had our worst knockdown and didn't even get water in the cockpit. We were anchored in Campbell Bay Mayne Island and protected from the Northwest. With the crew asleep and the water glassy I slipped anchor and started motoring. I intended to round Edith point and head NW to Active pass. I checked the radio etc and they were reporting 15-20kts in the strait. I didn't see any evidence of that so I motored around the point into 20kts wind on the nose and 5-6ft waves. All hull broke loose below decks and the admiral was on deck in a heartbeat. I tried raising a smidge of sail to stabilize things, but this got us broaching and rounding up as nothing had been put away ship shape and there were tangles and snags in almost every line. We went past 45°heel on both starboard and port, we were held down then rounded up violently before I got things under control. We then bashed our way into Active pass and headed to Miner's Bay where a little shore leave at the café lifted everyone's spirits and the sun dried my bedraggled crew. It was scary but like BOAT I did my best not to show fear and reassured everyone the could not capsize.
We sail comfortably at 15-20° heel now with the whole family knowing we can go over a lot further without disaster. I'm learning lessons so I don't repeat these incidents. I would hope that if your admiral could hear the confidence some of the admiral's have it may make her bolder.

Another idea... My wife knows me inside and out and therefore doesn't always take my opinions as fact(probably a good thing) so she will often give a lot more credit to someone else. Maybe even if it's not a Macfoulie you could get her to go for a sail with WindChime. She may trust Darry a bit more since he is an instructor and that may help her get more comfortable heeling further.

Last idea, since our boats sail most efficient around 15°heel I often get the crew to move to the low(leeward) side of the cockpit in very light air. This gets them used to the heel while they are instinctively confident that nothing scary is going to happen.

If none of that works just fire up that giant Suzuki and show us slow boats how it's done!

Willy

[BOAT]

Always interest in vids, my son has been diagnosed with a chronic illness so last 6 months have been pretty much sailing free here

Okay Kadet - That really sucks - I want your son to feel better - I hope he feels better soon.


Trying to acclimate the crew, (Whipsyjac), is a good thing to do and may I also suggest skippers get used to spending time on the low side of the boat. I read too many posts here about people "diving" to the low side of the boat to grab a jib sheet or some other thing. There is no need for such maneuvers. Get comfortable with riding the low side. Don't treat half the boat as off limits just because it's leaning. Walk around, look over the side, relax - nothing is going to happen and you will be better prepared to reach any sheet or line that needs tending as opposed to distancing yourself from all the ones on one side of the boat.

Okay, here is the vid of the ipad. The chartplotter creates a wi fi network on 'boat' that all the phone and tablet devices can see. The wife likes to take pictures of sea creatures so I try to find them using sonar; but alas, my sonar skills are not so hot - in the end my whale sounding ended up only being a dolphin:


https://vimeo.com/176998271