Next message: Len den Besten: "[world-cruising] Re: Whiskerpole attached to"
On 6/25/06, Peter Ogilvie <> wrote:
>
> First, it's a staysail not a cutter jib. A double headsail rig has a jib
> on the headstay and a staysail on the staysail stay. Sometimes the jib is
> called a Yankee if it's closer in size to a 100% of the foretriangle. You
> might think about ditching the staysail boom. They make for a poorly
> setting sail, always seem to be in the way, and are a club waiting to take
> your teeth out, if you're lucky or crush your skull if you aren't.
>
> Depending on friction in the vane and steering gear, self steering vanes
> aren't at their best when running. The relative wind across the wind vane
> decreases as boat speed increases. Quite often the wind vane doesn't
> give enough input into the servo rudder to effectively steer the boat. The
> bigger the sails that your carrying downwind, the less effective the self
> steering. On our boat, we could run wing and wing with the Reacher drifter
> sheeted to the main boom and the staysail sheeted to the main boom and the
> vane steered just fine. When we tried the spinnaker, we picked up at least
> a knot of boatspeed but the boat sailed out from under the self steering
> vane and we had to steer by hand. Downwind is where autopilots earn their
> keep.
>
> I'm setting up a small tiller autopilot to give direction control to the
> Monitor on our boat. The tiller pilot doesn't have to exert itself much at
> all as it will just be turning the servo rudder so electrical consumption
> should be very low. Since there will still be good boat speed, the pendulum
> servo should give plenty of force to steer the boat.
>
A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a couple who were just
completing a circumnavigation aboard a Valiant 40. Some of the discussion
was about sails and what worked and didn't. His downwind strategy was to
put the wind at approximately 150 apparent, pole the genny to windward,
sheet the staysail to the end of the boom, reef the main, and wing the boom
as far as possible to leeward. He steered with his Monitor. Said the boat
would lock in on course for as long as the wind held.
FWIW, Scanmar now recommends against the small tiller pilot to windvane
steering. They said it will accelerate wear on the bearings.
--
Best,
Bryan Genez
"Capella" V40-158
New Bern, NC
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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