BYYB Forums

What order do you raise the sails on a Weekender, and why?  Can someone please walk me through raising sails to getting underway on various headings off the wind.

Regards,

    Will

Point into the wind, raise mainsail first.  Keep it slack.  It will be loud and scary sounding if there's much wind, but this is normal.  When you are ready too move, sheet in the main to get moving. Raise the jib after the main, otherwise it will pull you around and things get hairy real fast. 

This is a nutshell description.  If you're trying this by yourself, make sure you've got lots of room. Better yet, get an experienced sailor to show you a couple of starts, stops and how to heave to.

If you kill yourself or worse following these directions, I never said any of this and never heard of BYYB.  ;-)

OK, sounds do-able hehe and have experienced weekender sailor I can ask to show me.  As for heave to...I was under the impression that with the clubfoot i couldn't back the sail properly to heave to?  Is this not correct?

Regards,

  Will

For a long term, cruising heave-to it might be difficult (I'm sure someone will chime in on this soon), but a basic dinghy heave to is easy, even with a club-foot jib. Per Bob Bond-

"To heave-to, sail slightly to windward of a beam reach.  The sails should be let out until the boom just clears the leeward shroud and the jib starts to flap.  The boat will now only move very gently forward."  Basic Sailing

You can also stop by simply luffing up into the wind, but if you get caught "in irons", it can be hard to get moving again. On that note, you may want to start off by getting into a basic heave-to, instead of trying to bear away from a head-to-wind position.

BTW a used bookstore will have gobs of basic sailing books for cheap.  That's a great way to start, and the way that I learned the ropes before I met any sailors crazy enough to sail in these mountains.

An experienced gaff rig sailor told me last year that you can heave to with a clubfoot if you tighten it into a board.  It isn't as good as backing the jib, but it does work.  When I do it I sail into the wind but not close hauled and slab the jib.  I then sheet out the main until it just loses its power.  I balance out all of this with the rudder so that it will turn the boat into the wind once the main powers up.  What this does is the jib drags the bow downwind until the main powers up.  Once the main starts pushing the boat ahead the rudder rounds the boat up into the wind until the main depowers.  When the main de powers, the jib pushes the bow down wind until the main powers up again and the whole thing starts all over again.  So basically you are jogging along realllllyyyy slowly.  I haven't tried this in a real blow yet, but that is next on the agenda.  The last time I did this I got up and roamed all around the boat including the cabin to see if my movement would upset the balance.  No problem.  If you have a wheel on your weekender the biggest problem is locking it down so you don't have to tend it and can go about your business.  I made a ring gear that fit on the back of my wheel that I could lock with a key tab.  It was kind of an involved, overly complex system, but it did work. 

Anyway, try this in light enough wind that you won't get in trouble.  I think it is pretty cool.

Al

Greetings Will,

Downwind, and it is captain's choice, either will do. But head sail first pretty much guarantees that she will only sail downwind until the mainsail is up. Captain Chuck would teach people how to raise and lower sail on all points of sail in a single afternoon by floating a beer filled cooler in the middle of the sailing pond attached to a line and anchor. You got a beer every time you raised sail, sailed around in a big circle and approached from the opposite direction. It's amazing what a little incentive does for the attention span.

If you are raising sail at the dock, save yourself some trouble and warp the boat around the pier so that she is on the downwind side of the dock to ensure that the wind is trying to blow you away from the pier. Ditto for sailing up to a dock, if at all possible up-wind approaches are the safest.

And never, ever, put anything between your boat and the pier that you are not willing to lose. So, no hands, and no feet should ever be used to fend the boat off the pier, (that is what fenders are for), or you might end up looking like Peg Leg Pete or Captain James Hook. You do know that the whole cockamaimie story about the pocket watch and the alligator named Tick-tock that Peter and James tell was just to cover up how stupid James lost his hand while fending his boat off a pier? 

Cheers,
Tom

The general rule is aft most sails are hoisted first, which brings the bow up into the wind, so you can continue hoisting other sails. As Tom has pointed out, often you don't have the luxury of being able to "head up" so you hoist to control the boat's motion. The same rule applies though, the sail furthest from the wind, as it blows across the boat is first. This keeps the boat pointed like a weather vain and you can control the other hoists.

The best method is to just get the main up, maybe even party scandalized and get her underway, so you can then maneuver to a head up position and continue the hoisting operations, without incident. Lastly, there's no harm in motoring out, rounding up and then hoisting. I do it all the time, as my usually launch ramp is in a cove, with winds that twist around 180 within a few hundred feet of the dock. I've hoisted and left, just to get headed and pushed back into docks, pilings and other boats, with little way on and very limited control. I just crank up a trolling motor, get a few hundred yards between me and stuff I might embarrass myself against, head up and hoist in leisure.

Getting underway is about common sense, more than anything else. If you have doubts about being able to get off a dock or beach or whatever, paddle, row or motor into a place with enough maneuvering room, that you can screw up without bashing your paint job. Trust me, if you don't offer this maneuvering room, you will screw up, it's the nature of sailing. Mother nature screws you with a wind shift, only when it's the least handy time to have one. She doesn't care if you have lots of tacking room, but patiently waits until you're in tight quarters and tosses you a shift, just as you put the helm down and aim for a dock. She gets great pleasure out of doing this to sailors and has enjoyed this fun for many centuries.

WoW,  Than you all for the wonderful advice!  And Paul, I will definitely try it with room to move and screw up some   So your idea of motoring out is right on

Regards,

    Will

Motoring is great, but a paddle or set of oars makes much less noise, uses no gas, unless you had beans earlier in the day and is usually easier to setup. Even in the golden age of sail, a crew might have to launch a jolly boat with several strong members aboard and this would be used to pull the mothership, into water wide enough to permit "sea room", so they could hoist their sails without concern they'd drift into something in the process.