HOW DOES ONE HEAVE TO WITH A CAT KETCH?
ANYONE?
gb
I don’t have a freedom, but the Toucan is a Tanton 43 Cat Ketch. The sails are fitted with booms rather than wishbones, and she has unstayed carbon fibre masts and a traveler riggeed for the forward boom.
I’ve been able to heave to by the following method:
Begin on a port tack close hauled with the sails trimmed tight and pointed as close to the wind as is comfortable.
Move the traveler fully to leeward.
Tack leaving the forward sail sheeted tight and traveler fully to the starboard side. This effectively backwinds the forward sail.
Trim the aft sail and rudder to balance the backwinded forward sail and you are hove to on a starboard tack.
The Toucan settles down making little to no headway and perhaps one knot of leeway. Everything nice and quiet to do whatever you had planned.
it is easy. Strike down the main sail. Sheet the mizzen to the lee side. The boat will lye at about 60 degrees to the wind. Rudder and centerboard are for fine tuning.
How about with cat-schooner like the Freedom 39 PH? The traveler of the forward sail is not adjustable. It moves freely depending on which tack you are on. There is no easy way to keep the traveler to leeward. Any ideas other than rigging a temporary restrain?
CrazyRU has the right of it; we did this for eight hours last week, and only made 5 nm forereaching across the wind, in quite violent seas with Force 6 NW winds and a strong North-going current, somewhere off Norway. In fact, we had the main handed, and a reef in the mizzen; the windage of the mast and the sail on the boom was enough to balance the rounding up effect of the mizzen. Initially, I used the emergency tiller to lash the rudder to windward, but it bent (38mm stainless tubing), and the boat did better with the wheel loosely tied to the steering pedestal. We raised the centreboard about half way. Whilst still sailing we had waves, often about 4 or 5 metres high, breaking over the foredeck, but when hove-to, they passed beneath the boat and the motion was much more moderate. The boat was fine, although we still found it too rough to get any sleep.
About 20 miles south of us, there was a 37 foot boat which was knocked down. We heard the Mayday broadcast, but were too far away to do anything. The crew of three young men had to be rescued by helicopter, although the boat did not sink. When it got light and the wind moderated, we were able to sail for shelter, and we found it quite rough as soon as we started moving, although it calmed down quite quickly after. We were surprised how effective heaving-to was, despite having no foresail set. A few days later, with a different crew, I sailed through the same waters to Shetland, but with a southerly wind, and we just kept going. At times the boom was dipping in the water, despite a reef in main and mizzen. Dropping the mizzen eased this a lot, although the speed dropped from 7kt to 5.5.
Related to heaving-to, we also discovered this year that when reefing or handing sails, it was much more comfortable just to let the boat lie-to with no hand on the helm, instead of motoring to windward, when the sails flog, the boat shakes and one runs out of sea-room much more quickly. How has it taken us ten years to find that out?
Castaway,
Great idea about lying ahull when reefing. Have you tried it when dropping sail in rough conditions. Our F38 does a great job of sailing in rough conditions (especially reaching) but we dread the trouncing we get when coming into the wind in 5 to 6 foot short period waves (Lake Erie is very shallow and kicks up quickly) to drop the sail at the end of a leg.
Thanks,
Bob
Sailmon,
Yes we tried that, too, in calmer conditions earlier this summer. It’s been a discovery trip! When I dropped the mizzen as described earlier, it was still fairly dark and I didn’t care to go on deck without waking the crew, so I just let it fall, held the head down with the downhaul, and left the sail loose. With the lower part, below the boom, still set and gently sheeted, the rest just lay on the boom without flogging for the next six hours, until the wind eased enough to raise it again. We covered 220 miles in 37 hours, the last 5 motoring through windless fog. Quite good going with such an inauspicious start, but I couldn’t have carried on at 7 kt in the first night’s rough seas. My crew on this occasion has sailed his boat round Cape Horn and through the Southern Ocean to Antarctica, so he thought I was a wuss: probably right!
We learnt a lot about short choppy seas sailing to windward around Denmark; like the Lake, the water lacks depth and salt, so you slam into the third wave and stop.