A Wee Escape from Normality

Late February and whole March has been busy. My work got busier as well but nothing abnormal at this end. It was more of busy due to all stuff other than work. There was Easter, two major sailing sessions, guests coming over and us flying to Poland becoming guests. All, good fun. However, while all those events are exciting and refreshing, now I have started to miss those days of normality staying in cosy house. I feel like I will never learn how to balance these things out.

One of the unusual 'big' things that happened was those two long distance sailing sessions we had. We helped in moving a boat from Solent to Scottish west coast by sailing it. Four of us, cut out from the land life, farming sea mileage in bicycle pace. It was a good refresher to offshore sailing since I have not done it since early university times. It is a bit of shame that I could not take a picture (too wet and too bumpy) and share with you but I might upload some of those attempts in this website.

While sailing I was really wondering what happened to all these solid boats. The one we were sailing was 2010's German 45ft mass production boat and it did not handle force 6 wind with 3m waves well. It was going quite fast for more broad angles, but the angles for going upwind were nothing great. However, this is only the start. There were quite many design flaws as a sailing boat. Like almost all recent sail boats, it is comfy and looking good when photographed moored to the shore or in light winds. This quickly changes as soon as conditions get a little more challenging.

This can be said for many boats that are using the same system, but it is really hard to trim the sail to achieve the good shape for mast furling main. The vertical battens and lack of ability to adjust main halyard(for better furling) make vertical flatness adjustments almost impossible. This often resulted in too deep sail for strong winds and too shallow sail for light wind downwind. I really felt like I was never going to achieve the correct shape of the sail to the wind. Another, false advertised thing was self tacking jib. I admit that it is nice to have such thing when you are sailing only upwind. However, the price you pay for your laziness of grinding upwind is quite noticeable down wind. The jib is too small for the job and it gets super unstable even under 150 degrees course and for beating you never get right shape of the sail with right angle due to lack of carts. In my opinion, as long as you are not sailing alone, the gains of self tacking jib are almost non-existent. If you have a good skipper and trimmer that knows all the timings, you can pull 80% of sheet by hand and winch only that remaining 20% if not less. Conventional jib will allow tighter angles(less tacking) and faster speeds. How often you are in that situation that you need to tack every 200m if you are not racing? I think if you are in that situation, you have done something wrong in terms of navigation or engine maintenance.

Another monstrosity was plotters located at wheel and no magnetic compass in easily visible place. It is really made for Mediterranean coastal motor sailing. In long passages, you quite often rely on autopilot so you can do other thins, catch some rest or get some warmth under spray-hood. Now, I really want to see a true sailor that would say to me that locating all the electric chart plotters(that were failing to work every now and then) at wheels located at aft end of cockpit and not a single one in the cabin or under the spray-hood is a good idea. When rain is pouring or waves are smashing still chilly weather, who likes going out to exposed aft end of cockpit just to check all the stuff that gets displayed on the chart plotter; including all important AIS information? I really wonder what do those designers and engineers who designed these were thinking. Offshore rated class A boat? A bit of a joke in my opinion.

It is a sad times for sailing that most of recent boats are made for being photogenic, comfortable in port and fast on paper, while good old values like seakeeping, structural rigidity and crew safety are often forgotten.