Well I did it.
I sailed forth.
Now at home with a cold bum ahead of a few squalls coming in off Moreton Island, I can report that my bum is not quite blue...
...and the sail rig performed as nautical and as shiver-me-timbers as you'd hope.
Not one major issue. Not one moment when the aloft stuff threatened to come crashing down amidships.
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| Todays' breezes |
And the craft moved below it in a direction of my choosing.
Oh how it moved: northerly at first then coming about after 5 kilometres UNDER SAIL!
My one complication was that I was harnessing so much of the 8 knot wind on offer from the south east that my rudders (plural) were stressing out. There's a lot of force on tap when the wind gets cornered, captured or whatever...It's a restless wind that yearns to wander.
So how fast was I going?
If walking pace is 5 kilometres per hour I was sailing faster than that ...maybe around 7-8 kph. Given that 8 knots (today's forcasted breeze) is about 14 kph, I was doing OK in way of wind harvesting.
It beats paddling this beamy craft of mine.
I also paddled today; but that's another story...
Sail Design/Close Hauling
I also paddled today; but that's another story...
Sail Design/Close Hauling
Since the wind swung around further to the south as I was heading back I was impressed with the way the sail design handled close hauled .
One drawback of having a sail and one, at that, which drops close to the water line, is that you are blindsided to the leeward. Since the wind was and often prevails onshore here, that means that my view of the coastline is going to be obscured when sailing parallel to the shore. So judging my speed and watching the coastal scenery pass by isn't an easy squiz. So to check out one side of the journey I need to lift the boom to look under it. The sail still performs, but it isn't a neat manoevre.
I beached just as the sun was setting and the evening chill was advancing over me. While this was only a short trip there's not much traffic on Deception Bay to get sociable with, even though en route back I was in not much more than 40 cm of water as the tide went out. However, above me were three Tiger Moths practicing fly overs in formation.
The local Caboolture airport community -- 12 km away -- launches aloft many odd craft but these Tiger Moths were like giant mosquitoes that had come out of the swamps for a celebratory buzz.
A boat is sailing close hauled (also called beating or working to windward) when its sails are trimmed in tightly and it is sailing as close to the wind as it can without entering the no go zone. This point of sail lets the boat travel diagonally to the wind direction, or "upwind".That was a novel experience for me. Close hauling makes a big difference to whether or not you are home by tea time and you'd guess that the shape of the sail matters in such matters.
To sail against the wind, one needs either a fore-and-aft sail (eg: lateen, sprit, lug, gaff, stay, or Bermuda sail) or masts at both ends to control its direction.One could not sail effectively against the wind with a standard square rig, consisting of a single mast with a square sail. If the skippers of such ships tried, they found that they made hardly enough head against wind to be worth the effort.(ref)My rig impresses as a sort of proa/ crab claw shape - akin to the preferred lateen sail of the Pacific islands. Herman Hielkema and Mike Toy offers a useful discussion on the wind forces that are harvested across the surface of a lateen sail.
One drawback of having a sail and one, at that, which drops close to the water line, is that you are blindsided to the leeward. Since the wind was and often prevails onshore here, that means that my view of the coastline is going to be obscured when sailing parallel to the shore. So judging my speed and watching the coastal scenery pass by isn't an easy squiz. So to check out one side of the journey I need to lift the boom to look under it. The sail still performs, but it isn't a neat manoevre.
I beached just as the sun was setting and the evening chill was advancing over me. While this was only a short trip there's not much traffic on Deception Bay to get sociable with, even though en route back I was in not much more than 40 cm of water as the tide went out. However, above me were three Tiger Moths practicing fly overs in formation.
The local Caboolture airport community -- 12 km away -- launches aloft many odd craft but these Tiger Moths were like giant mosquitoes that had come out of the swamps for a celebratory buzz.
