David Thatcher wrote:

... Since that day I have learned that any gybe with a 53 square metre sail needs to be treated with respect and very well controlled...

I agree with you David, gybing 53sqm  -- or anything over 40sqm  -  must be done with care. With such large and heavy sails, I have wondered if it would be an idea to make some sort of spring or elastic connection for the deck sheeting point. If that would stretch only as much as 30cm in a hard half-long gybe, it could mean the difference between broken battens or  not.

Also, the sheets can be downright dangerous on such big sails, so I guess the use of arc-shaped bars (laminated wood or bent tubes) to keep them out of the cockpit, makes sense.

Arne

Just curious as PJR deals with flat panel sails, are gybes softer with flat panels?

Gary Pick wrote:

Okay gybing, from what I have read the sail should weathercock during the gybe and therefore lose a lot of it's force as the sail swings over. It seems the trick is to do it quickly...just reread the section in PJR. I've been  carrying out the manoeuvre with maybe more caution than speed and the result is a hard gybe with substantial force.

When I first read PJR it talked about how easy gybes were on a junk rig yacht. Bear in mind that I had been sailing for 40 years and had done a few gybes in my time. So I was quite blasé about our first strong wind gybe on Footprints. What a shock we got as the sail crashed across and everything down below including our daughter flew across to the other side of the boat. Since that day I have learned that any gybe with a 53 square metre sail needs to be treated with respect and very well controlled. Of special danger is the mainsheet which sweeps across at head level. I find that with the forward rake on the mast that the sail is less inclined to gybe, but when it does it goes across vey quickly! Sometimes in strong wind conditions we will round up and tack the boat rather than experience one of Footprints horrendous gybes. Fortunately one thing I have learned through the numerous inadvertent crash gybes we have done with our new sail is that our 6.5 metre carbon and aluminium battens  are able to withstand the force of a gybe.

Gary,
there are the short gybes and the long ones.

I did a lot of long gybes in both Malena and Johanna. The procedure is to first square out the sail to 90° and then throw the tiller over and quickly round up over the gybing point. This ensures that the wind will grip all the sail from bottom to top simultaneously. In other words, the whole sail gybes at the same time. If you have a tidy cockpit so the sheet doesn’t catch anything, this gybe will be totally without stress in the rig.

Now, as you have seen, the long gybe takes up quite some space and also takes some time as you have to turn about 90° and back again. Then, if you have some reefs in the sail, there is the added chance of getting a fan-up.

In strong winds, if gybing seems too scary, I rather tack the boat around. I have done that many times in Malena and Johanna. This of course takes even more time.

I guess, in a 3-panel wind or stronger, offshore, I would rather drop the sail, then reset the windvane for the new course, and then just gybe the bundle, and finally re-hoist the little scrap of sail.

On my much smaller Frøken Sørensen (20sqm), solely used for inshore sailing, I generally make short gybes. I do so simply because the sheet forces are so light that I can easily manage. The procedure is to first set the tiller brake to gently swing the boat past the gybing point. Then I have both hands free to quickly haul in all I can on the sheet. As we gybe, I quickly let out the sheet through my gloved hands and reset the rudder to stop the swing. This is a quick method which doesn’t take up much space (much of my sailing is in confined waters).

Your Redwing is about as big as my Malena was. I guess, if you let the sheet pass over a snubber winch, and also fit a tiller brake, you could easily make the quicker short gybes with this boat as well.

Good luck,
Arne

 

So very true Arne.:-D :-D