Sailing Experience

[safewalrus]

Fanie - hope it all went well with the maiden voyage!!

[Fanie]

Eh Guys.

Sailing SUCK !! Bottom line ! I mean really. With all your 'fair weather' wishes the weather turned out so fair it was actually NO WIND. Just look at the picture. Does it look like one can get anywhere like this ? Please next time wish me **** weather and maybe the wind will blow.

Ok ok I'll admit it wasn't all your fault. The missus went with and I couldn't swear enough for the wind to pick up any. Sad to say, the new year started at a VERY QUIET note wrt the wind. The only time there was a li-hi-hi-hi-tel wind was when a powerboat went past Some even waved that shame f idiot on a sail boat wave.

Here's my SAILING EXPERIENCE for the day -

1 - You cannot sail if there is no wind.

2 - You cannot tack if there is no wind

3 - sailboats mysteriously drift in any direction if there is no wind including aftward

4 - Take an electric motor with (thank GOD I did... I hate rowing) or take a petrol motor with. Forget life jackets, fire extinguishers, bailing buckets, GPS's. The wife even wanted to take an extra pair of shoes with. Maybe she had some walking in mind which now almost sounds like the better idea

5 - As far as a skippers licence I should get a bloody medal for what I achieved today. How many of you can 'sail' form wind patch to wind patch over a 5km range AND tack A-hand almost make it back before dark ! Yeah !

6 - Checked speed on the GPS The voice asked 'are you going to move or switch off to reserve battery power' (you cancel that with the fck off button) Top speed achieved in one of the random gusts was around 7 km/hr... I'm too ashamed to convert that to knots and put it up here.

7 - Put the sunscreen on before your feet turns bright red ! Oh. You know that.

8 - Wet bikes, power boats and rowing canoes are all much much faster than sail boats. As a matter of fact, the game in the reserve feed faster than sail boats goes. 'Oh look honey, the herd tacked again... they're feeding this way past us again...'

9 - 'Waiving' the rudder from side to side does not propel a sailboat any.

[longliner45]

look at the bright side ,,fanny,,,,at least it floats

[masalai]

Sorry Fanie, I was too busy ordering rain for Brisbane, which looks like persisting for 3 weeks (1.5 to go), but because of upper level windshear knocking off the tops of the clouds (all that wind leaving SA for some reason). Anyhow to blow in the moist cloud making air from the ocean, HE sent 30 to 40 knot stuff from the SE. Stuffed up the usual outdoors Xmas & New Year fireworks. We'll send it over when our dams are full.

[Fanie]

Yes it floated very well. Amazingly the sail made quite a bit of shade for the most part which was nice in our extreme sun.

Faults on the rig...

The sail from the mast to the loose end needs to be extended, it is about a meter too short. Would make for much better performance.

At rest both amas sits on the water, I suspect it will increase drag some so they could be made higher up. Will do this in due time.

The mast bends some when you do encounter a gust of wind. I may look at adding two aft stays. We got one or two fair gusts but I never got the impression the mast would break. I should take it out in a wind storm and see if I can bugger anything up. Eliminate the weak parts.

Tacking happens too slow, it may be due to both amas in the water but it may become better if the rudder is a bit larger ?

I haven't put any keel on the centre hull, this may also improve tacking, some advice from you guys here would be appreciated.

I must say the hulls go through waves (made by the powerboats) quite well and the little tri is stable all round.

The only forces I could detect was sideways 'washing' between the centre hull and amas, creating a slight sideways shaking effect.

The sailing is quite easy, can sail anywhere. Unfortunately the wind really changed direction every 5 mins and it wasn't too exciting to go anywhere fast.

I will invest in a small (2 - 5hp) outboard for days like yesterday.

[safewalrus]

Think positive Fanie, what a beautiful day to laze on a boat teaching a worm to swim with a tinny in your hand, shades on and laid back smooth! The sort of day the wife and her mates would love - for a sailor it to has it's advantages, just what I'm not sure but there must be some somewhere??

The thing is you got afloat and proved the damn thing floated, far better than lauching into the teeth of a howling gale that takes all your hardwork and smashes it against the rocks and straight to the bottom!

[Fanie]

One of my non-technical friends quickly calculated the centre hull could carry about 4 cu meter of water which is about four tons so if it gets a hole in it and the foam I used for the centre hull would carry about 200kg... this thing is going to sink like a rock

Don't worry uncle Wallie... I'll just take the thing out again. One thing I noticed the dam I was on made a V on one place and for the life of me couldn't get back past the V... the little patches of wind there were kept on changing direction. So the land created different direction flows... buggered any attempt to get out up. I got out all right, just sailed past the V (at about 1/2 km/hr and headed up that shoreline.

Maybe another lesson would be is to stay off the narrow dams. Head for the BIG ones. If I'm not mistaken our ave inland wind speed here is around 4 -6m/sec while at the coast it's 18m/sec.

[safewalrus]

Fanie you ain't gona break any water speed records with that kinda wind, but think positive! If that centre hull can carry 4 cubes of water think how much ice and tinnies it can carry (as well as you of course) enough beer there so's you wouldn't give a 'fishes t*t' about the speed - now that's living!!

[Fanie]

Fanie you ain't gona break any water speed records with that

Eh uncle Wallie - SAYS WHO !! I may land up in a tornado with this thing and get blowed past one of the thousands and thousands of speed camara's on our roads. I will be issued an official document WITH the speed, time date and so on. They also send you a crappy picture with which is very overpriced for the amount payable for it

Well, if one can determine the density of 'tinnies' it may even serve as extra boyancy... like fuel is lighter than water. The idea would be to empty the drinks from one side and fill the empty spots with fish, so when you're out of drink and full of fish you know it's time to leave...

I went to get some more fishing experience for a couple of days. Got hooked into the biggest bass I ever saw... lookied like one of these things you see in thriller movies... must have been a meter long ! No kiddin. It was a monster. Snapped the 20lb line in the trees as it took off like it didn't exist. Just got broken up twice, but the 2nd one was about 4kg's to the nearest lamp pole.

A friend and myself may go for another spin in the little tri this weekend. Hope for some bad weather.

I have found out how to resolve this wind thing. If the wind blows you sail. If there's no wind you fish, so the thing would be to take fishing stuff with and you pretend to go fishing then the wind blows and you can sail.

I was wondering for what kinds of crafts do one need a 'skippers licence'. It seems some guys take 'surf canoe's' and peddle them out to behind the brakers. No laws for that it seems and it seems like more risk to become shark food or bad weateher victims than using a proper boat.

[masalai]

Well done Fanie, good to see you on the water & having fun. Sorry I am not allowed to give you brownie points at the moment?

[Fanie]

Hi Masalai. I'm of opinion it is the weaving of the waves you feel when you get into bed after a day on the water that is so highly addictive. I love to be on the water.

What the heck is a brownie point ? My dad used to tell us kids a Dalmation has 364 spots, and when you pick the tail up you see spot number 365. Is that the brownie point you're referring to ?

[masalai]

Have a look at the bar above a post, next to the post number is "Post Feedback" that is where you can give "points" to express your appreciation to a contributor (or deduct same). I always add my name" -mas- " as no identification otherwise, particularly if deducting. The next one is to draw the moderator's attention - get the poster banned????
Cheers -mas-

[Fanie]

Put another SIX hours of sailing under my belt today.

This sailing thing is a wee-wee. If there's wind you sail. If there's no wind you drift. I got on the water at 13h00 and at least I could sail away from the shore to great fascination of the anglers on the shore, te-he... who watched the funny thing being assembled that grew and grew... The wind was very mild, and a few mono's was also splashing around. I fluttered for about 5km (I have a 5km boundary ?) when the wind died down AGAIN. It was getting personal now. The mono's all went in with their little outboards.
Now I couldn't 'go in' so I drifted around a bit... about half an hour or so when the wind picked up again. The evidence...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJzE6HmIYNI
Now from the movie you'll see -
1 - the mast bends too much, I'll have to add stays to keep it up.
2 - The sail was made too small, I have already drawed it over for the sailmaker, it will add 30% or more of sailing area.
3 - I get too much side drift on a reach so I'll have to add a daggerboard. Tacking is a bastard (so I tack the wrong way around... yuk) especially when there's wind, it pushes the hull right back. I get about 45 deg (maybe slightly more, 90 - 100 deg) sailing windward, but the daggerboard and stiffer mast (forestay) could improve this some.
4 - the aft mast works. There are a couple of things that seems important.
a - the angle of the sail it makes with the boat centre. Remember there's no boom, so the sail wants to fly upward.
b - the tie down position for it, should be adjustable port to more port and starboard to more starboard.
c - if you tuck the sail in real close you get a better close-haul angle, but you sacrifice some speed.
d - When the wind gets a move on there are quite some forces on the clew rope, so an auto-tacking device with adjustable distance from the centre should ease up on muscle power some. You could just slide it out the distance you want it for max speed.
e - If you watch the sail you can see by the way it ball under the wind's force where you get max force and thus max speed. The sail makes kind of a roundness in the sail, when the roundness is in the centre of the sail you get max force.
f - there's more to take into consideration, didn't have enough wind and time to fiddle with it

It seems trimarans is a new thing in our area. No less than six boats stopped by and demanded to know what this thing was. One mono followed me for quite a while during the no-wind period to have a closer look. I'm thinking of making an audio tape I can play each time someone wants to know what it was

Today's sailing was better, if the wind would just blow consistent for a while it would be nice too you know...

[masalai]

Nice, Fanie.
Looks like lots more tension in forestay by tightening backstay as needed. Jibe turning may be easiest, as you said. Wait till you get forestay straight in a bit of wind (15knots) and speed/tacking will be easier.
This is where the money gets spent - yacht fittings are EXPENSIVE - a track curved so as to follow the foot of the sail but about .5 m beyond??, have it so that the "carr" carrying the sheet block can be pulled and locked in place, from side to side. Increase purchase by sheet rope going from "carr" to block at foot of sail back to block on carr thence to your hand. - half the effort. If that is not enough start the sheet at the foot of the sail, to the block (double) at the carr then back to sail back down to carr then to your hand - for a 3 to one advantage. ( I will probably get some technical expert cry me down but you should get the drift of the idea regardless or terminology.)

[Fanie]

The yacht fitting are expensive, so I just make my own

Thanks for the advice, I will consider the pulley system for when the auto tacker is up. If the carr track is streight instead of curved (no boom, remember) it may well auto-adjust to it's best position, but I will have to play with it some. Maybe steal some of the curtain rollers here and put them back before the wife notice

I must admit the mast bending is irritating.