SailBlog

Well, last night I got to figure out how the reefing is going to work with the new boom repair... I guess it is not really related to the boom repair. If I get my old sail out the foot of the sail will fit on the boom and it will work on the boom just like it always has. For some reason, I am compelled to try to use the new mainsail. With lighter winds, the extra sail is nice and I have gotten used to using it... but it is a bit of rigging to work with it...and the whole sail shape and reefing is different but good.

I am sailing it on the boom much more like I did the sail off the boom, it is interesting how the shape of this mainsail seems to be working well with it. I had been frustrated at times earlier, before the boom break as the tack and clews of the reef points didn't seem to match up. If I hauled the reef line tight, I had a hard time getting the sail back up... the tension from the tightened clew was higher up on the luft, not at the tack. It was consistent with each reef point.

So.. without the boom, with tension on the next lower clew for the tack the sail was able to shape itself, allowed to fall in as it would naturally; and it has had great downwind shape. As I have said...like a trysail, the clew leading down toward the cockpit.

So now... what I am doing is to essentially use the lower clew again with the next higher tack, allowing the boom to stay more centered in the boat, the shape of the sail laying to beam. It is hard to explain but the leech is brilliantly shaped for downwind sailing. As I need to, I can haul in the clew for the right tack to bring it more streamline for a better close reaching foil.

The bottom of the sail, the original foot was too long after the removal of 6" of the broken boom for the boom repair but it has not been a problem. I have a separate mainsheet assembly attached to the original clew to manage it... keeping the edge in line with the boom and when I have the first reef point clew tight to the boom, I am able to attach the original clew to the boom mainsheet tackle with a clip keeping it in line... actually, the sail doesn't even hang down at all. The sail on the boom is a bit sloppy as the clews aren't lining up with the tacks, but it is all contained.

The winds are 20-25kts and I am sailing with the third reef tack on the cunningham, its reef line loose, and the second reef clew tight to the boom...and the boom is at about 30* or so maybe 45* off the cockpit, with a preventer on it attached aft of the repair by a good foot or two. So... last night, with the increasing seas, the mainsail jibed twice as the seas were growing and I was behind on my reefing...the steering became overpowered a bit. I can feel it happening as the boat heels toward the port side and that lull comes, then the sail catches the wind and goes, followed by the boom... and the steering can't recover. I can't get out of bed fast enough to save the day.

I get on deck and just looked at it a second to make a plan... the boom had gone about to midship on the preventer, but the sail was backed all the way... unfortunately, it wasn't quite far enough over to actually sail the boat and give me enough steerage to just simply steer the boat back on course... so I released the preventer and slowly let it tack, much easier that I expected it to be, ... but of course the sail shape is not tight to the boom...it has a large amount of aspect to it, decreasing the tension on the boom thus the preventer.

At this point, I take over steering as the boat began to get some headway with the wind in the sail ... the jib has been flogging on the pole the whole time, but starts to gain some wind as we fall off the wind on the starboard tack,... I haul in the boom as we come near to downwind so that the boom will not have too far to crash with the jibe... the sail finally catches and flogs its way across, again. as it has aspect and is not flat, it takes its time... I let out the boom and put the preventer back on... reset the steering lines so that Anam Cara is once again in control. We have recovered...

My feeling is that it was a relatively safe maneuver, not too stressful for the boom, and a situation that is going to occur despite my intentions to prevent it, giving the upcoming amount of due westerly winds in my path and my desire to stay on as close a course as possible. Having the sail not tight to the boom seems to ease the impacts on the boom... of course all of you foot free mainsail sailors have been doing things this way all along... The impetous for my creative engineering is partially from having sailed Calypso which has a free footed in-mast furled mainsail. We never have the boom so far from the cockpit... we let out the outhaul to give the sail shape for downwind sailing. But in this situation, the outhaul is not attached to a track on the boom, it allows the sail to take on an even more natural shape as it just falls away from the boom, though a lower clew may be attached to the boom...the shape again, has that trysail elongated foot.

Overall I am very pleased with the way this is working. I truly feel that the shape of the downwind sail is very stable and powerful. I have to say, that I did discover the culprit to my aching shoulders and neck though...it is the volume of winching bringing in the reef lines as well as hauling the main. By the time I had reefed twice, my shoulder was already crying from reinjury and my neck is 'crook' this morning.

I will have to work on that... as it is, I need to leave the port side winch free in order to manage the lose clew, independently of the main halyard. Overtime, I will figure out what process will decrease the tension on the reef lines so that I can ease the amount of winching tension. It is always hard to reef sailing downwind, unable to dump the wind from the sails in the process...and with the pole on the jib, I just can't turn up into the wind... so I am not sure the solution. If I let the main halyard down farther it does help to depower the sail though. I also can let the boom out farther to decrease the foot tension, so ...things to try.

I am in frontal mode now, the seas already to 8' or so but with short periods. The motion below has set me to sitting most of the time and my back is feeling the outcome of the compression. It will be a long week or 10 days potentially. I do have one spurt of light winds, though they may be at night... but the swell will be up so there will be little motion reprieve. The blogs for the next bit of time will be in storm mode. Hopefully I will figure a way to keep busy, not just eating and drinking...doing email.

Today, I have defined what I think is a sugar addiction that has developed. I am finding myself quite distracted all the time by the desire to have that next drink of hot sweet tea or the PB 2 on crackers,...jam on crackers... the fruits. I am tending to wander around the boat going from one to the other, actually distracted by this need for another sweet thing to appease me... I have had to put my self on a two hour schedule as there just isn't food to graze on. I only have alotted rations. But it was interesting to identify this addictive pattern.

There was a time when I woke to playing my instuments, and always had some project of knitting or writing a song going... lately, the boom box has taken precidence over everything else for my time and i have found myself busy all day, not focused on the next cup of tea... so maybe that is why today it seems so obvious...as immediately I am finding myself slipping back into that tendency.

It was amazing to be able to take this new awareness and meditate, then clear the addiction, the emotional attachment to the sugar fixes as a way to feel better and ' to have a treat', plus the physical addiction to the sugar itself. I am encouraged to get back to playing tunes on my whistle...after nine months of time offshore, I should be back up on my old licks... the ukelele and guitar strings are rusting away again without use...so time to open new pathways for creativity now that the boom repair is done.

This afternoon, I did find that my being was totally freed up from the sugar fix.. and I practiced my tin whistle for over an hour, made my soup veggies for the next four days of stronger winds and big seas... Playing my Irish whistle has always brought a wonderful joy to my spirit...I started playing it at a low time in my life, just before I made the leap of faith to go to work on the tall ship and then on to the Caribbean, where I bought Inspired Sanity. It was the one thing I could do that I was progressing well at the time, though it took such a long time to be able to play a tune fast like the Irish do... It is always a balm to my spirit. I have been carrying around the tune books for all these years on Inspired Sanity. We have such a story to tell... a good story...

BTW...I did manage to get the wind generator going...I think I have been trying to start it spinning it the wrong way... i am so dyslexic...it is incredible. But the wind is diminishing... the batteries were well below 12v so they are just coming up to 12v now... so I will be keeping the tracking off overnight and unless I am downloading..so no worries if there are not new positions...we are doing fine. Once the winds come up again tomorrow, we should have wind for a while and get the batteries back up to 'snuff'.

Keepin On Sailin On Caring... Faith... Despite my life's setbacks, I have had a gift of faith that has allowed me to always move forward with great hope. Walking by faith is living in presence and where all of the spontaneous LIfe energy arises. I have called is spontaneous combustion ... when a room full of musicians who have never met create the most dynamic harmony and resonance known to existence... they just start to play by faith...

"Faith is attraction to the Divine. For too long, faith has been presented as a weak form of knowledge..yet whilst faith seems feeble in the realm of evidence and proof, beauty always attracts us. It strikes our sensblty n a way that makes us respond. Our response to beaut is unaored. Even in nknown ways, or live ar charged with atraction towrd divine beauty. the infinity of the beauty which is God is a feast for the soul. The beauty of God increases and deepens our own beauty. We enter the secret of symmetry of Divine imagination. When we consider faith as a response to Divine Beauty, we begin to blimpse its creativity and passion. Faith is no blind piety but a primal attraction, the deepest resonance of the self drawn to the elegance of its ancient origin. ... Something in us senses and knows how perfectly the contours of the soul fit the divine embrace. It is the deepest dream of the soul to be in the intimacy of Divine Beauty." John O'Donohue, Divine Beauty, p. 245-6.

Fairest of Winds and the Love of the Ocean Only Gratitude Donna

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