Sails & Sailing

Mainsail

Aventura has a fully battened mainsail as I realized that only such an efficient sail would be able to get any performance out of a boat with a flat bottom and a centreboard. I have been happy with my choice and would choose a fully battened mainsail again provided that it has a well thought out reefing system. Also, an electric winch located in the cockpit, is a great help as it makes it easier to hoist the sail but also to take in the reefs as both the main halyard and reefing lines are led back to the cockpit. One further improvement that I made is to provide the electric winch with a remote control. First I prepare the halyard by winding it around the self-tailing winch. I then go onto the side deck and as I start raising the mainsail with the help of the remote control, I can check that the sail does not get caught in the lazyjacks. If it does, I stop the winch with the remote control, sort out the mainsail, and continue raising it. By using the electric winch with its remote control in the same way I can easily lift the large tender onto the foredeck on my own.

Both the original mainsail, which I replaced in New Zealand after 50,000 miles, and the present one were well cut, never suffering any serious damage, although the old one had started losing its shape towards the end of its life. Doyle’s Sailmakers produced, in their own words, a bullet-proof triple-stitched mainsail that after 20,000 miles still looks like new.

The Harken mast travellers had all their ball bearings replaced in 2007.

On the Wind

Rather than having the standard sail plan that relies on a 130% genoa, which is indeed better suited for Mediterranean sailing, I opted for a proper cutter rig. The yankee and staysail arrangement, both on Profurl gears, backed up by a powerful well-cut mainsail with four reefs, allows me to sail the boat efficiently in virtually any wind strength.

Not surprisingly, bearing in mind the OVNI’s centreboard and flat bottom, sailing on the wind is Aventura’s weakest point, so one has to make a real effort to minimize this problem. The cutter rig, fully battened mainsail and medium light displacement all help to overcome some of this drawback. Usually at about 14 to 16 knots I put the first reef in the mainsail and may keep the yankee full. Whenever possible, I try to reef the mainsail first as Aventura seems to prefer this. She starts slowing down when she heels too much and the ideal is to try and sail on the first chine. As the wind increases it is easy to keep things under control by rolling in some of the yankee. By about 22 knots the second reef is put in the mainsail and the yankee furled to about 50% of its surface. Up to now the staysail would have been kept full but at 25 knots, if we are still on the wind, the third reef is taken in the mainsail and the yankee completely rolled in. It is now that the staysail shows the advantage of a cutter rig. Usually we are able to continue like this to maybe 30 knots, but then the movement may become uncomfortable and normally I prefer to ease the sheets slightly and increase the wind angle.

Reaching

When beam reaching Aventura behaves like any other boat, she is fast, dry and comfortable and the reefing stages are almost the same as when sailing on the wind. I need to stress that the figures mentioned above are primarily for the sake of simplicity and in reality I might do things differently in view of existing conditions. As most will agree, beam reaching can be the most comfortable point of sailing and Aventura is no exception. However, due to the route I had chosen, where broad reaching or running conditions prevail for most of the time, on this latest voyage I have done very little beam reaching.

Broad Reaching

This is definitely Aventura’s preferred point of sailing as with her displacement and flat bottom she happily gallops along. If the wind is above14 knots the mainsail continues to do the main job, with reefs taken in at higher wind speeds: first reef at 20, second at 25, third at 30 knots. While the yankee’s surface is reduced accordingly, the staysail is rarely used as it is blanketed by the mainsail. One great advantage of Aventura, which took me years to discover, is just how happy she is sailing under mainsail alone. This, I believe, is due to her configuration. Because of the need for the mast to be exactly above the centreboard on all OVNIs the mast is further forward than on most other boats. The fore triangle seems to be smaller than on other boats of this size but this could be just an illusion. The great advantage of having the mast so far forward is that the end of the boom does not reach the cockpit, which I consider to be an important safety factor.

The efficient fully battened mainsail is often used on its own allowing me to tack easily just under mainsail Aventura behaving like an oversized dinghy. This ability to be able to sail
with the mainsail alone is a great safety factor in strong winds. I never fail to make sure that the Walder boom brake is firmly set up and its two lines are well winched in the cockpit in case of an involuntary gybe.  But even in a gybe, voluntary or not, the mainsail remains under control while the boom swings slowly on to the other gybe, all friction being taken up by the boom brake.

When broad reaching under benign conditions I usually hoist the spinnaker when the wind angle gets to about 125 to 130 degrees off the beam. If the wind moves further astern the sheet, guy and pole are adjusted accordingly, my favourite method of using a fixed pole making all this quick and easy. If I expect the wind to go up, rather than use a spinnaker I prefer to pole out the yankee. With the system I use, of a fixed pole, if the wind goes up the yankee’s surface can be easily reduced and if the wind goes down, the yankee is completely furled and a spinnaker is hoisted, which is quick to do as the pole is already in place.

The first time I sailed Aventura III with just the mainsail in strong winds was on an eighty mile passage in the Aegean between the islands of Thira, also known as Santorini, and Crete. The previous day we had visited the site of Thira’s infamous volcano, whose violent eruption and subsequent tsunami in about 1500 BC destroyed the ancient Minoan civilisation on neighbouring Crete.  As is often the case in summer in the Aegean, in the morning the wind was light so we started off under full sail, then as the day progressed, and the Meltemi with it, I started reducing sail, but, as the wind was almost from astern, by the time it had reached the upper 20s we were sailing under mainsail alone and were occasionally surfing at 10 knots. Reefing the mainsail under those conditions would have been rather difficult. The wind went up to 30 knots but as the boat speed increased accordingly, and thus the apparent wind remained manageable, everything looked all right. We continued sailing fast like this and reached Crete by late afternoon having covered most of the eighty miles under full mainsail at an average of eight knots.

I have used this system on several occasions since, even in 40 knots while on passage from Fiji to New Zealand. Knowing what I know now, I make sure to reef the mainsail early while it is still easy to do, as Aventura is so efficient off the wind that in strong following winds she is just as fast reefed right down. In strong following winds I usually go straight to the third reef as I know that speed will hardly suffer. Also, the autopilot is very happy with this arrangement and so is the crew.
  
Running

By the time the wind angle approaches 165° and looks like continuing that way, I start making preparations to gybe, primarily because I feel it is not fair on the autopilot to make it work hard to keep the boat on course. I don’t think I have ever had a pilot induced gybe. Sailing short-handed I find it much easier when gybing a spinnaker not to do it all standing, but to douse the spinnaker, drop it on the fore deck, swap halyards so that the new one is on the leeward side, then set up the other pole for the new gybe. I usually haul in the other pole and drop its end inside the pulpit. All lines on the lazy pole are left in place as I may well have to gybe back, so the pole might as well be all set up.

If I have done the whole procedure on my own, which I often do especially when sailing with only one crew, who may be resting, I set the autopilot to a cautious 150° on the new gybe, take a few turns of the sheet and guy on their cockpit winches, guessing how much to let out, then go forward and hoist the doused spinnaker from the foot of the mast. Although the spinnaker halyard is led back to the cockpit, it can also be handled from the mast, which I prefer when I do it on my own. Winching with one hand and controlling the raising spinnaker with the other I get it up to the top of the mast. If everything looks all right I pull up the douser, the spinnaker opens nicely, I have another look to make sure that everything is OK, then run to the cockpit to adjust the sheet and guy. Once the spinnaker starts drawing well I set the pilot on the desired course, re-adjust the sheet and guy, make the necessary adjustments to the pole (all its lines come back to the cockpit), then sit down and relax. It may sound complicated but, with this well tried method, it is certainly not.

Spinnakers

Aventura III started off with one tri-radial and one asymmetric spinnaker. The tri-radial is perfectly cut and I am still using it, but the asymmetric was a disappointment. In the late 1990s when I ordered my sails, asymmetric spinnakers had only just appeared on the market and their cut was still guesswork, so I kept it as a spare and later ordered a second asymmetric spinnaker, which is perfectly cut. Halfway through the voyage, while in New Zealand, I acquired one of the new ParaSailor spinnakers. The sail was delivered to Auckland, New`Zealand in March 2004. Since then Aventura III has covered some 18,000 miles from New Zealand to Northern Australia, across the South Indian Ocean and Cape of Good Hope to the Canaries and all the way to Croatia. Looking through my logbook I reckon that the ParaSailor was used for well over one third of that distance, which I guess must be at least seven thousand miles. Besides the ParaSailor, I still have the other spinnakers: a standard tri-radial and two assymetric spinnakers, all with dousers. I am probably a rather unusual cruising sailor in that the spinnaker is my favourite sail. Since getting the ParaSailor I have only used one of the asymmetrics on a couple of occasions, and never the tri-radial, as I found the ParaSailor so versatile that I use it in a much wider range of conditions than would the tri-radial.

I normally keep the ParaSailor poled until we are sailing at 110 degrees off the wind, then, if the wind continues moving forward of the beam and the pole is about to touch the forestay, I release the pole and fly the ParaSailor from the bows by connecting the pole downhaul to the tack of the sail. As I had asked the builders to provide a non-standard longer stemhead I don’t need a short bowsprit for an assymetric spi or the ParaSailor. Flown from the bows, the ParaSailor acts as an assymetric spinnaker and I can keep it up until the wind gets to 70 or even 60 degrees off, but as I have a well cut proper assymetric, I usually prefer to switch earlier. One further advantage of the ParaSailor is that it tends to stay full even if not perfectly set, so one does not have to constantly adjust sheets and guys, a chore that will not be missed by a lazy crew.

Aventura III’s two spinnaker poles are kept on the side-decks rather than parked on the mast. I regard this to be a good precaution in case the mast is lost as the poles might then be lost too. In such an emergency, the two poles can be used to create an A frame to hoist a smaller sail.

Reefing

The mainsail has been provided with four reefs, only three of which are permanently set up with blocks and reefing lines. The fourth reef needs to be set up from scratch but I have only used it once, in a blow in Le Maire Strait, where perhaps the third reef would have done anyway. Initially only the first mainsail reef came back to the cockpit and to take in the second and third reefs I had to go forward. This was obviously an illogical solution as it meant having to work at the foot of the mast in strong winds. I kept changing the arrangement until I finally arrived at what I now regard as the best solution, with all one-line reefs coming back to the cockpit. Putting a reef in is very easy as the main halyard is also led back to the cockpit. While I pay out the halyard to lower the mainsail, I take in the reef with the help of the electric winch.