More Sail Work

Bob came by for a "quick" visit and was soon tied up and on board helping me out with my staysail issue.

I told him of the quotation of $10 per sq ft for a new storm jib and he seemed very contemptuous. I then raised a possibility that he had thought about himself and was about to suggest to me: put reefing points in my existing staysail. The staysail is in good condition and well made, with triple stitching all over the place. It seems to us that I could save a lot of money (and storage space in the boat) by being able to reef the staysail to a storm jib size of about 80 sq ft. I'm even wondering if it would be possible to use the same tack but put the reef clew high up the leech to yield a high cut sail which I think has been called a Yankee. This high cut would help protect the sail from boarding seas.

Neither of us knows enough about sails to be sure of anything. However, I will draw an accurate plan of the staysail and approach a sail maker in Cost Rica about putting in reef points in the sail. I think that the fabric is strong enough to take the loadings of high (e.g. 60 kt) winds.

I then showed Bob a worry that I have about the deployment of my "last ditch" parachute sea anchor in a survival storm. The parachute will hang off a chain around my bow roller. This is wonderful because it eliminates all possibility of chafing. However, according to Heavy Weather Sailing the loadings from a sea anchor in a survival storm can be phenomenal - entire anchor windlasses have been ripped off. Well if my bow roller gets pulled off the entire base to which my headstay is shackled will go with it, and the mast will fall backwards. Losing a mast is bad enough , given that the solar panels, wind charger, GPS, HF, and AIS antennas will go with it; but losing it in a storm could be catastrophic with me frantically trying to cut away the wreckage with a hacksaw without being taken overboard by a wave before the boat gets holed.

Bob agreed that my worry is well founded. For cruising in "non-threatening" waters I'll probably stick to the current setup for a quick deployment of the parachute in an emergency. However, for the waters around Drake Passage (i.e. The Horn) and the Southern Ocean past South Africa I'll connect the parachute to my regular 3/8" anchor chain which I will cleat the chain off at the big samson post that I installed in Fremantle. This won't be a problem because the anchors would have all been stowed aft.

After Bob left I felt bold enough to raise the mainsail and try my new reefing system. There was some wind of 5-7 knots but it was from dead ahead, rather from the side as happens so frequently in this current-prone anchorage. After using the new reefing lines to set the sail at the proper height up the mast for the no 1 and no 2 reefs and marking the lines at the cockpit I tried reefing with them and it seemed to work splendidly. I would pay out the mainsail halyard and pull on the reefing line until I saw the mark. I would then cleat off the reefing line and tighten the halyard and that was the front of the sail taken care of. I'll try all of this in gentle conditions when I am underway to Costa Rica but at this point I am confident that the system will work well.

The first photo shows the red line that will be connected at the other end to the parachute is connected at this end to the now roller with a chain. The 100 meters of line to the parachute is shackled to the red line at the cockpit. The bag containing the parachute is then thrown in from the cockpit. When the parachute opens up and bites into the water it will break the plastic ties holding the red line to the starboard gunwale and soon the boat will facing the sea anchor bow-on and connected to it by that chafe-proof chain around the bow roller. I propose to replace that loop of chain around the roller by the regular anchor chain cleated off at the samson post.

The next photo is a side view of the second luff reefing line in action, where the blue speckled rope is holding down the sail via a bowline knot around the reefing ring. The third photo is looking down to the deck, showing how the line passes around a block at the base of the mast and to the cockpit.