question about older ketch or yawl handling

[wizbang 13]

I just cannot see anything exciting happening in a sailboat "chase".
Need a Hacker powerboat and a guy blasting away with his Tommy Gun. Dudes on the sailboat returning fire with shotguns.Illegal booze blows up, hot chicks clothes catch a fire, gotta get em off fast !

[Woxbox]

So for excitement, they don't manage the running backstays well, the wind gets gusty, and there goes the main mast.

[willmarsh3]

Enough excitement for me is when the throat halyard gets chris crossed and the sail stuck in the 80% up position so she doesn't sail very well. Then the long boathook breaks. There is no choice but to go up the mast to get the halyard loose.

[Tom Hunter]

There is a lot that can go wrong, a simple but sensible scenario is the need to keep sail up for speed, in a situation with rising wind. As the wind increases the boat will get harder to control because she is overpressed and eventually she will broach. The answer is to reef, or take in sail, but you can write it any way you want. They can reef early, or they can try to keep the boat going fast when she is overpressed, or they can broach and then reef.

You have a lot of options for trade off scenarios, where they can go for control or speed. You can also have one boat try to out point the other, and what works in lighter winds may not work in heavier air.

You can do the reverse, start with high winds and less sail up, but have the wind die and the crew need to keep adding sail. A ketch would have a nice set to work with, and its hard to fly a spinnaker on a big yacht with only two crew.

[Ian McColgin]

Broaching is an off the wnd event. Impossible on a beat, when you might go from rail in the water to knock down. If off the wind, especially with large yachts of this vintage even if not gaff rigged, shortening sail is about impossible without rounding up and luffing.

[johnw]

And cotton sails weren't as strong as Dacron, so they could blow out in a breeze.

[johnw]

Broaching is an off the wnd event. Impossible on a beat, when you might go from rail in the water to knock down. If off the wind, especially with large yachts of this vintage even if not gaff rigged, shortening sail is about impossible without rounding up and luffing.

It may be that you haven't experienced a knockdown, so I'll describe one I experienced. I was sailing in a race aboard my father's 31' ketch with him, my girlfriend at the time, Monica, and another fellow who, like me, was in his 20s. The wind wasn't all that strong, so we had main and genoa jib up, when when we got hit by a strong gust.

Now, I was at the helm, and on this boat I could stand in the self-draining cockpit and the main boom would not hit me in the head. When the gust hit, the boat went so far over that water was flooding into the cockpit and when I tried to release the main sheet, the boom was in the water and the sail couldn't go out. My feet were on the weather side of the mizzen at this point, because we were too far over to stand on the deck.

After a brief eternity, the gust subsided and the boat came up and the main boom went out and we released the genoa (the cleat for it had been under water.) I had gone from standing on the mizzen to the cockpit seat, which meant I was the only one with dry feet. The others had hung on and braced against the lee side of the cockpit, so their feet had been in the water washing into the cockpit, which was now full of water and draining somewhat slowly. I didn't want to alarm Monica, who hadn't been sailing before, so I remarked to my father, "do you think we should switch to the small jib?"

After a moment's consideration, he nodded and said, "well, if you think so."

Monica thought we did this sort of thing all the time.

[cappel]

That's a great story of things going suddenly unexpectedly wrong, JohnW. Near disasters like the ones mentioned above are the sort of thing I want to throw at my two characters to keep things interesting.

I have some slam bang action moments in other parts of my story, where the characters are under fire during a winding mountain car chase. I think it's enough that they be in peril from wind and waves here.

I've been looking at info on Karenita (Sirocco). She's Bermuda rigged and often photographed with a monogrammed spinnaker or a genoa. Of course, she's also fully crewed and running with modern sails. For the sake of my story, I'm thinking that the characters get some assistance in the escape, so they can raise sails and get underway quickly, but their confederate isn't coming with them. Given the time period and the fact that they can't change the cotton sails easily, I'm thinking they would want smaller jibs in their working sail plan, so she might be outfitted more like the photos I've tracked down at
http://marc-pajot.com/en/annonces/ka...y-sons-1929-2/
http://aldendesigns.com/ketch-full-keel/d0422.html

Chris

[gilberj]

Ian comment was that broaching was impossible going to windward, not that a knock-down is impossible. I have been knocked down going to windward, not quite as cute as JohnW's story but we recovered just fine and reduced sail, as appropriate. A broach is loosing control while broad reaching-running, includes the knockdown, along with an uncontrolled slew towards the wind, but into a beam to attitude to the sea. The strong wind and a large sea and perhaps sails in the water, on the beam can be catastrophic. When going to windward, if in a gust you round up in an uncontrolled fashion, to whole thing depowers the sails eliminating the problem. It is still time to consider reducing sail.....

[johnw]

Here's an example of broaching:



Even aside from the issue of getting sideways to the waves, the sails are an issue. You can carry a lot more sail down wind -- that's the whole point of spinnakers -- and if you find yourself sideways to the wind with all that sail up, you can get into a knockdown with too much sail up to readily recover.

Instructional vid here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...;v=DkouAjobzac

In heavy weather, it's one of the most dangerous things that can happen to you.

[John B]

I've sailed boats that broached on the wind, the two I can think of in particular were Farrs from the 80's . If you let them heel a bit to far over their relatively wide beam aft would mean the rudder came out of the water enough to lose traction and they'd spin out into the wind. You need to have a hand on the traveller. Once you know its no problem , but the first time was bigggg surprise for moi.
A classic might get knocked down but won't tend to do that , my old boat never lost steerage and I always could luff through the squalls rather than dumping sheet. You don't tend dump sheet on an old boat with a big sail unless you really have to , because its so hard to get it back in.

[Ian McColgin]

Interesting how terms differ from place to place.

Up here a broach is exclusivly a down wind phenomenon and can happen to boats like the IOR horrors that pick their rudders out of the water when they heel too far and to narrower deeper boats. In this terminology the broach is caused by either or combination of the stern essentially falling off the following wave and overtaking the bow and/or the torque applied by the well out boom.

All boats round up when on the wind and hit by a puff. Well designed seaboats round up gently. The IOR types pick their rudders out of the water and round up with no control. But here we just call it rounding up, not broaching.

[gilberj]

That is my take too Ian.....The big difference is when you round up suddenly when going to windward the sails automatically de-power. In a real broach your sails power up....

[johnw]

Interesting how terms differ from place to place.

Up here a broach is exclusivly a down wind phenomenon and can happen to boats like the IOR horrors that pick their rudders out of the water when they heel too far and to narrower deeper boats. In this terminology the broach is caused by either or combination of the stern essentially falling off the following wave and overtaking the bow and/or the torque applied by the well out boom.

All boats round up when on the wind and hit by a puff. Well designed seaboats round up gently. The IOR types pick their rudders out of the water and round up with no control. But here we just call it rounding up, not broaching.

Sometimes called rudder stall.

[John B]

Yah , I suppose you're right, but I still tell my friends about the boat that 'broached on the wind' on me, usually with I can't believe that just happened face because it happened so fast. Temperamental damn thing.
One coastal classic race we broached 11 times under kite on a friends 39 ft light displacement , he looked at rudder re design after that.

[cappel]

I've tried to come up with a specific scenario here gentleman. I've got these two fellows on a Bermuda rigged Karenita clone, sailing toward shore (lets say due east) on a close reach. Wind is from the southwest--about 10, but gusting--and the tide is coming out. They need to jibe and head north, parallel to the shore. The proposed sail plan is main, mizzen, staysail and jib. They jibe, putting the wind to port, with the tide running abeam from starboard. The wind gusts and everything starts to fall apart--they are quickly in danger of capsizing. The pursuit boat is still in sight, so they need to come out of this mostly intact or they're dead.

Questions:

Is this a reasonable sail plan given the circumstances I've outlined previously? Trying to break up the square footage as much as possible and give them a chance to run well in a variety of points of sail.

Can they recover quickly? Other than waiting for the wind to calm, what do they do? Lose the head sails completely (and probably the chase)? How quickly can they reduce sail with just the two of them? One man is forward dealing with the head sails. How much can the helmsman do managing the helm and sails? How much time do they have--or can they run on their side for a bit in a well designed boat? If the cotton sails get doused and heavy, can they still handle them?

Thanks for your thoughts.
Chris

[wizbang 13]

Is it because they are close to shore and in the surf? Wind and current alone will not capsize them .
Also , in the interest of accuracy, tide does not go in and out . Tide ONLY moves up and down . Current is what you seek.
bruce

[Ian McColgin]

You'll want to get a chart out to make sense. If one assumes a generally NNE to SSW coastal run it gets messy. If you're on a tight reach approaching a shore on this continent, you're on a port tack headed NNW or starboard tack headed SSE, unlikely to be closing with the shore. If the tide's coming out, I don't see how it gets on the starboard side.

It may be that your directions are confused but it's more likely that you're considering a specific stretch of coast, a wrinkle of bays and penninsulas, that needs description for the directions to make sense.

Firstly, since these boats are unlikely to have annamometers, have at least one good sailor who knows the Beaufort scale and use that. This gives you lots of physical cues you can use but WARNING: The standard sea state descriptions are for mature seas in open waters. Observe your local conditions and you will see that depending upon a lee shore or shallow water the conditions will be quite different.

So, you start in a nice Moderate Breeze (Force 4, wind 11kts-16kts) Definately a full sail day. Now your local research will matter. In Nantucket Sound a southwesterly like that is sure to rise to a Strong Breeze (Force 6, c 25kts) by afternoon. Maybe higher. That's in fair weather. Other weather systems do different things and you're locating this far from where I know anything so best I can say is pour over historical hour by hour weather on interesting days.

Boats of this size are not in danger of capsizing in anything like the conditions you'll be describing. Perhaps if caught with the sails too far in - say going roughly W on a nice tight reach in a SSW Moderate Breeze and there's a sudden backing to S and gust. THe boat will heel but you're enough off the wind that recovery by easing sheets and maybe rounding up a little will fix that, assuming there's no obstructions, shoals or such to weather.

See what you need to consider as you refine these things? I was writing a sort of sailing novel (all drafts lost with Granuaile and I have not tried again) and even with my very detailed logs to help me lay out various runs, it was hard to get the details all in the right order.

G'luck

[gilberj]

Ian is right....You want to pick a geographic location and work up the conditions consistent with the weather in that location. get to know and understand the tidal movement, and the interaction between the tide and the wind. Out here on the West Coast, Salish Sea off Cape Mudge, a flood tide and strong SE wind will throw up a very steep nasty chop, and many vessels even larger ones have got into difficulties (actually a strong ebb tide can have a similar effect because this is where two tidal systems meet). Geography can have a specific effect as well. Off Cape Rich in Georgian Bay with a NW wind, locals will know that as you sail towards Meaford the wind will bend around the Cape becoming North, but at a certain point it will change quickly right to the West and significantly increase ( say from force 3 to force 5) as it comes out of the hills. Local conditions like these might effect the escape of your protagonists.

[cappel]

example.jpg
Here's a cleaned up diagram of the sketch I made for myself (hopefully, I haven't posted pics here before.) The coast I'm thinking of gets a lot of wind out of the southwest. The current runs south along the shore here. Again, they are sailing east with the wind on her starboard. They want to head north along the coast, so they need to jibe and put the wind to port. The tide is going out and they are keeping their distance the shore at this point. I know there are rip currents along this section of beach, but as the boat is staying out a bit to avoid shallow water I don't THINK that would be an issue. They aren't close to any sandbars. They guy at the helm has sailed here before.

The chase boat has fallen behind and the jibe seems straight forward, but I'd like something to go wrong that loses time and creates a lot of apparent danger. What would make that more credible? Is the described wind too gentle? Is the ketch too stable? What would have to happen to cause them to blow the jibe that badly? Or is it too improbably unless they are sailing with too much sail to begin with?

Chris

click to enlarge or go https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.n...6343759ae42a12

[Ian McColgin]

Well, since we're in the age of cotton sails, let the wind be coming up to the upper range of a Fresh Breeze (Force 5, get to 21 knots) and maybe in an otherwise routine gybe where the main sheet was not let to run and in the snap when all fetches up on the other side you get a nice long seam rip. Once squared away on the new course one party sets to desperate work mending the rip while the other sails on jib and jigger watching as the chase boat begins to catch up. Try sitting with some damp canvass on your lap making herringbones up a tear for an idea as to just how evil this experience can be. Add the boat rocking. A few times putting one needle or the other into a palm. Depending on skill level, the stitching might bog down to barely one foot every five minutes or so.

[cappel]

Posting in this old thread to say thank you to all who answered the questions of a new author trying to write a brief sailing sequence as part of a long book. SEVERAL rewrites later, that book, Valhollywood , is live on Kindle. I put a shout out in my acknowledgements, but I wanted to personally express gratitude for everyone's comments and willingness to help me look (hopefully) smarter than I am. - Chris

[johngsandusky]

That's a cool update, thanks Cappel!

[Art Haberland]

I will have to check it out. Thank you for the update!

[cappel]

That's a cool update, thanks Cappel!

Thanks to everyone here! I'm running a free Kindle book promotion through Friday of this week (May 5 2023), so you can all read it and tell me what I got wrong.

https://amzn.to/4259ZaY

Chris

[Breakaway]

Thanks to everyone here! I'm running a free Kindle book promotion through Friday of this week (May 5 2023), so you can all read it and tell me what I got wrong.

https://amzn.to/4259ZaY

Chris

Cool!

Also, BUMP

Kevin


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