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Lexington - 3/7/17. 08°. 34 ' S. 98°. 09 ' W



Decisions, decisions. We are now down fairly far south and appear to be in for consistent trade winds in the 10-15 range. Now we need to decide how to sail them. Our wind will be about 120 degrees off our bow on a rhumb line course. Right now we are on a beam reach in 10-12 knots of wind but need to adjust our course about 20 to the west. Things get complicated.. as I have been writing this the winds have dropped to 6-8. Go figure! Our choices are: 1. Regular white sails down wind 2. Regular white sails with wing on wing 3. Two head sails, both poles out 4. Asymmetrical spinnaker.

We decided that the others would fly the asymmetrical spinnaker that they can do with little effort without my help. I am doing the radio roll call soon. Little effort means that it is already up and furled on a top down furler. We will take down our white sails and unfurl the asymmetrical spinnaker and hope that the winds stay between 8 and 15 knots. I realize that I need to explain the term white sails to some readers. The basic set of sails is usually a main sail and some sort of foresail which were traditionally made of white Dacron fabric. For some reason the spinnaker type sails are traditionally colored and some have designs. The big billowing colorful sail out in front of a boat you see in a photo is a spinnaker type sail.

Next I need to explain furl. Most boats have some way of wrapping the sail around itself to take it in. Older boats just dropped the sail and then took it off whatever it was attached to. More modern boats have devices that roll up the sail and it can stay in place to be easily deployed by simply unwrapping (unfurling) the sail. The most common example is a foresail (triangle sail off the front of the boat) which wraps around the forestay which holds it up. On my boat I have a boom furling main sail. There is a mandrel (round pole ) in the boom which turns to roll up the sail into the boom (horizontal support off the mast at right angle to the mast).
That is it for today's lesson. Hope all is well at home! Bob

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