Our deep / dead downwind strategy is to go as fast as we can with as much sail area from our twin headsails as we can safely handle. The logic is that fast means minimising apparent wind onboard hence less loads on our sails and rig. Furthermore, lateral stability increases with speed (imagine riding a bike fast vs slowly) and exposes us to fewer total number of wave hits for a given passage.
However, having sailed full time on the twin headsail setup for a week, there are some drawbacks:
1) being pulled from the very front of the boat by the headsails means that the stern can sometimes have a mind of its own. This imposes unneccesary stress on the autopilot and reduces comfort in our aft cabin. Captain calls this fishtailing.
2) in light winds (below 15 knots) our heavy headsails flap. So the setup doesn’t work. To switch over to sail a higher course using single headsail with mainsail, we have to leave the cockpit to detach the leeward headsail sheet and its block from the end of the boom. The boom acts as our second pole. Being short handed with young children, this is not something we want to do - especially at night.
3) the same headsail sheet and block at the end of the boom gets in the way and doesn’t allow us to deploy the mainsail whilst they are on the boom.
So this morning in true Kaizen style (for those who do not know, Kaizen means “always learning, constantly improving” in Chinese, Japanese and Korean), Captain and I brainstormed for a solution. We then planned, spliced lines, and implemented an improvement that allows us to have two axis control over a permanent snatch block on the end of the boom. The addition of a third headsail sheet dedicated for boomed out sailing reduces reconfiguration when we switch to other points of sail. We now have the full flexibility to deploy the mainsail whenever we want, even when both headsails are deployed. YES - 3 sails!
This solution will hopefully solve our problems above and life on board should become safer and more comfortable.
The three sail setup pictured dampens the roll considerably and increases stability. This is because the boat is now being pushed from the mast as well as being pulled from the bow. We’ve noticed less amount of rudder needed when hand steering so there should be less strain and power consumption from the autopilot. The most important benefit is that we can now transition for sailing twin headsails, dead downwind, to broad reaching with a single headsail plus mainsail, single handed and all without needing to leave the cockpit.
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