Mahe 36: Rig and Sails

[DtM]

Hi Jef and Marin,

Can you give me the dimensions of your spifurl? Who made it?

What angle do you use it? We use our genniker from 60 degrees off the wind.

daniel

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Mark,
Thank for your suggestion.
I am considering what to do; I have only little time left before setting sail, and I have already prepared a solution: insulating washers, bushes and a plastic gasket for under the winch (cut from a placemat). I want to mount it with silicone kit.
The Tef-Gel sounds simpler, and would avoid having to enlarge the holes in the aluminium piece from 6 mm to 8 mm to put in the isolating bushes.

And congratulations with your boat.
What your skipper is doing to protect your ship is impressive: remove lazy bag, the internal protections. Makes a good impression.
Note that your Volvo Penta warranty might (in Europe) be void if the engine runs over 100 hours before having a Volvo Penta dealer service. Hope your skipper does not run into the doldrums.... Maybe it's different in the US, this issue was discussed more than half a year ago already on this thread.

Kind regards,
Jef

[jean1146]

Hi everyone. No winch on our mast.never had one.It's part of what happened when we got our boat,some of the things we ordered never got and got some stuff we never ordered......we are ready to leave after Easter for the keys and Dry Tortugas for two weeks.
JC.

[Cotemar]

Jef,

You have a novel solution and it will work like a charm. As long as two different metals do not touch you will not have that battery effect (Galvanic Corrosion)
My rigger uses that same method of using thin sheets of plastic when mounting anything to the mast. Catatude does not have a winch on the mast. Looks like another thing I have to add

Mark

[Scott730]

You get the winch on the mast only if you order the gennaker, all others don't come with the winch.

[DtM]

The mast winch is interesting.

On the original specification for the Mahe it was a standard fitting whether you had a genniker or not. In fact it still shows as that on the Australian importer's site.

Has yours got a mast winch Saildog ?

I will look at another Mahe on Pittwater this weekend that has no bowsprit.

[Wayward Wind]

DtM

Mine comes with the mast winch. Thanks guys for bringing this up. Like Daniel, I now plan to service it sooner than later.

JohnC

[DtM]

John,

Am I right in remembering that you have no bowsprit ?

daniel

[Wayward Wind]

Daniel

I believe we have the same setup.

Cheers!

JohnC

[Wayward Wind]

Originally Posted by Jef & Marin, Netherlands

There are maybe not so may spi's and gennakers out there; we had only the second spifurl, after Kev & Jo from Invincible. See attached picture!
Probably there are some more gennakers.
Kind regards,
Jef

Mark, congratulations on Cattatude. I enjoyed the blog, and look forward to the posts.

Jef, nice pic of spifurl. What exactly is the difference between the spifurl and the asy spinnaker? What advantages does it have over the gennaker?

Cheers!

JohnC

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

John, Daniel,
Spifurl was the name Fountaine Pajot used last year for an asymmetric spinnaker that they had developed together with Incidences. It uses a Facnor FX2500 furler which has an endless loop. The Facnor furling system has a dyneema forestay which rotates. The spinnaker is attached with a small dyneema loop at bottom and top to two roller bearings which are mounted on the ends of the forestay.
There is a line of around one metre between the middle of the front side of the spinnaker to the middle of the dyneema line. When you furl, first this one metre line is first rolled around the dyneema forestay, then the whole spinnaker is rolled around the forestay from the middle.

Kev and Jo had as far as I know the first instance of this system, we have the second. Don't know how many followed.
Advantages: Easy and quick to roll and unroll as long as the sail is behind the mainsail.
Easy for jybing singlehanded just by furling.
Disadvantages: The dyneema loops on top and bottom wear very quickly. After about 10 days of uses the bottom one tore when crossing from the UK to Netherlands, with the spi flying from the halyard. So you have to inspect and replace these lines regularly. I am in discussion with the Dutch importer of Facnor whether Facnor already has a solution for this. Already ahlf a year....
Other disadvantages: You should not sail with the spi unused and furled but mounted, you really have to stow it away. There is the risk that the sail unfurls at an awkward moment.
Compared to a gennaker: I do not know which I would prefer. The sail is a bit rounder I guess, so less good for smaller angles. Normally you can sail to a minimum apparent wind of 70 degrees, 110 TWA. On very flat water you can get to 60 degrees AWA / 100 degrees TWA.
With a TWA of 120 degrees performance is best. We have reached to speed of 16.5 knots surfing down, and sustained at 14 knots. Best hour distance 10 miles with 1 knot of current against us. Wind varying 18-25 knots.
Depending on waves and how close you are to 120 TWA, and correct trim,your boat speed is between 60 and 75 % of the true wind speed. Normal is 65-70 %.
The sail is more critical in wind angles maybe then a gennaker.
I think the sail area is 50-60 m2. Halyard has a block only just above the jib halyard mast entry.
You can sail well in butterfly. We have been tacking with wind at e.g. 160 degrees TWA: changing between 180 and 130-140 degrees TWA gives better speed than sustained at 160 degrees. TWA's of 160 degrees are very awkward: the spifurl does not caitch enough wind, collapses, boat speed is low. Not suitable for butterflying.
Tacking with wind from straight behind is not useful: you have to go to 140-130 degrees TWA to get good speed increase, but this increases the distance too much.

We had one day where we sailed with wind from straight behind. Speed was a frustrating 6 knots, we had to sail a long distance. The wind then turned to 120 TWA, and speed increased to 10 knots!

Incidences made our sail in the wrong colours. During the week of delivery they made a new one in the right colours. So they have a sail lying around. Maybe nice to bargain?

The Gemini catamarans have a spinnaker which is one a rail which goes from one bow to the other via a bowsprit. I wonder how this would work for TWA's from 140-180 degrees. Allows you to catch more wind, less wind shadow from the mainsail. I have been thinking about mounting the spifurl to one bow, just to try it.

Greetings to all,
Jef

[lstyles]

Interesting that you should mention the gemini catamaran and their screecher sail. I think I might be uniquely qualified to comment on your ideas about mounting a screecher on the bow. I owned a gemini catamaran on SF Bay until May 2006 when it was capsized by a charterer. Unfortunately it was a total loss. I then went on to purchase a Mahe in November of 2007 and it is now in charter in SF Bay. Just before my gemini was capsized I had purchased a screecher sail for it (I had had the track installed when I got the boat originally). I never go to use it on the gemini so had a brand new screecher with a Facnor code zero furler on it. After purchasing the Mahe I sailed it from St. Marten across the Caribbean. I didnt really need a light air sail for the Mahe as we have an abundance of wind in SF. But, I figured I would try it out when sailing from Puerto Rico to Panama (non-stop). We rigged spectra loops in the center of the cross bar and where the cross bar met each hull. We tried the screecher in many different settings but quickly found out that putting the sail in the center didnt work well. Putting it by each hull on the crossbar, however, worked quite nicely even in winds of 6-8 knots. We would fly the screecher with the main mostly as it didnt work well running wing and wing with the jib (not enough wind). We flew it from 90-180 apparent. It worked so well that my local dealer (he was sailing with me) has become convinced that this is the way to go on all cats. He thinks that all the cats he sells sail better with the tack of the screecher/spin on one of the hulls. Our current plan is to put either pad-eyes on the front of each bow to hold the furler or better yet, to drill a horizontal hole through each hull up front to hold a spectra line to clip the furler to. The other think we are going to work on is a system to allow the tack to be 3-4 ft up off the bow as the sail works better that way. Using the code zero furler made it so easy to move the sail around and it wasnt hard for even me (a girl) to move the furled sail from hull to hull for a jibe. Really a one person operation which is nice.
Hope that helps some people and will post pictures when we get the system set up,
Lori

[DtM]

Serviced the mast winch a couple of weeks ago. Should I say I part serviced the winch.

My winch base was insulated from the aluminium plate by a plastic sheet.

The mounting bolts were solid as described by others. Other than using an impact driver does anyone have an idea of a spray perhaps that will breakdown the "oxidisation" caused by the dissimilar metals. I seem to remeber that WD40 might have an effect.

any comments?

d

[muskoka]

:: Llewellyn Ryland :: Bringing Colour To Life ::

Duralac anti-corrosion compound for aviation & marine applications where you're joining dissimilar metals. Apply with a small brush and join when tacky.

It won't break down the oxidation to help remove the winch but will protect the metals when you re-attach it so you won't have the same problem next time.

[Jef & Marin, Netherlands]

Regarding mast winch corrosion:
I planned to use insulating bushes, as I have written some time ago, however the position of one of the 5 holes makes this awkward.
So I mounted the winch with a thin plastic sheet (placemat) with silicone kit on both sides, and I greased the bolts liberally with waterproof grease. Quite messy, with the combination of silicone and grease.
Next time I dismount it I'll see the result. I expect no corrosion due to bronze / aluminium contact, but there might be corrosion between aluminium and stainless steel bolts. If this is the case I'll mount the bolts with the bushes on 4 of the 5 bolts; the critical one (at the top) does not have much function (little force due to tensioning of the halyard) and I might just leave it out.

have been sailing with the kids and friends the last 5 days. All beds occupied. Sunny, warm for end of april; little wind, around 3-8 knots with a peak of 12 knots.
In around 2-3 weeks we will leave for a 5 month trip to the Baltic.
Kind regards,
Jef