Is it stupid to take a racing style sailboat around the world?

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by wingssail

...sail fast and live slow

You got it Fred

From my own personal experience, I concur with all your rebuttal comments.

And for all the reasons you mentioned I have also often found the more traditional and slower heavy cruising boats to be more unpleasant and more difficult to perform normal sailing operations on when compared to a more performance orientated boat, where everything is set up correctly in the first place to work properly and efficiently for sailing purposes.

Many members post dockside anecdotes without actually having experienced the situation for themselves.

Sometimes after sailing a nicely setup racing boat it can actually be quite a surprise just how easy things can be by comparison.

[JPA Cate]

There's a sort of anti-racing zeitgeist here on CF. I really don't know why.

What we see a lot of nowadays is a whole lot of retiree cruisers, with little experience and big plans; someone once characterized them as having too much money and too little anchoring skills. But even more, they don't really know how to trim sails, nor care. They work towards longevity of sails, regardless of hideous sail shape. And, it isn't important to them. Lacking the experience of sailing whatever the weather offered them, they only sail in pleasant light air weather, and do not learn much about coping with motion, or sails in heavier weather, so they fear it.

Who it does matter to are those who used to sail competitively in their youth, and carried those skills and habits over to cruising. And we are a very small number in an already very small community.

I'd like to say thanks to Fred for his mostly very patient explanations, and thanks to whoever it was that wrote about sailing when the rest are motoring; and to jmh2002. Imo, you have the right of it.

What is sad to me, is the popularity of the cruising idea, seen against the lack of experience of the applicants. When will they get the opportunity to learn? How many good years do we really have left after 60?

Ann, check my "about me" in my profile, if you're curious. I was lucky to sail with a number of skippers, and to not go to HI with a poor one. Before I met Jim.

[Nico Domino]

Originally Posted by Gmcgyvr

If it’s a noodle mast with runners &/or checkstays - you’ll need to make sure you will never do an involuntary jibe in heavy weather- could lose the mast easily.
Ask previous owner how he managed jibes by himself with runners.

I m sailing a ss36 with runners, Mouved the runners aft to miss the end of the bom, as I m sailing solo most of the time, usually 1st reef and then I can ignore the runners. If need for speed then full main and more work. No issues with race cruiser for cruising, improve your sailing knowledge and pay attention.. Enjoy the boat.

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

There's a sort of anti-racing zeitgeist here on CF. I really don't know why.

You are quite right about that. I guess the reason is that there are few here who grew up sailing in any type of performance or competitive manner. More's the pity. It's a great loss of skill and feel that is much harder to learn later.

And as for the boats, well when I look or sail on the average slow fat type of cruiser, I look at the winches and say "too small", I look at the lines and say "too fat", I look at the blocks and say "wtf is that crap!", etc, etc...

It's the same with the slab reefing threads. It can be quite easy with the right winches, lines, and blocks, but is often so difficult on some boats that people think in mast furling is the only way.

And the silly thing is, cruising boats are mostly short handed and it's meant to be fun, right? But then why are so many things more difficult to do than on a race boat that has a full crew... ?

@ Fred on Wingssail: every time I look at your boat my eyes are immediately drawn to those big primary winches - what size are they, big Barients or Lewmars maybe?

[Supercat568]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Well, our Sayer is a bit longer than the 37 mentioned, but she's done around 140,000+ miles now, including some time in the Arctic Ocean and the Southern Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific and ancillary seas. Plus she is our comfortable and to us attractive home, and has been for 17 years.

So, no, I don't think this chap is stupid. It is the folks who automatically decry any cruising boat that isn't heavy, old fashioned, slow, narrow, etc that are stupid IMO.

Jim

Great reply, thank you! I'd love to hear more about your boat..maybe some pictures? A YouTube channel?
Thanks again!

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Supercat568

Great reply, thank you! I'd love to hear more about your boat..maybe some pictures? A YouTube channel?
Thanks again!

You could try looking at my profile here on CF. Definitely no u-tube...ever!

Jim

[Supercat568]

Thank you, very informative post. Things I do not have much experience with are big waves, spinnakers, multiple head sails, and big boats. I've been sailing my whole life so I do have experience with big waves...but while on a windsurfing board in Aruba and Dominican Republic. A little bit different then a big boat! Your reply answered my question, thank you
Edit:
I was thinking further about what you wrote...and one more thing is I've never navigated from place to place. I go upwind, back and forth, then downwind back home, turn and either beach it, dock it to drop off passengers, or grab the mooring ball. Therefore I've never really had to turn while going downhill. Just had to come out of it to head home. So I never thought about it! 50 years of sailing and still have more to learn than I've learned...that's part of why I love sailing.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

You could try looking at my profile here on CF. Definitely no u-tube...ever!

Jim

So Jim, it looks like you have runners and the boom easily clears them, right?
I wonder how many cruisers have runners and checkstays? Not many I reckon.

[Supercat568]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

You could try looking at my profile here on CF. Definitely no u-tube...ever!

Jim

I checked, I saw the tiller and instantly fell more in love with your boat! I'd call it "Satiable" or maybe strike through the first two letters so people would know how I became satiated. Other similar boats have kevlar in high stress areas, does your boat? My boat has kevlar in high stress areas...under my wife's side of the bed!

[tiopirata]

Originally Posted by Sailmonkey

They do? Cruising cats? Citations?

Yes they do, though not the charter style cats. I have exceeded 300 miles in a day in a variety of multihulls, not on the race course. Never done that in a mono though.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

...Fred on Wingssail: every time I look at your boat my eyes are immediately drawn to those big primary winches - what size are they, big Barients or Lewmars maybe?...

These are Barient 632-3 Aluminum. The "6" means wide drum, the "32" is the size, "-3" means 3-speed.

These are the power-houses of our boat. They do everything. They allow us to grind in 150% genoa in 15 knots of wind. They do much more. Since every line on the boat, including all halyards, sheets and guys, even reefing lines, can lead directly to these winches, we can use them whenever the load is high or speed is needed.

For instance raising the dingy. We lead the spin halyard to the port primary and Judy yanks the dingy up in about 30 seconds using the Barient 632.

These are aluminum winches, 40 years old. We get parts from the AUSTRALIAN YACHT WINCH COMPANY, HUTTON-ARCO Yacht Winches. The've sent us bearings and other parts. We also have machine shops make parts we need if arco doesn't have them. (in 40 years of hard use we've needed parts a few times). We've replaced the aluminum gear teeth with custom made stainless gear rings and these winches also have new drums (Arco provided them)

We also have 3-speed main sheet winches, also Barient. In fact all of our winches are Barients.

We love these winches.

(I will add that we could never afford the winch package we have on this boat if we had to buy them, they are outragously expensive if bought new. But when you buy a used race boat you gat ALL the good stuff.)

[Supercat568]

How embarrassing, that post was not supposed to end there, what I wrote next was I'm kidding, I don't have a wife or a boat with a bed! I don't know how it chopped off the rest. I just switched to the app version from chrome so I don't know. And I was referring to stress of having a wife, not needing extra support...oh never mind! I'm sharp as a marble.



.

Originally Posted by Supercat568

I checked, I saw the tiller and instantly fell more in love with your boat! I'd call it "Satiable" or maybe strike through the first two letters so people would know how I became satiated. Other similar boats have kevlar in high stress areas, does your boat? My boat has kevlar in high stress areas...under my wife's side of the bed!

[Rucksta]

Originally Posted by wingssail

(I will add that we could never afford the winch package we have on this boat if we had to buy them, they are outrageously expensive if bought new. But when you buy a used race boat you gat ALL the good stuff.)

+1 The catalogue price of the Harken / Barient deck package on my 35 year old race boat is 5x the purchase price of the boat.

Once serviced it all works almost as well as new making the boat a delight to sail.

To ensure peak performance the boat and all equipment was designed to be maintained - easily.

A safe boat is well maintained.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Don C L

So Jim, it looks like you have runners and the boom easily clears them, right?
I wonder how many cruisers have runners and checkstays? Not many I reckon.

Don, only runners, no checkstays. Checkstays are not often required on swept-back spreader rigs, and while sorta skinny, our mast is pretty stable. In the PO's hands it survived two forestay rigging screw failures at sea (glad it was him and not me), one in the Arctic Ocean, far from help. Note that our rig is fractional, about 4/5, so the runners are the primary means of tensioning the forestay... though we can sail without them up to ~15 AWS (likely more, but I'm chicken). Again, a benefit of the spreaders.

And yes, the boom clears the runners. I had this mainsail cut so the first reef brings the head of the sail just below where the forestay and runners intersect the mast, and thus I can leave both runners set. Kinda nice when the wind gets up a bit: excellent mast support and no worry about gybing, etc.

I'm ambivalent about the Solent rig. After years of fussing with it, I think I'd prefer a normal cutter rig, mostly because of the need to furl the genoa for every tack or gybe. That is a real PITA!

Jim

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Supercat568

I checked, I saw the tiller and instantly fell more in love with your boat! I'd call it "Satiable" or maybe strike through the first two letters so people would know how I became satiated. Other similar boats have kevlar in high stress areas, does your boat? My boat has kevlar in high stress areas...under my wife's side of the bed!

If you are interested in the presence of both tiller and wheel steering, have a look at post #79 in

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...on-2930-6.html

which gives the history of the boat and it's peculiar setup. In fact, that whole thread is very informative, with some design discussions amongst some quite knowledgeable folks. I recommend it to you.

As to kevlar, no, our hull has only some extra glass layers in the impact areas and around the skeg root up in the hull... a really strongly built structure for once. I'm no expert, but there are some who say that adding kevlar to a glass layup isn't the best means of adding strength to a hull... for reasons that I'm not competent to discuss. Use the custom Google search function here on CF to research if interested.

Cheers,

Jim