Sail from broad reach to close hauled?

[dmksails]

Hi all -

I had an experience lately that I'm working on understanding so I can improve my technique.

The day started out with very little wind. I was ghosting along on a broad reach for a few hours when the winds slowly started to build. Over the next hour I went from 2-3 knots up to 5-6 knots. My boat is a 30-ft full keel sailboat.

When the wind was above 10 knots and the gusts where hitting 15 I decided it was time to take in a reef. Up till now everything was going well, boat was handling the wind and gusts just fine. I had the main out to about where the lifelines are and the jib was pretty loose. To reef I wanted to go from the present broad reach to being closed hauled. I proceeded to slowly turn up into the wind. When I was about on a beam reach, the wind slammed me down into a broach. I had to spill the main to get her back under control and went back to the broad reach I was on before. At that point I said screw it and wrestled the main down into the first reef while still heading downwind. After that, it was again smooth sailing and alot of fun with the wind hitting 20 knots on occasion and the boat screaming along.

Now I'm unsure as to what happened. If I'm correct, when going from a broad reach to close haul you would normally be slowing sheeting everything in. Why did I suddenly get so overpowered when I went from the broad to beam reach? What did I miss?

[mshozda]

In my mind, if you are trimmed for a broad reach and come up to the wind, if you leave the sheet alone then you should be spilling the main and should lessen the chance of being laid over. Without having seen what actually happened, it’s hard to diagnose. Perhaps a gust of wind or a stray wave? If a squall was near then a microburst is certainly a possibility.

[Jim Cate]

If you were running off in 10 gusting 15 apparent wind you were likely doing around 5+ knots. This means the true wind was around 15 gusting 20. Now you turn upwind and the apparent wind goes up to 20 gusting 25 (ballpark). So, something like double the apparent wind, and that means something like 4 times the aerodynamic loads. Add in an untimely stronger gust and it's easy to see how you might be overpowered .

The above is a slight exaggeration in that once past a beam reach the sails would be luffing a good deal, but they still provide a lot of drag, and that does add to the heeling force... plus there is some centrifugal force on the rig, and that too adds to the heeling force.

So, the lesson is that you need to watch the TRUE wind whilst running and use it to base your thoughts on trim and maneuvering as you change course. (A lesson that many newbie catamaran skippers learn the hard way since their boats can go quite fast downwind which exacerbates the situation if they turn up.)

So, keep sailing and learning... its why sailing is such an interesting sport!

Jim

[leecea]

In addition to the apparent versus true wind speed issue, I wonder if your sail trim was a contributor.

You mention having the main out to the lifelines on a broad reach, then sheeting in as you came up to a beam reach. I think the lifelines might be where I'd put the sail for a beam reach, certainly no tighter. Perhaps your sails were trimmed in too far when you hit a beam reach, and that would heel the boat.

[psk125]

The other thing if you want to reef might be to turn the boat into a close-hauled course but leave the sheet alone so the sail luffs. That lets you reef it more easily. As you found out, trying to reef the sail while it's full of wind is not how its usually done.