Randy, You are certainly on the right tack!
I heave to frequently in my M15 for lunch breaks and for reefing. I believe that it is one of the most calming techiques to have in your kit of experience. The sails to flog and raise the anxiety and the boat handles by itself for long periods of time even while you weight is moving around the small boat. Once you understand the mechanics of heaving to you just need to expieriment to get it right as you are. The footing speed while hove to should be fast enough to allow the boat to head up in a shifing gust (.5 kts is probably too slow) and avoid a knockdown but slow enough to not self tack in the same shifing gust(2kts is probably too fast). Some aproaches that help are as follows: Get the speed off of the boat and down to around .5 to 1 kt before you fix the tiller and main position. Think ahead and make sure you have comfortable sea room for footing along on the tack you chose ( practice reefing from either tack. If you have the sea room pick the tack that gives the better angle to the waves ( the wind is always from the same direction as the waves) Set up the main and tiller configuration to have the tiller quite a ways off center to quickly head up before the boat builds up speed on the gusts. The pinapple sails reefing sequence is correct. However if you do not have a topping lift or a boom kicker to hold the boom up you can start by shortening the clew before anything else. I did this for years but I have a bolt rope in the luff and not sail slugs. With slugs this process could put undue strain on the lowest slug. Heaving to has become such a valuable characteristic in a boat I do not believe I would own a cruising boat that could not be set up this way. Thanks Doug Kelch "Seas the Day" M15 #310 > The heave-to method would allow me to secure the > tiller in a hard-over position and then have both > hands free to work the lines. I want to give this > method a try next time but will first practice and > attempt to perfect heaving-to! > > It looks like I made 2 mistakes yesterday while > heaving-to. 1- The back winded Jib was not fully > flat, I should have sheeted it in tighter. And 2- it > sounds like I should have sheeted in the main just a > bit. I will give these a try on Monday. From the > pictures in the books <grin> I was expecting the bow > to be apx. into the wind, with a side-to-side > wiggle. Yesterday I hove-to on a port tack and the > bow settled apx. 30 degrees off-wind to port and > no-wiggle. I also seemed to be making more forward > headway than I expected, apx. 1.7 - 1.9 knots of > forward movement in apx. 15 - 20 knots of wind. Any > other thoughts or ideas? > > Thanks again, > Randy Graves > M-15 #407 > > > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/ms-tnef name=winmail.dat > _______________________________________________ > http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
