Snow Gum - Upwind Sailing Performance - Garcia Exploration 45
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2024
- For those who want to know about the Garcia Exploration 45 and its upwind sailing performance, here’s a compilation of clips from our recent passage from Bangor in Northern Ireland to Fishguard in Wales. We had to tack a few times, but the wind was also helpful for long stretches. Our Code 0 was in use for most of the trip and provided a noticeable boost in performance, given the consistently light and pleasant upwind sailing conditions. I don’t know who it was who coined the phrase, ‘Gentlemen don’t sail to wind!’, but I’m quite sure he or she was not riding in a Garcia Exploration 45 at the time. :-)
Adding serious value to other sailors. Well done and thanks for satisfying my curiosity.
Great fun! Thanks for sharing.
Hi, I am really enjoying you video's. Hope to see one at some point in the future with a bit more wind.
You're sailtrim looks fine. Maybe test Paolo's suggestion.
One remark on safety where I am not pretending to be the wise guy :-) On active winches it is better to do an extra safety turn of the sheet around the winch when you're done trimming. If you coincidently step on the active sheet it can't exits the teeth of the winch, fire off and take everything with it that is tangled (like your foot). When you start trimming again with the winch you have to undo the safety turn first.
Learned it at the ocean race training of Sir Robin Knox Johnson. They drill instructed it.
Hi Imeijaard. That looks like a Dutch name. 🙂 We will start to follow your suggestion, which is a very good one. Thanks. We’ll call this an ‘Imeijaard turn.’
Re stronger winds, look for a video by Mark Stern on Facebook in his Garcia yacht ‘Wings of Desire’. Mark was sailing upwind in high twenties and thirties. I’ll see if I can link it here. Or, look for our video with 10+ knots in the title. Here it is. czcams.com/video/8zpXWhD_0_0/video.html
@@SailingSnowGum I am definitely going to watch that video. Dutch I am. Living in Amsterdam. There is a very good marina next to the city center. So if you ever consider to visit by boat. We have a drink :-)
I forgot to sign with my fisrtname. Will do now. Regards Leo
Looks 👍.
Prob wld have been better to foot off on st’bd and go for speed as tide taking you down track anycase?
Hey our friends are back - Rick & Carolyn Sailing Snow Gum.. Great to have you guys back in our lovely harbour :P.. I have heard you managed to find the best chip shop in Wales already :P ha. Great to hear your back. I have been informed you are awaiting some deliveries ( new parts for the boat? ) What have you ordered...?? Anything you need help with, let me know.. If you need transport to get any where, feel free to call. Best wishes .. LUGGY - ;)
Hi Luggy. Great to hear from you. Imagine the pleasant surprise we had when the loveliest young lady in Fishguard asked if we were the Aussie yachties who’d met you. 😀We’re waiting on a new speed/depth/temperature sensor and a radio. Your friend will be checking it’s ok for the first of these to be held at the post office for us. The second should arrive at the yacht club. We did think of getting them addressed to Luggy, Fishguard, Wales. Would’ve worked. 🙂 We’ll let you know if we need special help with something - thank you. Much appreciated.
@@SailingSnowGum Good Morning. I was above the boat 15 mins ago, looking down on your starboard side. Ah yes i saw there was an issue with the sensor. Hopefully it will arrive with good speed for you. Yes, just let me know if i can help in any way. Will be my pleasure. By the way. It is ok for you to have the delivery made to the PO - the boss has agreed .... ;)
😄 no problem at all! And thank you for your kind words 😄
Rick, I would add more tension to code-zero halyard going upwind. It will allow a better shape to the sail.
I might need your strong arms on board Paulo. That halyard gets some load on it! I’ll try your suggestion next time we fly the Code 0 and report back with the results. I hope we get an extra knot and if we do we’ll call it the Paulo Knot. 🙂
@@SailingSnowGum who need arms with electric winches! Cheers!
I think Paulo is right…But… The halyard tension on an aluminium mast is always a critical element, a code zero is really a demanding sail in terms of forces on the rig…. With regards to the force needed to tight the halyard, do you have a 2:1 halyard? That would be a great improvement in case you do not have it.
@@albertoialongo2005 Hi Alberto. You make good points. The tension on the ‘gennaker’ halyard when flying the Code 0 is phenomenal. Pulling the luff straighter is more than I can do manually - and feels risky. I might allow Paulo to show me how it’s done with his own Exploration. 😀
looks great. was the centerboard all the way down?
Yes, the centreboard was all the way down while we were sailing into the wind. We start to raise it once we are on a reach and have it two thirds up for a broad reach.
Where (depthwise) was the centerboard? My understanding is that the centerboard needs to be tuned to the wind angle as well.
For tight, upwind sailing the centreboard should be all the way down. Then, the underwater wing that the centreboard is counteracts the wings that the sails are. The centreboard can be gradually lifted as the sailing angle moves through a reach to a broad reach, where it might be set at only 1/4 down. When we are running we have it all the way up to reduce drag to a minimum. :-)
There are 4 or 5 ropes on a sailboat. 1. Bell rope 2. Tiller rope 3. Foot rope. that is the rope you stand on out on a yard of a square-rigger. 4. Bolt rope, that is a rope folded into the lead of a for stay. 5. Rope ladder. All the rest are called " Lines ".
I thought a line was something you shaped up with the side of a credit card? Carolyn thought a line was something she used to hear in bars. But I would know nothing about either of these.
Re sailing, we got into the habit of just calling them by their colour. It was good of Garcia to use a different colour for each rope. 😝
@@SailingSnowGum Dang, that was funny. touché I am a traditionalist and was just trying to keep it alive. I is your boat so call anything you want.
no ropes on a boat
Hello very much enjoy your channel but I have to question the upwind performance of your Garcia. I understand Snow Gum will be fully loaded but the upwind speed is a little disappointing. Were you able to monitor leeway, is there weed on the hull or perhaps you were trying too hard and too close to the wind. As an Allures 44 owner it is my impression that Snow Gum should do better. Ed Major
Can you please show how you use the lifting centerboard with various wind directions and when entering an anchorage. Great videos, thanks.
Hi Monkey Boy. We are routinely adjusting the centreboard position. Problem is, until I screw a camera to the stub keel, there’s nothing to see. 😕 The centreboard needs to be down for upwind sailing, to counter the lift of the sails. Afterall, a sailing boat is just an aeroplane flying with one wing in the water and one wing out. Once we have the wind around beyond a reach we start raising the centreboard, to have it all the way up when running, or motoring. We also pull it up if entering a shallow anchorage or marina. Happily, the boat doesn’t need the centreboard to be useful. I even heard of one Allures yacht that lost its centreboard somewhere in the Pacific and the skipper didn’t even know it was gone, given all the downwind sailing and surfing that’s done in trade winds. But this is a third hand story …
@@SailingSnowGum many thanks for your reply. Perhaps you could include the adjustments you are making to the centerboard position in your videos - as you do with your sail settings - is there a centerboard position indicator or just marks on the winch. Looking forward to your next video. Safe sailing.
Been thinking about this and testing on my Allures. I rarely use full deep keel and the boat has less weather helm that way. I find with keel less than half down VMG is better upwind because speed through the water is greater and I can carry full sail in higher wind speeds. Try using half keel and full main.
Cheers
Ed
This is interesting. Your Allures might have less weather helm with half centreboard because it’s standing up to the wind less well, which is allowing wind to spill from the main sail. Perhaps. But clearly something is happening and it might simply be that your boat is faster without the drag of the full centreboard. I will give this a try the next we are tight upwind and progress is less than it ought to be.
@@SailingSnowGum Great. These centreboarders have most of the ballast in the hull therefore the keel position doesn’t significantly change stability, unlike Southerly and others. Lifting the centreboard simply moves the boat’s pivot point ( or centre of lateral resistance) aft thus reducing weather helm and eventually eliminating the possibility of a broach. This allows greater mainsail area, greater speed and hence VMG without much extra heel. See Pete Goss etc.
Good luck.
Ed
@@edwardmajor1427 Hi Ed. All you say is true, but there’s more. 🙂 The centreboard also acts as an underwater wing, generating lift in the same direction as that generated by the sails. This goes someway to balancing the lift forces above and below the water and reduces the boat’s heeling action. I spoke often and deeply with Pete Goss in the lead up to ordering this yacht. He was a great help, which has inspired Carolyn and me to be as helpful as we can be for others thinking of ordering one.
@@SailingSnowGum Absolutely yes. The main message of course to those thinking of Allures or Garcia is that off the wind with keel retracted there is this fantastic “Magic carpet” ride which is both fast and safe.
Ed
Hi Carolyn and Rick,
I wanted to ask if you are able to reef the main sail completely from the cockpit or if you need to step out of it and work directly at the mast.
We inquired if Garcia offer a furling main sail but they are against that because of the added mass and complexity of the mast.
Have a nice trip and fair winds.
Valentin
Hi Valentin. It is indeed possible to reef the main sail from the cockpit, for example, if the weather is so bad that moving up to the mast is just not a good idea. However, the job of reefing tends to work better if someone can step up to the mast, to help keep the lines running freely. Don’t get me wrong, reefing will work from the cockpit if that’s how it has to be done, but it’s better for the sails and lines if they are being helped along by friendly hands at the mast. Carolyn and I put three reefs in at the start of a gale, in the dark of night and howling with rain. We certainly didn’t go up to the mast. The conditions were simply awful and helped us appreciate the robustness of the Garcia’s sail plan. The simple fact is, while we were reefing, the boat was spinning in the wind. But the system worked, with no damage or problems. Having an inner forestay proved its value. Slab reefing is clunky, but it’s also flexible and robust. :-)
In the first part of the video (but please consider that it is difficoult to evaluate through a video)I think I saw the halyard of the main a bit loose and the vang too loose (the upper part of the main sail was ‘floppy’)… my two cents…
Hi Alberto. I think you saw correctly. I recall seeing the vang loose and cranking it tight. That made a difference. I’m quite sure the vang line will be the first to be replaced, given the chafe it experiences against the rubbing strip. The main sheets will be next. Thanks for the pointers.
Mark here from WoD: are you reefed for comfort? I think we sometimes pushed a little too much to speed on our recent trip, but I think you could easily get 8 knots in nice flat water if you wanted.
Hi Mark. Good to see you here. :-). On this trip we had light winds in our faces the whole way, apart from the last part; the run into Fishguard. So we had full main and Code 0 for almost the whole journey. But we do reef for comfort and safety whenever it’s a good idea. And as we get better at reefing we’re doing it earlier and deeper. We over did it while waiting for the tide north of the North Channel. Three reefs and two thirds staysail needs more than a breath of wind to be useful. Best way to change the wind is to change your sails!
For sure we would have sailed with much more emphasis on comfort if it had been just the two of us:)
Thanks guys, awesome video. So informative to watch the actual sailing performance of the different sail configurations. The code 0 is a total winner, but also love the little staysail for a stress free sleep at night. I would love to see you reef the mainsail, as I can't quite see if it is single line reefing or seperate sheets for the clew and tack.? Our old Lagoon only had a reefing line at the clew of the sail and it was quite hard work for my wife to drop the main in a serious breeze while I was having a beer.
Hi Greg. I’m glad you got some info from the video. We’ll try to get some footage when we’re actually doing the reefing, probably with our GoPro on my forehead, given that it’ll free up one hand for a beer. 🤪 During this trip we tried a technique suggested to us by Adrian and Bev from SV Falcon. Instead of motoring directly into the wind, we sailed at a close-haul with the Solent foresail deployed and eased the main until the wind was close enough to blowing directly along the boom and mainsail. With the reefing put in we resumed course, furled the Solent and deployed the staysail and tweaked the tension of the reefing lines and main halyard. We like to use names for techniques we learn from boat neighbours so we’ll be calling this an ‘AdeBev Reef’. 😊
Pond water flat isn't the windward condition gentlemen worry about.
You make a good point Barry. It was exceptionally pleasant upwind sailing! By golly I love that Code-0!
สวัสดี Thang you'VDO
You're way under trimmed. The inside telltales should be streaming with a 45° upward angle. The top inside telltales can be stalling 50% of the time, but the bottom inside should not be stalled.
Could you tell Mark Skier that we haven’t owned this boat for over two years now? But thanks for the tip. Are you able to nominate a time code where this trimming problem is best visible? Which sail are you focusing on? Keep in mind, it’s not a racing boat! Thanks for your tips. Regards, Rick.
@@SailingSnowGum I was talking about the headsail, and you can see the inner telltales are stalled most clearly at 0:42 and 4:20.
@@SailingSnowGum and race boat or not, proper trim is still important.
Thanks. I’ll look closely, once I’ve fired up my computer with its big screen. Can’t see the telltales on my iPhone.
I totally agree. In one of our other videos I picked up a knot by easing the solent (as Garcia call the big foresail), but we were on a broad reach that time. More curve in the sail helped. Racing training would carry over to sailing heavy exploration boats. This Garcia is well set up for sail management and flexibility. Jimmy’s influence is a bonus, but he didn’t get all that he wanted. Racoupeau insisted a cutter rig would be better than a solent rig, which I agree with, having experienced the benefits of that much smaller furling staysail close to the mast in tough conditions. And it was still possible to tack the solent through the gap. Tricky, but possible. 🙂
Hello very much enjoy your channel but I have to question the upwind performance of your Garcia. I understand Snow Gum will be fully loaded but the upwind speed is a little disappointing. Were you able to monitor leeway, is there weed on the hull or perhaps you were trying too hard and too close to the wind. As an Allures 44 owner it is my impression that Snow Gum should do better. Ed Major
Hi Ed. Sometimes I’m disappointed with the upwind performance too. 🙂 It’s a bit weird, how the boat zips along one day and is a slug the next. I’ve noticed the wave direction has something to do with it. Anyway, I’ve shown all the numbers in this video so I’ll ask you to get specific and tell me where you think the performance is a bit shit. Examples of the weirdness - I would often see 4.5 knots from 8 knots, hard on the wind and then see 4 knots from 17 knots on a close reach, but pushing into a high frequency chop. The frequency of waves here in the Irish Sea when they’re coming at you is surprisingly high. It’s like a million hands holding you back. Still, we made it from Bangor, Northern Ireland to Fishguard, Wales in quicker time than our realistic calculations. Being able to use the Code 0 for most of the trip made an impact.
@@SailingSnowGum I’m sorry but I don’t have an answer it just seems a little odd since the hull shape and sail areas are very similar on our 2 boats. Obv. yours is heavier. Where are you at present it would be good to meet up as I am based in Swansea. Ed