I am sailing more and more singlehand these days and duirng the fall, we start to get a good breeze but it comes accross my beam, so my stern and bow is under tension, sometimes a lot with a 15 kt breeze. Two people, no problem as I have the one person tend the bow line as a loop / spring and when I tend the stern, fairly straight forward as I typically reverse into my slip.
Singlehand is a different story. As I soon as I go up front, remove the last bow line that is under tension, run back and remove my mid-ship / stern line and jump back behind the wheel. NO matter how fast I do this, the time I get to my wheel, my bow is all the way on the other side of my slip and now I am fighting a piling on the leeward side, rubbing aginst it. Same struggles coming into the slip, as soon as you get the sailboat into the slip in the perfect postion, you jump to it and start tying of a stern and bow, or sometimes a midship tight to the sailboat, but in that 10 seconds for the first line, the bow has already started to move to the other side of the slip.
It's timing of when you step away from the helm and get to the critical lines to secure the sailboat in place, it's too late.
I saw on youtube, a bow spring line, secure to your geneo winch, outside of the hull and looped aroudn the farthest forward piling and then to the bow cleat, around the cleat and run inside of the shrouds and back to the cockpit. both ends are in the cockpit.
This morning I had about 12 kts to 15 kts accross my beam and so I tried this. All was good until I released my mid-ship / stern line, and then started to pull in the bow spring line from the inside for about 10 seconds but my stern started to wonder while I was doing this and result was the same. I need to duplicate myself only when I leave the dock and arrive, just the extra pair of hands for that 10 seconds....
Lighter winds or winds on my nose or stern is fine. Is the cross wind that gets me every time.
Any thoughts on a better technique?
Singlehand is a different story. As I soon as I go up front, remove the last bow line that is under tension, run back and remove my mid-ship / stern line and jump back behind the wheel. NO matter how fast I do this, the time I get to my wheel, my bow is all the way on the other side of my slip and now I am fighting a piling on the leeward side, rubbing aginst it. Same struggles coming into the slip, as soon as you get the sailboat into the slip in the perfect postion, you jump to it and start tying of a stern and bow, or sometimes a midship tight to the sailboat, but in that 10 seconds for the first line, the bow has already started to move to the other side of the slip.
It's timing of when you step away from the helm and get to the critical lines to secure the sailboat in place, it's too late.
I saw on youtube, a bow spring line, secure to your geneo winch, outside of the hull and looped aroudn the farthest forward piling and then to the bow cleat, around the cleat and run inside of the shrouds and back to the cockpit. both ends are in the cockpit.
This morning I had about 12 kts to 15 kts accross my beam and so I tried this. All was good until I released my mid-ship / stern line, and then started to pull in the bow spring line from the inside for about 10 seconds but my stern started to wonder while I was doing this and result was the same. I need to duplicate myself only when I leave the dock and arrive, just the extra pair of hands for that 10 seconds....
Lighter winds or winds on my nose or stern is fine. Is the cross wind that gets me every time.
Any thoughts on a better technique?