Skipper’s tips – call for the barber

Tom Cunliffe has assessed hundreds of sailors for the RYA Yachtmaster exam. He shares a few skipper's tips with us...

Tom Cunliffe
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Skipper’s tips – call for the barber

Skipper's tips

Rig a barber-hauler to stop the leech spilling wind

A tall, thin 110% genoa can be a brute to sheet on a reach, especially if it’s a self-tacking one. The trouble with these powerful, effective sails is that while they set like a dream close-hauled, as soon as you ease the sheet, the clew rises dramatically. No matter what you do with the lead, the leech falls away. The result is that a lot of power is lost from up high, and the leech flaps all the way to Holland.

The only satisfactory answer is to rig what racing people call a ‘barber-hauler’. Snap a block onto the rail or a stanchion base outboard of the clew, attach a line to the clew in addition to the sheets, lead it through the block and heave the clew down and outboard. The result is the shape you want. Minimum trouble for a big difference in speed and peace on earth.

Skipper’s tips – single coordinate

Skipper's tips

To check your progress on an east-west passage, just read off the longitude

If you’re running more or less east-west or north-south and need a rough position check, plotting a full lat/long fix from GPS is often unnecessary. On an east-west run, for example, you may simply want to know how far you’ve come, in which case the north-south coordinate is irrelevant. Just read off the minutes of longitude and have a quick look at where that puts you. In this case, it’s due south of Great Marsh. If you also know there’s about 3m of tide up, the fact that the sounder (corrected for actual depth) is reading 13m, gives you a useful fix on the 10m contour, literally at a glance.

 

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Skipper’s tips – back up

Tom Cunliffe has assessed hundreds of sailors for the RYA Yachtmaster exam. He shares a few skipper's tips with us...