I actually spent the latter half of September sailing the Cherub, doing (part of) the UK Nationals for the first time in several years. Great fun, big waves and dolphins. Consequently what with that and a sort of cold/flu type bug I haven't been sailing this boat much. Carries on much the same, with lots to learn. Interesting how many different ways there are to set the rig up to achieve much the same sort of effect when overpowered upwind, its possible to lose power with either lots of twist or by depowering the top with the cunningham. Latter ought to be faster and feels better (provided you keep enough twist in to cope with varying wind, but there's not a huge amount of difference. Key thing is, as ever, how high to point, and there are loads of alternative ways up the beats. Its all part of the learning curve. I think a fleet of these boats could provide quite fascinating technical conversation on the different ways to achieve good upwind performance, but then that's always the way with development classes - much more interesting talk in the bar afterwards (provide that the techie stuff doesn't bore you rigid). Now the boat is going down to Bloodaxe for a bigger daggerboard and case (I'm much too busy to do it myself).
Pleasant discovery today on relative performance. For one reason or another I haven't had much of a chance to sail boat for boat against the asymmetric equipped boats at the club, but today, in about 5 to 8 knots, I wound up just in front of one of the middle of the fleet club RS400s for a tight reach/run/broad reach combination of legs in what was for both of us marginal planing conditions. I had - as you'd expect, a definite speed advantage on the tight reach, being able to pull out a few yards on every little gust, managed to stay at the same speed on the runs through sailing deeper and getting one less gybe in, and then still managed to stay ahead on a broader reach that should have suited him best. In what wasn't remotely powered up conditions for either of us, it was good to see I had a boatspeed advantage in spite of the kite. Pity I found a hole to sail into on the next beat!
After some pretty dire weather this month there was actually a decent breeze today - very decent at times. I was running the big rig in what must have been pushing 18knots at times, and generally not having too many problems. I was getting much better upwind speed than I have done by sailing very low indeed - some 10 degrees lower than a Laser I think, and keeping the boat footing fast. Loads of cunningham, with the top of the sail completely bladed out flat, and quite a lot of twist. In the windier bits the top 3 battens were inverted (well top 2 so flat as to be impossible to tell) and the 4th one in a nice S Curve, inverted at the front, but with the bottom of the sail powered up. The boom was right out towards the quarter, I suppose about three feet off the centreline at the transom, but the resulting VMG seemed pretty reasonable. All in all, in spite of having started 6 minutes late (just call me Davro - in-joke for Cherub sailors) I had a most enjoyable sail. Pity the main halyard decided to pull through the cleat about a foot halfway round the last lap, (no idea why, maybe just loads of cunningham tension, I shall have to put something less convenient on), but on the whole a good day.
Continue sailing the boat, not much dramatic to report. (other that its good to sail!).
A recent distraction from the more serious stuff was the club kids day. I knocked the sail area right down (even used the storm rig at one time) and used the boat to carry various young passengers round the lake for various events including duck racing (scatter 300 plastic ducks round reservoir, sail out to pick up ducks, most ducks win!)
The ++ was a neat tool for this, you just sit your young passengers on the leeside wing, heel the boat so the wing is parallel to the water, and then they just pick up the ducks as you sail past. Even neater is the fact that the wing touches the water at the back first, so if they miss a duck under the wing, heel the boat a bit more and the duck gets caught under the wing beam and can just be retrieved!More seriously, my sailing of the boat seems to be improving steadily, with less frequent major silly errors. One of the key things is not to point too high beating. Once weather is outside the absolute optimum lower than most other boats always seems to be the way to go. Key, at the moment, in the lighter stuff seems to be to make sure the daggerboard isn't overloaded. I'm going to get a longer chord daggerboard (probably round October) which I hope will make things more user friendly!.
I think the number of people who are interested in my personal sailing diary is rather limited, so I'll call a halt to doing that unless anything particularly different happens. Instead I'll try and summarise what I've learnt about sailing the boat under the main headings below.
I also had a second opinion on the boat today, and there might be a little to come from that source later, plus hopefully a few photgraphs.
In very light airs when not powered up its a tricky boat to sail well. It points high, but its very easy to get out of the groove and slow down too much. As soon as it gets powered up - sitting up on the wing - it will plane readily upwind. The most difficult situation is when the wind is varying between light and powered up as the helm needs a lot of awareness of what's a shift, what's a change in wind speed etc etc. This pretty much goes with the territory really as its all part and parcel of a boat that can manage boat speed that's a significant percentage of windspeed.
Once the wind has got up enough to justify reduced sail with the stump things change again. It almost seems as if a switch is turned off when you point the boat up high, and it seems to be more difficult to get the boat in the groove and planing upwind steadily in 15 knots than in 7! My second opinion agrees with this, and we've talked it through a bit. We think something very dramatic must be happening to the whole rig in this regime - it seems as if suddenly there is a lot of drag from somewhere. As its obvious that it can't be the hull it must be the rig or foils - maybe both. The obvious conclusion is that the short rig is too stumpy, and has got so low and is so over-elliptical that the induced drag has gone through the ceiling. Another possible contributing factor might be that the centreboard - a NACA 63 series foil, is operating outside its ideal range as a result of the rig lift/drag curve and is overloaded. This is discussed a bit more on the Rig Design page.
It planes. Virtually continuously. The only thing to watch out for is the huge changes in apparent wind as windspeed increases and decreases. Again this pretty much goes with the territory. I haven't experienced any control issues at higher speed. The only thing is a definite tendency for the bow to dip - which is inevitable with such a low rocker hull, but a good pump and a move aft on the wing has to date been more than enough to keep things in order. She seems to need far less dramatic trim changes than the shorter Cherub, but of course this is all in flat water and moderate winds - a few waves might be *very* interesting! In very light airs its quite possible to overtake the wind as you sail into a calmer patch, which is somewhat disconcerting.
The worst point of sailing. Difficult to tell how much of that is me rather than the boat though, probably rather a lot. I've yet to get the angles for tacking downwind sorted out. There's also something of a tendency to get into a roll on broad reaches and runs, which I suspect might be related to the large head mainsail, but I guess all boats do it to a greater or lesser extent.
Not easy. In particular tacking from reach to reach in a serious breeze is very difficult. What tends to happen is that you throw the boat into a tack, the drag on the big rig slows the boat, the low weight provides little inertia and you stop coming out of the tack. Then the foils stall out and you go sideways without steering. The main reason, I think, is mast position. In most singlehanders the mast is well forward in the boat, and if the sail isn't sheeted in then the drag is a long way forward of the centre of effort, and helps the boat bear away. In this boat the mast is much farther back, with a short boom, and the drag from the rig is nearer the centre of effort. It has occurred to me that one solution for this might be to sink the transom and let the bow lift out of the water, catastrophic for speed, but it might get the boat to turn. A more disciplined tack, keeping the power on until actually pointing past close hauled is more successful, and with practice I can tack pretty smoothly more often than not, provided that I concentrate.
Ordinary tacks in lighter airs are OK with practice, the art being to release a good handful of main when head to wind, let the boat heel to leeward on the new tack, and simultaneously pull it up and grab the mainsheet in again to give a titanic pump - like a normal roll tack really but exaggerated. . This also works a treat for making sure the battens come across.
Fine, no great worries. Well, maybe not quite, but I've noted that boats with short booms and mainsails with plenty of roach always seem to gybe quite readily. The only concern is that its quite easy to over correct and let the boat heel to windward coming out of a windy gybe, and that can be followed by a classic bear away/roll/capsize to windward. No worse than any other boat though, and better than many.
The business of coming up to a windward jetty has been causing some amusement, because if you go to slowly the foils stall out, and... The trick seems to be to find a corner of jetty and beat up to it at a reasonable speed. Stand up on the windward side, and aim the boat so that the bow will clear the corner of the jetty but the wing won't. Just short of the jetty - timing is *important!* point the boat up and free the sheet. The wing you are standing on disappears below the water and the brakes go on hard with all the extra drag and no sail. Just before the boat has a go at capsizing to windward step off the *front* of the wing and onto the jetty, grabbing the shroud at the same time. So far its worked! Lee shores are easier - just stop and pull both foils up and the boat drifts in gently sideways.
Its not an easy boat to sail, and in many ways is frustrating in that respect for a mediocre helmsman like me. On the other hand when you're sitting halfway up the wing, loads of power still to come, the wake is so smooth that you can hardly see a trailing stern wave, you've got fingertip control and are travelling faster than anything else on the reservoir... Lets just say I wouldn't rather be in a Laser.
Spent the day making a new boom - It turns out Needlespar haven't used the section the old one was made out of since around 1975, so the chances of having anything suitable to sleeve it with were pretty much zero. However they have, at virtually no notice and in spite of regular business for regular customers, assembled what amounts to a kit of pieces for a new boom for a pretty moderate cost, and which has taken much of the donkey work out of building the new spar. So many thanks go to David Hunt and his staff at Needlespar.
Another breakage I'm afraid. This time the boom. The sailing club' Wednesday evening series starts this week. After a very windy day it looked as if it had dropped off, so with the wind varying between 10 and 20 knots I decided to risk the big rig on the assumption the wind would drop further before dusk. However coming down to the start it was still very windy, and I was definitely sailing the boat well within itself, but with the rig fairly depowered with loads of cunningham and quite a bit of kicking strap. Then, after a tack, the boat was accelerating as normal when suddenly, for no apparent reason, I completely lost control and the boat bore away and rolled into windward. When I eventually sorted things out it became apparent that the boom had broken between kicking strap and mainsheet takeoffs, just at the point where the sleeving I put in for the kicking strap point load finished. Obviously not strong enough. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I wonder if Needlespar still make something I could sleeve it with? For various reasons I have to have the boat back on the water by Sunday week (9th) so not much time to make something - certainly not a plastic boom.
Recent worry has been centreboard size in very light airs (<3 knots). In these conditions the board very easily stalls out and its difficult to recover. The obvious solution is a larger board, maybe a more tolerant section, but its a lot of work for what are frankly dire sailing conditions anyway, as the plate is OK in normal conditions...Still mulling over this one.
I'll write today up in some detail because I learnt quite a lot about the boat, and also the way I sail it I fear! The wind varied between about 12 and 20 knots, but was steady, with neither major guts nor shifts. Actually it was hard to believe I was sailing inland in the UK. I imagine the overcast conditions had a lot to do with that.
It was definitely a small rig day, and I went out with my newly repaired tiller extension, sleeved externally. This is good call I think. The standard 16mm tiller extension tubing feels far too fragile when it gets to over 4 feet long, bends easily, and is vulnerable and gets bent all the time. When I repaired it from last week I sleeved virtually the whole length with 16mm inside diameter tube (19mm o.d.) and it feels a lot more robust.
Anyway it was an excellent time to evaluate how the small rig works, and to get to grips with learning how to depower it. Basically it mostly works as predicted. Grab a big handful of cunningham at the start of the beat and the top of the sail goes board flat and the mast bends and twists off, but the bottom of the sail stays reasonably full. Heeling moment goes down, boat is manageable again. Get to the top mark, let the cunningham off, mast straightens, top of the sail regains curve, rig powers up again. The difficulty was pointing - As soon as I tried to point reasonably high the speed was dropping off far too much, and I suspect I was making worse VMG than I do in 8-10 knots with the big rig up. I wasn't using a great deal of kicking strap, and towards the end of the session I started using more, and things did seem to improve. However I wasn't much cop at sailing upwind when overpowered in the old boat either, and the suspicion has to be that a lot of the problem is me! Offwind the boat was definitely underpowered in the lighter parts running, but there was one long reach with the true wind on the beam, and I most definitely enjoyed that!
They say that you should learn something new everyday. Today I learned that you should never use pultruded glass tube to sleeve a broken alloy tiller extension - it fails at the point loads where the actual joins were, and leaves you with no steering about twenty yards off the beach... I've hardly got to sail the boat since the last entry. I've had one shortish run with the small rig in around 18 knots and building, and I ended calling a halt to that due to being tired out and completely unfit, and yesterday's very short outing that ended with the tiller extension.
For those that are interested I've written some comments on Sailboat 99 on the Cherub News Page, and the thing at the AYRS seemed to go off reasonably enough. Although there's been a reasonable amount of interest in the boat, especially after the Y&Y article, I think that as I always suspected there aren't a huge number of people wanting to own a larger development singlehander than a Moth in the UK right now. I guess its a function of reduced leisure time - twenty years ago the predictions of the future were that people would work less and less as technology changed society, but what actually seems to have happened is that less and less people are working more and more, and people who might once have worked 40 hours and got on with a hobby are now working 50hours and taking a load more work home on a laptop...Its noticeable in the Cherubs too - I think the average age of people who build new boats has dropped about 5 years since the 1970s.Sailing the Boat
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· Page Last Updated 25 Apr. 2000