Heave to Heaven

I tried to heave to once on my old bluebird to no avail. I didnt try it again until today after watching all of Skip Novaks Videos again. I love those vids :)
Got it first time and i couldnt believe how well it works. 25 knots today. #3 sail 1 reef in the main. I am going to be doing this all the time! no more "Holding on" when needing to go to the toilet. If i wanna coffee, i can make one, if i need anything from inside i can get it. In fact i really took advantage of it and successfully "heaved to " 4 times.
Good ot learn something new and i think heaving to is a great thing to know.

surprise surprise, my photos upside down. im using a samsung S5... It isnt upside down on my phone!

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fishmonkey said...
i love those Skip Novak videos too.

i found this heaving-to video helpful as well, it also covers heaving to by gybing:

does your main flap and bang much when you are hove-to?

No it didn't had it wired. I felt like i may lose the bow a few times and eased the main , but mostly she was well balanced. Really works very well. Got it 4 outta 4 times successfully. Was so good i just wanted to sit there and chill.

yep, it seems kind of improbable when you do it (i was inspired to practice and use it by Andrew Evan's single-handed sailing book).

how fast were you drifting in 25 knots?

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fishmonkey said...
yep, it seems kind of improbable when you do it (i was inspired to practice and use it by Andrew Evan's single-handed sailing book).

how fast were you drifting in 25 knots?

I would guess about 1 to 2 knots. I cant wait to do it again . Im not gonna sail anymore. Just sit there heaving to!

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Sectorsteve said..

Thanks hg. I was waitin for you to come rotate my photo
How did you do it ?

when you take a digital photo, the raw image has an orientation specific to the camera device (i.e. only one way is up).

most camera devices these days also embed metadata with the image which says how much to rotate the raw image when displaying it so that the orientation matches how the device was been held when the photo was taken.

unfortunately, some display software and websites ignore the orientation metadata. therefore the only way to guarantee that your images appear the right way up is to use image editing software to change the 'raw' orientation of the image so that what you want to be 'up' is indeed 'up', or to always hold your camera in the 'right' way so that the raw image doesn't require rotating when it is displayed...

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Sectorsteve said..
I dont have any problem on any other websites with pic rotation/uploading. So which way is the right way up on my phone ?

well, whichever way you were holding the phone when you took that photo, spin it 180 degrees!

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Sectorsteve said..

fishmonkey said...

Sectorsteve said..
I dont have any problem on any other websites with pic rotation/uploading. So which way is the right way up on my phone ?

well, whichever way you were holding the phone when you took that photo, spin it 180 degrees!

Well i cant remember that

Ill post you a this way up freight sticker

The above mentioned theory does not work!
I just put on a pic 4 times, turned each time, and the site always displayed the pic the same way.
So what is going on?

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sirgallivant said..
The above mentioned theory does not work!
I just put on a pic 4 times, turned each time, and the site always displayed the pic the same way.
So what is going on?

you mean you took four photos at 4 different orientations and they all get displayed the right way, after uploading to Seabreeze? another quirk is that some display code makes assumptions based on the aspect ratio of an image.

keyj.emphy.de/exif-orientation-rant/

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Sectorsteve said..

fishmonkey said...
i love those Skip Novak videos too.

i found this heaving-to video helpful as well, it also covers heaving to by gybing:



does your main flap and bang much when you are hove-to?

No it didn't had it wired. I felt like i may lose the bow a few times and eased the main , but mostly she was well balanced. Really works very well. Got it 4 outta 4 times successfully. Was so good i just wanted to sit there and chill.

Heaving to is easy in a long keel yacht. Not so easy in a fin keel boat in all breezes and you may need to experiment. The main wont flap or bang, it will either just shiver or you might need to pull it in a little to balance the backed headsail. In a fin keel boat it might be better to furl the head sail and just heave in hard on the main sheet, let the tiller go and see how she responds. Basically you need to go out and experiment.

As for tending to my needs, I just take a glance around and wander down below and leave the boat to the windvane. Surprising how many times I have glanced out the window to see a runabout pass close.

I heave to mostly to fish.

Love those videos. In the very worst of conditions, Skip heaves to and has a cuppa tea. Priceless. I also like the video on fastening the boat in the middle of a fjord using 4 dirty great hawsers. He the Man!

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fishmonkey said..
i guess 'shivering' is a better way to describe what i have experienced when hove-to on an Adams 31, with gentle 'bangs' against the shrouds.

With a fully battened main the sail is never really depowered and pretty much the best you can do is have it stalled out. I have the main cleated off so the sail does not reach the shrouds.

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fishmonkey said..

Ramona said..

fishmonkey said..
i guess 'shivering' is a better way to describe what i have experienced when hove-to on an Adams 31, with gentle 'bangs' against the shrouds.

With a fully battened main the sail is never really depowered and pretty much the best you can do is have it stalled out. I have the main cleated off so the sail does not reach the shrouds.

the main isn't fully battened, but yes it does seem impossible to totally depower it when hove-to.

yep, gentle 'bangs' against the shrouds or mainsheet, as i also will sometimes use the mainsheet to try and get a better balance.

i wasnt gettgint his with fully battened main. the 2 sails in my case are depowered and are just opposing each other. As Ramona said with the full length keel its quite easy and i guess thats why it was very hard on the bluebird.

With my M&W 26 [fin keel] when I needed to change headsails I would sail close reached. Leave the main cleated off, leave the tiller and drop the headsail. I would gather in the headsail and do the whole unclip and reclip the new sail. The boat would simply round up and then fall away in a series like this till I returned to the cockpit. I could hove to with no headsail and the main hauled down hard and the tiller left to it's own. The boat sailed off a bit and certainly did not stop. The Currawong will hove to in a similar manner but once again covers some ground. The backed headsail hove too is definitely the quietest.

It pays to go out and try everything in different wind strengths. It also depends a lot on how much speed you can put up with whilst hove to. Some modern boats will still cover a lot of ground.

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Sectorsteve said..

Yara said..
So thats the classic heaving to with the jib up. Now lets think about using the heave to manoever in order to provide a stable platform to change headsails.

We are flying a genoa and the wind has got up. Luckily we have rigged a downhaul for the jib, so we pinch up into the wind, ease the jib sheet and pull the jib down to the deck.

Now we want to heave to under main alone. Some say head up into the wind and pull the traveller to windward and lock the tiller amidships. With no jib she might want to round up, so tiller to weather?

Anybody had good success with heaving to under main alone, and if so how, and what shape keel?

this is a good point. i recently was heaving too and decided to drop the heady and change to a #3 but the balance got lost.
def something to try as i am erring away from the furler again...so indecisive....

I am thinking that if your current set of sails are in good shape, and the boat is worth, say, $7k, then adding a furler/reefer is over capitalising. In addition, your current smaller headsails would be more efficient in a blow compared to a reefed genoa.

The problem with hanked sails is the job of getting to the bow and doing the heady change without falling overboard or loosing control. If you can heave-to under main, and have a solid jackline/safety harness, and the boat is reasonably stable, then it becomes doable.

My sails are good-all as new. The old owner didn't use them.
at Xmas I plan to go to Jervis bay and I'm going to do a trial run with the hanks.
A good down haul system on the jib and main and a better reefing system than I'm using now. All will be tested over the coming months.
i can have a number 3/4 hanked on below the number 1/2. I've tried this already in 30knots and it took about 3 min to lower the number 2 and raise the Number 3.
Im also going to try something. Might be silly but there's another halyard on the front of the mast that goes up about half way. Would this be for a jib pole?
im wondering if I can raise a number 4 on it and tack it on cleat on the foredeck. If so I could lower the jib then raise this number 4 without going forward.
Geez I missed out on a second hand reefer/furler the other night that went for 32 bucks.was missing the bearing and guide arm only. I was watching it on eBay til,the last hour when I went out for dinner... Would have cost about 150 to get it going, then of course cutting the sail.

im sure id love a reefer/furler. I'm just not sure I want to cut my sail up. Probably would need a new sail ideally then we are talking a lot more money. I think it's possible to have a good system with hanks and the boat may sail more efficiently.