Sailing 101: Kitemares, spinnakers, and sailing downwind

If you've been following the race diaries so far, you will have seen a few reference to 'kitemares', including (but by no means limited to!) on my boat, Telemed. And, if you're not up on sailing jargon, you might be wondering what the hell that means, though you've probably figured out it isn't good. Thus this bit of Sailing 101....

The biggest, coolest, most powerful sail is not actually the main. It's the spinnaker, also known as the 'kite', also known as the 'Code'**. If you've seen a picture of a sailboat and said "Oooo, that's pretty!", odds are it was flying a spinnaker. They are big, billowy sails that fly out in front the boat. They tend to have more design work on them. (Other sails are generically referred to as 'white sails'.) And they are tricky. When things go wrong with a kite, they go wrong fast. And that's a kitemare.

** Code 1 is the biggest, Code 2 the medium, Code 3 the smallest. You don't really hear Code without the number, while kite gets used more generically. Similarly, the jibs are Yankee 1 to Yankee 3. Bad enough everything on a boat has a different name, often they have several!

Next question then: Why are spinnakers tricky? First, they're big and powerful. While that's good for making the boat go fast, it also means that all that force from the wind in a huge sail can make a real mess of things if it isn't rigged right, e.g. if a line is running inside something it should be outside of.

That brings us to the second reason, which is that spinnakers are rigged differently from the other sails. The main and the other headsails are attached to something solid along the whole of the leading edge, or luff. The spinnaker is just attached at the three corners. This lets it get a lot more curve in it, but it also makes it less stable. If you lose wind in your main or jibs, they'll flap around. At the most, you might get the Yankee a bit hung up on the inner forestay.** But they'll always be well supported and fairly easy to untangle. But there's a lot of extra spinnaker, and it's not attached to anything solid, so it can get wrapped around things much worse. There's a typical 'hourglass' where the middle part wraps around the forestay while the top and bottom stay open (you get the picture), but it can get wrapped around other things too. Or it can fall in the sea. Or it can come loose. Many, many ways for it to go wrong.

** The forestays are two metal cables that run from the mast to points in the bow. There is an inner and outer forestay. These are the "something solid" you attach the jibs to, with the luff of the Yankee on the outer forestay and the luff of the staysail on the inner forestay. At some point, I'll figure out how to explain all the jargon without just referring to more jargon.

Bigger picture, this is all linked to sailing downwind. You only use the spinnaker when you're going downwind. Upwind, you stick to the white sails. And sailing downwind is tricky. (Or, as the Clipper website describes it, it is "the most technically demanding point of sail".) Why? I'm not entirely sure. Part of it, I'm sure, is that you're flying the kite and dealing with all the related complications. There is also the fact that it's more difficult to gybe (come across the wind when the wind is behind you) than to tack (turn across it when it's coming from ahead). It might seem that turning straight into the wind is a bad thing, and it's true that you wouldn't want to head that way for long. But it also means that the headsails are being kept off the forestays by the wind. And the boom is nearly centered when you're heading upwind, so it doesn't have far to move in a tack. But when you gybe, the headsails get blown onto the forestays, and you have to be more careful about bringing them around to the other side of the boat. And the boom tends to start well out to the leeward side, so you have to bring it all the way back in, keeping it under control, then ease it back out. An even bigger issue is the accidental gybe. An accidental tack isn't great, but it's more embarrassing than anything. If you accidentally gybe, so you're coming across the wind without all that careful control of the headsails and the boom I mentioned earlier, things can really fly around violently.

The Clipper race is planned around a lot of downwind sailing. Why focus on "the most technically demanding point of sail" with amateur crews? I don't know. Maybe to test us. Maybe because it's fast. Whatever the reason, that's how we're doing it.

We have a new skipper

Never in the history of the Clipper race have all the skippers who started the race finished it. I suppose there's no reason to have thought that this year would be any different. At the same time, it was a huge surprise to hear that it was our skipper who would be withdrawing.

I don't really know anything more than is in the official announcement. Diane sent a note around to the crew, and while it's a bit more personal, there isn't really anything more to it. Maybe that's because there isn't anything more there. "Personal reasons", while vague, could easily be all there is to it. Leaving everything behind for a year is a huge commitment, and it could be as simple as after two months at sea with the prospect of nine more ahead, she decided it wasn't worth it.

On the positive side, I know our new skipper, Matt. He was an instructor on my Level 2 and Level 3 training weeks, and I thought he was excellent. He skippered a boat round-the-world two years ago. He knows his shit. He's a great teacher and a great leader. You never want to have disruption like this, but given that we have it, I couldn't imagine anything that would leave me more comfortable with the situation.