Cruising chute contemplations ...

I was going to post this to the private crew blog but then I thought I'd share it with a wider audience. It is primarily aimed at the regular crew members so if you find it boring, my apologies!

The cruising chute is an entirely new beast we haven't encountered before and I've been putting much thought into how, and when, we are going to use it. Not least, I've been musing on how the hell we are going to handle around 180 square feet of 1oz rip stop nylon (the stuff kites are made of) in the space available!


First of all let's be clear on what a crusing chute is and what it isn't. It looks like this (from the Crusader Sails web site) ...

Note that the sail looks rather like a large genoa and indeed that it (sort of) what it is in a way so hence the alternative name "gennaker".

The sail in the photo is fitted with a snuffer (note the bundle at the top of the sail) which is a cloth tube with a hard mouth and control lines which can be pulled down the sail to turn it into a benign and easily handled sausage. You'll be delighted to learn that we haven't got one!

By the way, our sail is red and white. Dunno why, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

The cruising chute is NOT a downwind sail like a spinnaker. It is a reaching sail used from a beam reach to a broad reach





Again unlike a spinnaker, the chute is flown without a pole and is easily rigged and controlled. However, it can be turned into a poor man's asymmetric spinnaker (but only in modest wind conditions) by the addition of a spinnaker or whisker pole (this is something we're working on)

The advantage of the chute is it's vastly larger sail area and lighter weight compared to the working genoa. This will give us a real performance boost when sailing off the wind in lighter conditions (a point of sailing we've struggled to get decent boat speed on to date).

Rigging the Chute ...

Ideally, the head (the top) of the sail would be hoisted on a halyard running through a block forward of the forestay. Unfortunately, despite having all the fittings on deck for a spinnaker, Brigantia doesn't have (and shows no signs of ever having had) a fitting (called a crane) at the masthead for such a block. For now, at least, we'll be hoisting the sail on the spare genoa halyard inside the forestay.

That being the case, the tack (front lower corner) of the sail will be attached to a line running through a standup block on the foredeck just aft of the forestay and clear of the furled genoa. This line is led back to the cockpit on the starboard side in exactly the same arrangement as the genoa furling line to port.

The sheet (or sheets) come right aft to a block lashed to the aft cleats and then forwards to the sheet winch. Note that the diagram depicts the chute flown outside the forestay, our sheets will be led inside.

The main consequence of setting the sail inside the forestay is that gybing is likely to be an excercise in frustration with an attendant danger of hanging the sail up and damaging it. Realistically, we'll probably have to dowse the sail onto the deck (with all that that entails which I'll come to shortly), gybe, and reset the sail. We're certainly not likely to be too keen to do this very often so I doubt we'll be hoisting the chute in the confined waters of the river! A secondary problem is likely to be getting the sail to set correctly with the tack line potentially fouling the pulpit rail. May take some fiddling to sort out the best arrangment.

(Ultimately, sorting out the masthead so that a proper spinnaker halyard can be fitted and setting up a short pole bowsprit with a tack block on the end of it would be a far better arrangement).

To snuff or not to snuff ...

I elected to try the sail without a snuffer for this season for several reasons.

Firstly cost. The snuffer would have cost nearly as much again as the sail and we've rather pushed the, ahem, boat out this season on expenditure as it is.

Secondly, performance. The snuffer sits like a bundle of rags at the head of the sail and reduces the available sail area as well as creating windage. With as small (comparatively speaking) a chute as ours, this drawback is exaggerated.

Thirdly, complexity. The snuffer requires extra lines and cleats and so on to control it.

However, the downside is that without the snuffer we've got to handle a substantial bundle of not particularly thick nylon sail and experimentation at home has highlighted some issues we need to sort out.

Handling the sail ...

I'll tackle this slightly back to front and deal with lowering and stowing the sail first because the way we tackle this will determine the hoisting method (as it will determine how the sail is stowed in the bag).

To drop the sail, the tack line is either released and eased out or tripped (depending on circumstances), the halyard lowered whilst the sail is hauled into cockpit under the boom with the working sheet. As it is hauled in, the cockpit hand bundles the sail down into the cabin.

With the sail safely out of the way, the halyard and tack lines are sorted out and set up ready for the next use and the sheet(s) stowed away. If the chute will not be needed again on the passage, or time and/or circumstances do not permit repacking the chute ready to hoist, the chute can be stuffed into the large sail bag kept on board for the purpose foot first (by which I mean the bit that went into the cabin first at the bottom of the bag) leaving the head of the sail at the top of the bag.

To re-stow the sail properly, the headboard is passed through a plastic ring and the sail pulled through into a bundle. This bundle is tied up every couple of feet with thin cotton thread until the whole sail is a long sausage. The sausage is then folded up into the launch bag (currently an old holdall) with the head, tack and clew at the top.

To hoist the sail, the launch bag is clipped onto the pulpit rail (the holdall has a couple of useful clip straps ideal for this purpose), the halyard is shackled to the head, the tack like to the tack and a sheet or sheets (one if the sail will not / cannot be gybed, two otherwise) to the clew.

The sail, still tied into a sausage, is hoisted and the tack line set up and then a good tug on the sheet plus the wind filling the sail will snap the threads and allow the sail to set*

After experimenting with stuffing the sail back into the sail bag in our bedroom (in a space very similar to the cabin of Brigantia) it was clear that wasn't a terribly good option. A second experiment of taking the stuffed sail, pulling it through a plastic ring (a slightly unwieldy plastic shelf off our gas BBQ! It had just the right sized smooth edged hole in the middle though and until something else can be found or made will have to do) proved much more successful at creating a sensibly sized and easily handled bundle.

So ...

Messing about with the sail at home has been a bit of a revelation. Unless we've got our ducks lined up in a row it's going to be a nightmare to handle on board!

Clearly, it is not a sail we're going to be hoisting for five minutes or even perhaps fifty five minutes. It will really only be worth hoisting, other than when we fancy some fun, if we can set it for a good long run.

On the other hand, faced (as we might very well be this season) with several hours on the same course with the breeze aft of the beam and boy will it be worth the effort! I hope!!

* This is an ancient technique used routinely in the days before furling headsails called "hoisting in stops". Snapping the stops to set the sail is called "breaking out" the sail. Some scepticism has been expressed in conversation about this method to which I would say that it has been working for sailors since time immemorial!

A modern version of the technique uses thin rubber bands on a length of pipe which can then be slipped off onto the sail at intervals as the sail is drawn through the pipe. This would certainly be the easiest way to tie in the stops but I have issues with scattering lengths of broken rubber band into the environment.

Fiddly as it is to tie the sail up with thin cotton thread (and I suspect the thread I used this afternoon when experimenting was much thinner than necessary and therefore more fiddly than it might be) at least the thread is bio-degradable and much less likely to injure wildlife

For a much better description of the techniques involved you could do worse than to read the following article from Yachting Monthly ... Master Your Cruising Chute