The word “incident” may be somewhat of a misnomer, because it generally implies a negative situation, and this one was not. But it also implies a notion of “surprise” and I think in that sense it is used accurately. Everyone in the flotilla knew Bryan and Angie had this sail onboard, and we constantly gave them shit about never wanting to try it, and we also doubted that they would try it. So during the last month when the winds became light and almost directly behind us, we on the Gualby Nation definitely felt an incident was about to take place when the Romo’s announced over the vhf that they were gonna try the symmetrical spinnaker.
A little background may be necessary here: if you haven’t read any of their blog, you might not know that out of the 3 boats in the Flotilla, the Romo’s are probably the least interested in actually sailing. In fact I doubt they would have any interest in it at all if it didn’t mean saving money on fuel. If that sounds harsh then feel free to ask them yourself, because they have no problem admitting it. Being salty, respectable “sailors” just isn’t something they aspire to. The stray cat is simply a tool they use to travel, and they will tell you there are most definitely more suitable tools for this task.
Now that the three of us have been sailing for a few months now, and have had opportunity to gauge the perfomance of each other and each other’s boats, everyone in the flotilla would say that the stray cat really shines while sailing downwind. Any angle down wind. That’s when they have the most speed and most comfortable ride. But everyone likes sailing downwind, so the surprise is in that they havent tried to use the aforementioned spinnaker yet (which came with the boat, complete with lines, blocks, and a sock to douse it).
Surprisingly enough they decided to use, and the next surprise came when they got it up. And the third surprise came when it looked full and more or less as a you would expect a spinnaker to look on a sailboat. And after a few cents worth of trimming advice from the Gualby and the Salty Dog the fourth surprise came. The Stray Cat was sailing over 6 knots in 10 knots of directly aft wind only using that one sail. For comparison purposes, in these same conditions, Gualby with only its Code Zero out was only able to do 4.5 knots, and Salty dog with its gigantic genoa was pulling 4 or so knots. This is the first time in recorded history that the Stray Cat was able to pass any other sailboat in the Tortilla Flotilla, and they passed both of us. I’m sure Bryan has blogged the hell out of this incident by now, taken a million pictures of his gps so he can prove speed, a million pictures of that spinnaker bellied out and full of air, and a million pictures of the other two boats as he passed us. And rightfully so, because it was pretty sweet.
None of us in the Flotilla are seasoned sailors, nor racers, only couples traveling on their sailboats. But when you travel with other boats there is always an unspoken underlying aire of competition, because no one prefers to come in last. (Some boats also prefer not to come in first, so will wait at the entrance to a harbor until everyone else goes in, all so that they don’t have to be first to test the waters.) What I
'm trying to say is we all probably try new things, new configurations, and fuck with our sails a lot more than we would if we were sailing solo. And we privately revel in glory when we come in first, and play it off when we come in last, and when asked about our lastness we would reply something like “ahh we had a nice, steady, comfortable sail; its not a race you know!” Despite this, the only time Stray Cat comes in first is when they leave 3-4 hours ahead of everyone else. So after we realized Stray Cat stood a chance to pass us under sail, we tried every sail combination we could think of to break that 6 knot bar. We rolled sails out, rolled them in, calculated wind angles vs. achieved speed, pulled up the main, took the main down, tightened and loosened, switched the code zero from port to starboard, questioned each other’s competency at the helm, and still couldn’t break the 6 knot bar set by stray cat.
I am sure Bryan was videoing this momentous occasion as he passed us to port, spinnaker hauled in tight and billowing. But I’m not sure if he was close enough to see our bare assess and middle fingers shining in the sun light. We even held up Penny’s tail to give em a view of her gooch as we were left sniffing the bitter cloud of Stray Cat’s victory.
I would also like to add this as a post script: whenever you ask anyone about the usefulness of a spinnaker on a cruising vessel traveling this route around the world (mostly downwind), they invariable tell you that that sail will sit in its sail bag and grow mold for the whole trip. It doesn’t matter if you ask other cruisers, sail makers, seasoned racers, or sailing instructors, and we asked all of them, we were always told that that sail has a very narrow range of usability on a cruising vessel. And up until this historic day I believed them. But this day changed everything. I saw Bryan and Angie (who don’t really even like sailing) keep this sail full all day even at times when they were 30 degrees or more off the wind. Believe me, I had a lot of time to scrutinize wind angles and sail fullness. I attribute this to the fact that once that sail is up and inflated, it has a lot of freedom to do what it wants, the sail itself can move 30 degrees or more from the center axis of the boat, so even if the boat axis is not directly downwind, the sail can adjust itself, and will adjust itself to stay full. I don’t know if this is possible due to the fact that the stray cat is a catamaran, so the attachment points are very spread out, or what, but it looked very low maintenance. Whats more is that if it was necessary to turn more than 30 degrees off the wind, one could let out the windward side of the sail and pull in the leeward side, effectively changing the shape to almost asymmetrical.
It was suggested to me that a code zero had a larger range of uses and wind angles for a trip like this, and would be a better investment. And we do use it in a huge range of wind angles, anything dead down wind to just slightly upwind (when one of us is asleep and the wind is shift, or we are just too lazy to pull it down until we are sure the wind is gonna shift all the way past beam). But this sail is not letting me sail 6 knots in 10 knots of dead aft wind. And this far into the trip we have sailed in nearly dead downwind conditions probably 1/3 of the time. The day the Romo’s passed us the most speed we could achieve was 5 knots, and that was with the code zero rolled out to starboard and the 115% Genoa rolled out to port - the infamous mariposa configuration as Meg calls it. And this configuration really requires that the wind be within 20 degrees of dead downwind. Bottom line is this: if anyone has and old spinnaker growing mold in it‘s sail bag, and wouldn’t mind parting with it, let us know.
C
A little background may be necessary here: if you haven’t read any of their blog, you might not know that out of the 3 boats in the Flotilla, the Romo’s are probably the least interested in actually sailing. In fact I doubt they would have any interest in it at all if it didn’t mean saving money on fuel. If that sounds harsh then feel free to ask them yourself, because they have no problem admitting it. Being salty, respectable “sailors” just isn’t something they aspire to. The stray cat is simply a tool they use to travel, and they will tell you there are most definitely more suitable tools for this task.
Now that the three of us have been sailing for a few months now, and have had opportunity to gauge the perfomance of each other and each other’s boats, everyone in the flotilla would say that the stray cat really shines while sailing downwind. Any angle down wind. That’s when they have the most speed and most comfortable ride. But everyone likes sailing downwind, so the surprise is in that they havent tried to use the aforementioned spinnaker yet (which came with the boat, complete with lines, blocks, and a sock to douse it).
Surprisingly enough they decided to use, and the next surprise came when they got it up. And the third surprise came when it looked full and more or less as a you would expect a spinnaker to look on a sailboat. And after a few cents worth of trimming advice from the Gualby and the Salty Dog the fourth surprise came. The Stray Cat was sailing over 6 knots in 10 knots of directly aft wind only using that one sail. For comparison purposes, in these same conditions, Gualby with only its Code Zero out was only able to do 4.5 knots, and Salty dog with its gigantic genoa was pulling 4 or so knots. This is the first time in recorded history that the Stray Cat was able to pass any other sailboat in the Tortilla Flotilla, and they passed both of us. I’m sure Bryan has blogged the hell out of this incident by now, taken a million pictures of his gps so he can prove speed, a million pictures of that spinnaker bellied out and full of air, and a million pictures of the other two boats as he passed us. And rightfully so, because it was pretty sweet.
None of us in the Flotilla are seasoned sailors, nor racers, only couples traveling on their sailboats. But when you travel with other boats there is always an unspoken underlying aire of competition, because no one prefers to come in last. (Some boats also prefer not to come in first, so will wait at the entrance to a harbor until everyone else goes in, all so that they don’t have to be first to test the waters.) What I
'm trying to say is we all probably try new things, new configurations, and fuck with our sails a lot more than we would if we were sailing solo. And we privately revel in glory when we come in first, and play it off when we come in last, and when asked about our lastness we would reply something like “ahh we had a nice, steady, comfortable sail; its not a race you know!” Despite this, the only time Stray Cat comes in first is when they leave 3-4 hours ahead of everyone else. So after we realized Stray Cat stood a chance to pass us under sail, we tried every sail combination we could think of to break that 6 knot bar. We rolled sails out, rolled them in, calculated wind angles vs. achieved speed, pulled up the main, took the main down, tightened and loosened, switched the code zero from port to starboard, questioned each other’s competency at the helm, and still couldn’t break the 6 knot bar set by stray cat.
I am sure Bryan was videoing this momentous occasion as he passed us to port, spinnaker hauled in tight and billowing. But I’m not sure if he was close enough to see our bare assess and middle fingers shining in the sun light. We even held up Penny’s tail to give em a view of her gooch as we were left sniffing the bitter cloud of Stray Cat’s victory.
I would also like to add this as a post script: whenever you ask anyone about the usefulness of a spinnaker on a cruising vessel traveling this route around the world (mostly downwind), they invariable tell you that that sail will sit in its sail bag and grow mold for the whole trip. It doesn’t matter if you ask other cruisers, sail makers, seasoned racers, or sailing instructors, and we asked all of them, we were always told that that sail has a very narrow range of usability on a cruising vessel. And up until this historic day I believed them. But this day changed everything. I saw Bryan and Angie (who don’t really even like sailing) keep this sail full all day even at times when they were 30 degrees or more off the wind. Believe me, I had a lot of time to scrutinize wind angles and sail fullness. I attribute this to the fact that once that sail is up and inflated, it has a lot of freedom to do what it wants, the sail itself can move 30 degrees or more from the center axis of the boat, so even if the boat axis is not directly downwind, the sail can adjust itself, and will adjust itself to stay full. I don’t know if this is possible due to the fact that the stray cat is a catamaran, so the attachment points are very spread out, or what, but it looked very low maintenance. Whats more is that if it was necessary to turn more than 30 degrees off the wind, one could let out the windward side of the sail and pull in the leeward side, effectively changing the shape to almost asymmetrical.
It was suggested to me that a code zero had a larger range of uses and wind angles for a trip like this, and would be a better investment. And we do use it in a huge range of wind angles, anything dead down wind to just slightly upwind (when one of us is asleep and the wind is shift, or we are just too lazy to pull it down until we are sure the wind is gonna shift all the way past beam). But this sail is not letting me sail 6 knots in 10 knots of dead aft wind. And this far into the trip we have sailed in nearly dead downwind conditions probably 1/3 of the time. The day the Romo’s passed us the most speed we could achieve was 5 knots, and that was with the code zero rolled out to starboard and the 115% Genoa rolled out to port - the infamous mariposa configuration as Meg calls it. And this configuration really requires that the wind be within 20 degrees of dead downwind. Bottom line is this: if anyone has and old spinnaker growing mold in it‘s sail bag, and wouldn’t mind parting with it, let us know.
C
 |
| pull your ladder up already Bryan |
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