Sailing a new Skerry: I need help!

Builder's Forum
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I took out my recently completed Skerry (lug rig) for the fourth time today. In two previous outings, the rudder kept popping off. I adjusted the bracket keeping the rudder in place, and that problem now seems solved.

However, I capsized today. I will skip some of the dramatic details, but basically, there was a gust, I heeled leeward pretty far, water started coming in, and I was unable to right the boat in time (due to distractions from the dramatic details that I skipped).

I managed to get the boat, and all the detachable pieces, back to shore, with the help of a couple of boats that happened to be in the area, and my daughter towing my capsized boat behind a jet ski.

At least the rudder didn’t pop off.

I have questions about how to avoid and deal with such disasters.

  1. This isn’t the first time I’ve taken on water. The first time, I let out the sail, the boat righted, and I continued with my day. As mentioned above, this time I wasn’t so nimble, water came in, and I capsized. But I’m doing something wrong. Other than being more careful, and going slower, how can I avoid heeling? The shape of the Skerry seems to be a contributing factor – water comes in at the middle of the boat, where the gunwale is lowest.

  2. What do I do following a capsize? Based on this one experience, it is not possible to continue sailing a Skerry following a capsize. What are my options other than having my daughter tow me home behind a jet ski?

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You could reef the sail.

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“You could reef the sail.”

Ow, that stings a bit. :slight_smile:

Although, could be a bit of truth to it. I have to say, I’ve never capsized my skerry and the closest I’ve come was jibing in gusty conditions, not upwind. And I’ve had it out in open water with wind and wave (Chesapeake Bay and Fishers Island Sound for two).

So, upwind, never tie off the mainsheet in a breeze. Yes it’s a bit hard on the hand, but that’s why I upgraded the mainsheet tackle to a Harken ratchet block. Let go the mainsheet when it starts getting bad. Also, get a secure spot in the bottom of the boat with your feet braced so you are steady in position. And really honk down on the downhaul to tension the luff (leading edge) of the sail. I replaced the single part downhaul right away with a couple of blocks to get a 3 part tackle for more mechanical advantage when tensioning.

Learn to feel the rudder when it starts to load up in a gust and let the boat come up into the wind some. Gust loading happens fast in a small craft that is this light.

And last, yeah, reef. But do it early before you really need to. Unless you’ve gotten clever with the reefing lines and rigging, reefing is easiest done in this boat by dropping sail, tying in the reef, then rehoisting. This is such a light and easily driven boat that the full lugsail is really not needed once you’ve got more than 10 knots apparent wind speed.

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Sorry. I did not mean to be so blunt. When I was a kid my very first sailboat was a snark. No way to reef the sail. It seemed like I always had too much wind or not enough. I capsized it a LOT. But it was made entirely of foam so easy to right and reboard. I would have given anything to have a Skerry in those days.

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i’ve sailed a number of small boats including the dory I built a few years ago. Once I start exceeding 12-15 knots I avoid jibing at all costs. You can still get pretty much anywhere with tacking and careful downwind operations. But the risky jibe in strong winds has capsized me a couple times on the smaller vessels, like the sunfish.

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Welcome to the forum BBT

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I’ve had that happen in my Hobie 12 (a monohull akin to a Laser). It happens fast and I’m not sure what the mechanism is. Anyone know?

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What point of sail?

Laszlo

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Running downwind. The sail jibes and very quickly the boat swings and goes out of control- either flooding over the stern or capsizing. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been out on that boat so I don’t remember exactly how it goes, but it all happens very quickly. From an engineering perspective it goes unstable.

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The broach puts the boat beam-on to the wind and if the sail is still sheeted and/or the crew stays on the new lee side of the boat too long (due to the speed of the event) the boat goes over. It’s not so much unstable as transitioning to a new stable point and the transition is not being performed optimally.

You can probably blame the lightness of the boat for the speed at which everything happens. There’s very little inertia to overcome and almost all of the righting moment is provided by crew weight. Things happen fast with little to no resistance. This situation demands paying careful attention to sheeting and crew position.

On small light boats you can’t really tighten the sheet to try and keep control of the boom. That keeps keeps the sail powered up and will lead to a flip. You also have to be proactive about shifting your weight in the boat. That includes fore/aft position to avoid excess weather helm which would speed up the broach and give the crew less time to react..

That’s my understanding of what happens when jibing small boats goes wrong. The good news is that practice and experience with a particular boat should fix that and until then, jibes can be avoided.

Laszlo

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I’ve read you should raise the centerboard/daggerboard when running before the wind, any chance that would help?

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Of course being sure to be reefed appropriate to the wind speed and doing a “chicken jibe” (wearing around through a 270+ degree tack instead of jibing) are ways to help prevent your jibing problem, there are techniques that should help prevent capsize even while doing a “real” jibe in high winds. And I say this even noting that there are times when I elect to “chicken jibe” - even when racing. Staying upright is always faster than a capsize. I’ve sailed for over 60 years now, in all sorts of boats (75 ft schooner to 8 ft Opti and everything in between). Mostly racing dinghies. Before continuing, I’ll say the best thing to do is get some on-water instruction from an experienced sailor who is also a good teacher, and even in the absence of that, finding a way to practice safely and actually practicing. Maybe this means going out in high winds with a safety boat and accepting that you might capsize several times.

What is most likely causing you to capsize is the tendency for the boat to round up/spin out (turn more beam towards the wind) on the new tack just after the mainsail come across. You avoid that by EXPECTING that to happen and counteracting it even before it gets started. It is called an S-turn maneuver. As to having the centerboard up or down, there are conflicting schools of thought, and I’ll usually go for the in-between option (partially down, which isn’t easy to accomplish on most CLC designs). I leave the board down on my NE Dory, just too much hassle to do otherwise. Racing sailors will raise a board to reduce wetted surface, and also to prevent the boat from “tripping over itself” as you change directions going downwind (even when not jibing - like when chasing wave troughs to prolong planing). It just makes sense that having the resistance of the rudder at the stern, without having the resistance of a centerboard amidships will tend to keep the bow downwid. However, the boat can become skiddish and “slippery” and harder to control your steering direction with no or too little board down, and tough to recover in event of a capsize. The impact of board down while running downwind is different on every boat, so it is best to test up, down, and in-between.

I’ll let AI and some videos explain the S-turn and what I’m trying to get at in more detail, but here is my short version: Prior to the jibe, turn a little more downwind, sheet in a bit (or just grab the whole mainsheet and pull, even grapping up near the boom, not pulling in more line through the last block), watch the back ot the sail, as it starts the jibe, turn to swing your stern through the wind, but then immediately as the sail crosses the transom turn back to a more downwind course, rapidly easing the mainsheet and changing sides with your weight. You want to be pulling on the tiller to keep the boat from turning too far across the wind onto a beam reach on the new tack with the sail still sheeted in - that is the most common cause of a capsize while jibing. You’ll see some boats capsize for exactly this reason in the video link. This link is quite good - while directed towards racing, it is the best I could find in a short search and watching several videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbCw4OomdbY

And here is an AI explanation of the S-turn high wind jibe, which is actually pretty good:

To jibe a small sailboat safely in strong winds, use an S-turn maneuver: bear away onto a broad reach to build speed, carve smoothly through the eye of the downwind run as the boom crosses, and then gently counter-steer up into a controlled arc to prevent a violent rounding-up or spin-out.

Prepping the Boat

  • Pull the mainsheet in smoothly to shorten the boom’s travel distance before the turn.
  • Raise your centerboard or daggerboard slightly (about 1/3 to 1/2 up) to allow the hull to slip sideways rather than trip and capsize during the roll.
  • Check that the area behind and downwind is clear of traffic and obstacles.

Phase 1: The First Curve (Bear Away)

  • Start on a solid broad reach with good boat speed. Speed reduces the relative snap when the sail switches sides.
  • Turn the tiller away from the sail (bearing away) to bring the stern smoothly through the wind.
  • As the boom crosses the centerline, aggressively sheet in the mainsail then immediately feed out the mainsheet as the sail fills on the new side to cushion the power.

Phase 2: The Second Curve (Counter-Steer / S-Shape)

  • Immediately pull the tiller back toward the center and slightly up-wind once the boom crosses.
  • Carve the bow back up slightly toward a broad reach on the new tack.
  • This second arc prevents the boat from rounding up uncontrollably or accidentally jibing right back in high-pressure gusts.

Something I just noticed in my post above. I can’t leave an indadvertent misuse of sailing nomenclature alone without correction, especially as I get to do it on my own before someone else points it out. I should have said " chicken jibe: tacking around through a 270+ course change instead of jibing."

Whereas, for those who care, “wearing around” is a way to change course through the act of jibing, usually refering to going from one close hauled course to another on a boat that doesn’t do well in completing a normal tacking maneuver. I’m reading a lot of the Patrick O’Brian Jack Aubry series right now, and didn’t want to have Mr. O’Brian rolling over in his grave, thus the correction. :wink:

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I just noted the thread on this forum “Skerry Jibing Tactics” from June 2019. More good discussion there. What’s old is new, I guess.

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And I also note that I’ve designed a new rudder shape and changed the rudder pivot angle on the transom of my NE Dory, so I think my rudder works better. A rudder that works better helps avoid high speed spin-out downwind, among other things (like low-wind tacking). Discussion and pictures of that all can be found in a search of this forum. The Skerry potentially has some of the same issues, as discussed by Skerry sailors. I’m sure the Skerry rudder is fine as is, but can probably be improved if you want to experiment.

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One thing is for sure the smaller the dinghy the more it teaches you.

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Thanks all! The video was very good, especially seeing the boat that failed the Jibe.

When it happens to me they are unplanned jibes. I also will tack 270 to avoid a jibe. They probably happen when a gust comes up as the gust sometimes changes wind direction. So the sail is powering up at the wrong time.

Yes, dinghies are very instructive and, usually, forgiving (other than being dunked).

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It’s another rope to deal with but if accidental gybes are common you could rig a preventer.

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A preventer on a small boat like a Skerry, in any wind at all, is an almost guaranteed way to take a swim! If and when the sail does ever get backwinded/go into an accidental jibe (and one must presume high probability of that, thus the reason for the preventer) it is almost assured you’ll never keep the boat upright, even with a quick response to getting your weight repositioned.
A preventer is really only there as a safety device to protect someone’s head - and maybe prevent breaking some mainsheet tackle from the forces of a big mainsail coming across with uncontrolled force. If an accidental jibe happens with a preventer on, the only options are to immediately jibe back, or immediately release the preventer in a controlled manner just as soon as all heads are clear of the boom. In both instances things get exciting in a hurry (in any high winds), and only a well-ballasted boat can handle any time at all with a backwinded (jibed) main being held out to the (now) windward side by a preventer. A single-handed skipper, trying to control the tiller and handle all the necessary lines during an accidental jibe with a preventer on will almost never be able to also qualify as the thing that will make a light dinghy qualify as “well balasted” in this instance.

If you are having unplanned jibes, the best thing to do is sail on more of a broad reach heading and thus remove the liklihood of the unplanned jibe. Shifty winds might mean you are even sometimes near a beam reach if that is necessary to prevent the jibe. Almost all boats make more true speed made good to a dead downwind objective by sailing a series of broad reach tacks than they do going dead downwind, anyway.

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Like I mentioned before, the skerry is so light that in any kind of real breeze, the lug sail is too much canvas. Reef at 10 knots true and it’s a lot easier to manage. And rig a loop on the yard around the mast to keep the yard controlled and close to the mast, especially when reefed. I just used a tied loop of leftover rope, but you can be properly nautical and rig a loop with parrel beads to let it slide up and down more smoothly.

The skerry hull doesn’t plane, so if you have too much sailpower pushing it, it’s just trying to displace more water, making a bigger hole in the water. So, if you are downwind with too much sail, and you try to jibe, it’s a fine balance trying to get the stern through the wind and get the main over. It overpowers as you do that and tries to round up. It’s not a bad rudder, but in those conditions there’s just not enough rudder authority to get that stern turned while the sail is pushing the boat harder into the water. Reefing helps solve that problem.

The “chicken jibe” solution of tacking around can sometimes be a challenge because windy conditions are often choppy conditions and if there’s too much slop, the boat is hard to tack. There’s not much mass to keep way on and make it through the eye of the wind when the chop is slapping the bow back. So, I’m back to the best option of reefing first and timing a gentler normal jibe that I can check by shifting my weight as I turn, yanking the sail over. It does take a bit of agility. I’m also of a certain retirement age but have been fortunate to stay fairly limber as the years accumulate. I can see where mobility challenges can be an issue in handling such a light boat with a powerful rig.

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In the case of accidental jibes, I have to think that in many cases, the sail may not be out far enough for a deep reach verging on a dead run (i.e., trimmed too closely for a downwind point of sail), and in a wind shift or minor steering shift, the wind gets behind the sail and over it comes. I race on keelboats and often see boats on the course with the sails overtrimmed for the course. They seldom do well. A light small craft just has much faster signals to the sailor than a 5 ton keelboat.

The solution for the skerry is let the sail out until at least the upper portion (the yard) is square to the centerline and the boom is far out over the beam. I don’t think you’ll get an accidental jibe that way unless you have a really radical wind shift, or are steering very erratically. The wind just can’t get behind the sail to throw it over. Again, a reef is your friend.