Video

Mainsail Upgrade

/ Doug / 17 Comments

We have crossed back to the mainland after our trip to Corsica, and everything went really well with our new headsails. We had ordered a new mainsail before we left, but it got held up in customs so it didn’t arrive in time to fit before we had to leave, so we have returned to Marseille to get the new sail installed and setup on the boat.

Replacing the mainsail was the last item on our project list, and it’s also made it really clear just how much difference there is between standard cruising sails and the new high performance molded sails. Any sailboat racer will tell you that your sails are the primary engine on the boat, and if you want to win races, you need a great engine. I really respect and admire the racing folks, but it’s just not my thing. I like being out at sea, with long distances between course changes, and feeling the freedom and peace that comes from a well trimmed boat sliding through the water, so I didn’t really consider buying high performance sails when we purchased Wildling.

But as with many other activities, advances in technology used on the racecourse lead to new possibilities for regular folks, and what North Sails is doing with their new 3Di molding process is truly revolutionary. These next generation sails are almost half the weight, deliver more drive and speed, are easier to raise, trim and reef, and are as durable as traditional cruising sails. They really do provide the best of all worlds! Just like it no longer makes sense to install anything other than lithium batteries in a cruising boat, I think we’re approaching the time when the same can be said for installing anything other than molded sails.

The mainsail we ordered from the factory when we purchased the boat was just the base option (Incidences hydranet fabric with an area of 124 sq. meters). I’ve talked in previous posts about how we had problems with the top batten attachment fitting breaking on the sail, but we also had trouble with the sail holding it’s shape in light winds. The top battens would fold backwards when the sail is tacked and the upper roach section of the sail would flop over to leeward, which essentially eliminates the power from the top section of the sail. It’s not until apparent wind speeds increase to 10-12 knots that the sail will tack the top battens properly and take the correct shape. I’m not sure what’s causing this, but my guess is that a sail this size in hydranet fabric is too heavy to work properly in light air, and the weight also requires a lot more effort to hoist, reef, and stow. The video below shows what I mean about the hydranet sail deforming.

I was so impressed with the North 3Di headsails that we purchased, that I took Philippe from North Sails, Marseille out on Wildling in light winds to show him the problem we were having with our mainsail. Philippe promised me that North could build us a 3Di mainsail of the same size, that would hold shape when tacking in light winds, would generate more power and would be significantly lighter than our hydranet sail, while still being a very durable world cruising sail.

North offers a range of options in their 3Di sail line, and we ordered the North 3Di Endurance 760 sail which is high performance but optimized for durability for cruising. They have other sails that are more racing oriented for the folks that want to go in that direction.

The new sail was delivered to the boat and fitted, and we went out for a test. I’m happy to report that Philippe and North definitely delivered on their promise! No problem with sail shape, noticeably more power and drive, and the sail is MUCH lighter and easier to handle. We haven’t weighed the old sail yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the 3Di sail is half the weight of the hydranet sail. (I’ll report back with comparison numbers when I have them.)

We still have some adjustments to make to the batten tension and we have to re-position the reefing line attachment points, which the North guys will take care of, and then Wildling will be ready to cross the Atlantic ocean on the first leg of our voyage back to Australia!

I was a bit too busy sailing the boat and checking all the details of the new sail to take many photos, so I will just post a few previews for now. What I can say for sure is we are definitely faster with the new mainsail. Although it has the same area as the old one, there’s a lot more drive in the 3Di sail, and you can feel the acceleration due to slight changes in the wind speed much more than the old sail!

The first thing you notice about the sail (aside from the stealth-fighter gray color) is how thin the material is!

The battens are rectangular section carbon fiber with a Dyneema sleeve. Very light and strong.

The new sail stacked on the boom, it looks about half the size of the old one.

Reinstalling the track gate on the mast after all the luff cars have been fitted

The leech reefing lines run through titanium rings, with additional guide rings to prevent them from chafing the sail edge

The new sail almost fully hoisted

One thing I was quite surprised with regarding the 3Di sail is how sensitive it is to traveler position compared to the old sail. We put the boat on a close reach and as soon as we eased the traveler down, the boat just took off. On the old sail, the traveler position has much less effect. Because of the rigid airfoil of the 3Di, it’s very obvious when the sail is trimmed correctly, which makes traveler and twist adjustments much more precise. It makes the boat feel quite a bit different, and I’m really looking forward to spending time on the water with the new sail to get to know it!

Field testing the Ultra anchor

/ Doug / 6 Comments

Sunset in Corsica

One of our winter projects was to upgrade our 35kg Spade anchor to a 45kg Ultra. After 3 weeks of cruising and anchoring with the Ultra, I feel like I can give some feedback on how it’s going. Although we haven’t had any really strong winds at anchor so far this trip (the top was around 20-25 knots) we have had no trouble setting and holding in many different bottom types, including weed, rock and sand. The Ultra has worked perfectly for us in all the conditions we have encountered. It definitely sets better on a short scope than the Spade. We can reliably set on 3:1 scope on the Ultra, where we needed 4:1 scope or more on the Spade. This may be due to the extra weight, but in any case, the Ultra is definitely better.

I nearly always dive on the anchor after we drop to check we are set well, and I really like the shiny stainless steel finish of the Ultra, which makes it easier to spot when we are setting in weed bottoms.

Here’s a video of our Ultra in a sand bottom in Sargone Bay, Corsica. The anchor reset overnight after a 90 degree wind shift. You can also see our anchor roll in the video, which is a really handy little buoy that makes it easier to drive towards the anchor when raising it.

Sailplan Project Feb 5th Update

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We’re making good progress on the sailplan changes. All the winch and line handling changes are done now. Next steps are to install the stays and sails, and finish connecting the UpSide Up system.

The big news this month is that after 6 months of waiting, Incidences finally installed the broken batten fitting on the mainsail!

Here’s a video of the progress this month:

Experience so far with our hydro-generator

/ Doug / 8 Comments

Since we really wanted to avoid having a diesel generator on Wildling, we had to install a power generation system that would be a viable substitute. Solar panels are the central element of our charging systems, but they have their limits. During night passages, with all of our navigation, instruments, lights and radar running, followed by several days of cloudy weather, the batteries get depleted and need to be charged by other means. We have our Mastervolt 24V alternators, which are rated at 110A each at max rpm, and give us about 70-80 amps each at 1,500 rpm, so we can recharge our lithium batteries pretty quickly, but I hate running engines on a sailboat, so our supplemental plan is to use a hydro-generator.

I had no previous experience with hydro-generators before we purchased Wildling, but Outremer has been using the Watt & Sea generators for a while with good results, and a lot of the round the world race boats use them, so I decided to give one a try. These systems are very expensive, and they appear pretty fragile, so I was a bit skeptical about how well they would hold up in a long distance cruising environment.

Although we haven’t used ours extensively yet, we have used it quite a bit and so I can provide some initial feedback on how it’s going. What I can say for sure, is that it really works well on our boat. Between the solar panels and the hydro, we can keep our batteries fully charged without needing to run the engines. The downside of the hydo is that it of course won’t do anything at anchor, but we use less energy at anchor and usually don’t need any more than the solar to keep us topped up. Long periods of no sun will require running the engines though, which is still better than having a generator in my opinion.

Because of the speeds our boat reaches, we can’t use the cruising version of the Watt & Sea hydro generator. The high rpm destroys the turbine blades, and I know of at least one other 5X that had this problem. The racing version that we have is more expensive (of course!) but it has smaller, adjustable pitch blades that are continuously regulated by a hydraulic actuator depending on charging load and boat speed, so the turbine blades last longer. The downside of the racing version is that it really only produces a meaningful output above 8 knots of boat speed, and I have heard from other owners that the blades will still strip out over time, so you have to carry one or two spare blade kits. The turbine blades will not survive much of an impact either, so spare blades are a good idea no matter what.

Here’s a video that Lindsay and I made on our last trip to show how we have our hydro-gen setup. So far, I’m very happy with it, and I’ll post an update when we have done some more miles.

Sailing to Tunisia video

/ Doug / 4 Comments

Here’s some video I took during our trip along the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia on the way to Tunisia. The first part of the video is with winds behind around 20 knots, and in the 2nd part we are sailing at 45 degrees upwind in winds around 7-8 knots with the Code-0. You can see from the instruments how well we do upwind in light conditions on Wildling. We can usually manage to sail about 0.5 knots under the true wind speed.

Propeller Replacement Video

/ Doug / 4 Comments

This is a video I took in May 2016 when we craned Wildling out of the water to remove the EWOL propellers that were the wrong size for our 5X and causing a huge vibration. We re-installed the original Volvo folding props, and fixed a rudder alignment problem during the liftout. We found the cause of the vibration is that the blade edges were too close to the hull surface, which creates a lot of turbulence and cavitation.  EWOL is working with Outremer to try and find the correct propeller match for the 5X. Until then, we will continue to use our Volvo propellers.