On a P18, one person cannot turn the boat into the wind by standing on the bow: it takes about 300 pounds on the bow.
The Prindle manual recommends a trip aft:
"If the mast is pointed into the wind, the boat may flip over in the other direction as you try to right it. To swing bows around into the wind, walk back towards the transom slowly until bows are positioned properly."
sailing a P-18 single handed?
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Posted: Jul 09, 2009 - 09:55 PM
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Posted: Jul 09, 2009 - 10:40 PM
the manuel also says to point your hulls into the wind. now on my trac 14 the boat will be perpendicular to the wind always. any advise? -
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Posted: Jul 09, 2009 - 11:21 PM
Kenny:
I don't think that the P18 has higher volume hulls than my Nacra 5.5 and my 180 lbs is enough to get it to turn into the wind.Standing aft would be pretty dangerous. When you pull the boat up, it would be facing downwind and will disappear.
RCH:
Tell manuel to get forward of the mast to rotate the bows into the wind. Easiest position to right in is when the wind is blowing halfway between the top of the mast and the bows.
Righting can be made easier by installing a carbon spar. It is a little cost prohibitive though.
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Posted: Jul 10, 2009 - 09:15 AM
I meant to say manual. like the hobie manual. my bad. for a minute i could not understand what you were talking about. so i stand infront of the mast step? does that change the center of drag or something? or do you actually have to paddle the boat around. Just a fun thought...have you seen how big the mast float is on a macgregor 36 catamaran? 6'wide 4'long 1' thick -
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Posted: Jul 10, 2009 - 09:29 AM
my pleasure.. again i hope you didn't think i was being rude to YOU... where as i meant i disagreed with the handbook
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Posted: Jul 10, 2009 - 01:21 PM
RCH:
I knew what you meant I was just screwing around.
The boat will tend to rotate around the point that has the most weight on it (it sits lower in the water than the rest of the boat). If you stand on the bow, the bow sits lower in the water and creates more drag, which slows it down. The stern will move downwind faster than the bow and the boat will turn into the wind. The same concept works if you stand on the stern, but it tends to sink faster since it is lower volume than the bow.
The idea is that you get the bows just off the wind so that the wind is pushing on the tramp to help you to get the mast head out of the water. Once the masthead is clear of the water, the wind gets under it and the boat goes up like a rocket. As soon as you realize that the boat is going to right, just for the dolphin striker and hang on with both hands. This helps the boat to stabilize and prevents it (sometimes) from going over on the other side.
The more wind that you have, the closer the bow needs to be to the windd to prevent the boat from switching the low and high hulls. You don't need to expose as much of the tramp as the wind increases since the same amount of pressure can be exerted on a smaller area of the tramp.
When the wind hits 20 knots, I am only about 10 degrees off the wind when I right. Your numbers will vary based on the weight of both your crew and your rig. I solo, so my crew weight is only 180 lbs, but my light rig (35 lb mast) means that
I don't need as much help from the wind as I would if I had a 75 lb aluminumm setup. I used to think that any 18 foot cat was pretty easy to right, but borrowed an NF-18 and found it much more difficult to right dispite 6" less beam and a comparable length mast. The carbon fiber setups really allow you to gain confidence in your ability to right the boat on your own. The F18 seemed to take forever to come up and was more easily affected by gusts, which is the reason I was righting it in the first place.
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Posted: Jul 13, 2009 - 09:50 AM
Wow, thanks for all the good advise guys. I did buy a 1980 Prindle 18 in really nice shape, #745 on the sail. I managed to get it rigged and took it out a few times this weekend, pretty light airs but enough to get it moving. Just what I needed to start re-learning cat sailing.
Bill Beach
