Well, I have owned this boat for a year now, and previously owned a 14T, as well as a few monhulls. I have NEVER flown a hull on either of the cats, at least not intentionally. For some reason I had this 'fear' of going over. I just went in when winds got crazy, or just simply sheeted out.
I decided, no more. I need to push the limits.
Yesterday, we had what I would call 'ideal' conditions to experiment with hull flying. With air temps in the mid 80's, and water temps not far behind that, 15-18mph winds , I decided I was going to see how far I could push this baby,
maybe even see what it is like to tip and right.
Pushing this fear aside, I was able to repeatedly fly the hull, and actually surprised by how stable it felt, even heeled way over. I felt like I was 8' up in the air! But of course I wasn't. But I was over like 45deg quite a few times. It seemed that if you want to prevent going over, you can quite easily, even when you seem to have reached the point of no return. Funny thing is, every time I got really close to going over, I would chicken out, and let the sheet out. This excercise was quite the confidence builder. And what a blast!
Finally, wanted to really push it. I held the sheet, and over she went, dumping me off in the process. It kind of happened in slow mo. Almost surreal. So bobbing there next to the hull, I am thinking, that was not bad at all! Kind of fun actually. So next step, ketting her back on her feet.
So I swam the bows around sort of 45deg off the wind, the mast pointing too it, I grabbed the righting line and stood on the hull. I leaned back as far as I could, limited by the length of the righting line over the upper hull. Nothing. Would not budge. Even bouncing it, it just stayed there. I am like, ok, this thing is suposed to be the easiest cat to right, what is the problem? I weigh 150lbs, so that should be adequate. At this point, my father in law sees this going on, and jumps in his boat to see if he could offer some help. Great. Now an audience.
I was determined to do this unassisted.
It occured to me, after about 10 min, to check the main sheet. Sure enough, I had forgotton to uncleat. Doh!
So, try again, this time I swam the boat around so the mast was pointed almost directly in to the wind. Again I try, almost no movement. All the while, I keep thinking that righting line is way too short. I could not lean back hardly at all. Finally, and very slowly, the main, which appeared to still full of water, slowly started to come out, and it finally popped back up righted. Defintely not as easy as I would have thought.
So why was this so difficult? I am thinking I should have untied the righting line on the lower point so I could use the entire 15' over the top of the upper hull, and lean
way back. Was I supposed to untie?
Or perhaps I need to re-tie the righting line loops so that they are much smaller, to fee up a little more length.
One other thing that might have compounded my issue, I have a ratchet block, maybe under these conditions, it just would not allow the sheet to flow out. Does this make sense? I was sheeted in tight. So next time, I will first uncleat and
manually free the sheet way out, to eliminate this possibility again.
Bottom line, anyone see any problem(s) w/ my methods?
Thanks!