However much of it you've got though, a towed generator will reduce it by up to half a knot, or at a cost of up to 12 nautical miles a day. These really kick out the battery juice at any time of the day or night, providing you've got reasonable boat speed through the water. But in the tropics the nights are long, when solar panels don't perform at all. Perfect for solar panels they'll perform at their best. Solar Panelsīeing in the tropics, as that's where you'll find the tradewinds, there'll be lots of sun high in the sky. So you'd be wise not to expect too much from your wind generator on a tradewinds sailing ocean passage. The stronger the apparent wind the faster the blades will spin, and the higher the speed of rotation the more of those precious little amps will be deposited into the battery bank. Much like the windvane self-steering gear, the windcharger's performance is a function of the strength of the apparent wind. Yes, you can run the engine for a couple of hours each day to charge the batteries, but who wants to do that unless you have too? Wind Chargers Larger cruising sailboats are likely to have a built-in generator to provide a reliable charge to their batteries when they need it, but without one of these you'll need to find some other way of charging your batteries. Don't forget that if the wind changes direction, so will your course.įew of us would set out on a tradewinds sailing passage relying solely on sheet-to-tiller steering, but when all else fails.Īrtwork by Andrew Simpson Keeping the Batteries Charged on a Tradewinds Sailing Passage An interesting experience for single-handers, but once set up this rig will take you downwind with little further tweaking. This is done with the tiller between your legs, one eye on the compass, the other on the windex and a headsail sheet in each hand. There'll be a fair amount of fiddling around with the position at which you tie them off to get the balance right, particularly if your headsails are not quite the same shape and size. With the twin headsail tradewind rig set, cross over the sheets in the cockpit through a pair of blocks and tie them off to the tiller. So let's assume that, like me, you've got an aft-cockpit sailboat with a tiller. The sheet-to-tiller self steering with twin headsail tradewind rig. But don't get me started on the tiller versus wheel issue. OK, if you've got a centre-cockpit sailboat then you've little choice in the matter, but many aft-cockpit sailboats would be better off with tillers in my view. The main requirement for this approach is a tiller, which is becoming increasingly rare on modern yachts, as fashion demands that wheels are the thing to have now.
Sheet-to-Tiller Steering for Downwind Tradewinds Sailing But it requires electrical energy to drive it, often quite a lot of it - which has to come from somewhere.
Most skippers will choose this electronic steering system, perhaps as a back-up for the windvane gear or as their primary self-steering system. This is at the very limit of most windvane gears' performance, so you shouldn't rely too heavily upon them for your self-steering requirements on a tradewinds sailing passage. On a tradewind passage, the wind is likely to be pretty much dead astern, so the apparent wind speed will be less than the true wind speed.įor example, if you're bowing along at six knots with a 12 knot breeze blowing directly over the transom, the windvane gear will only feel a 6 knot wind over its vane. Windvane self steering gears only work well if there's a decent flow of air over the vane. You'll need some form of self steering to take you across.
You won't want to helm across several thousand nautical mile of ocean. Self Steering on a Tradewinds Sailing Passage