Firstly, sailing at higher speeds when surfing down a wave gives your rudder movement greater impact in terms of direction change. The faster you sail downwind in waves, though, the more technique is required to reach your destination safely. You don’t have to go back too many years before 8 knots was the maximum many boats would be likely to see.’ ‘These days double digits downwind are not uncommon and even high teens are fairly regularly seen. ‘If you take a fairly modern boat, they all tend to be easier to sail downwind in big waves for a couple of reasons, but one of the key reasons is that they are able to achieve higher sustained speeds downwind,’ says Neil Mackley of North Sails. Usually in these sort of extreme conditions, slower tends to feel safer but it is something we should all be trying to do in a following sea, to reduce the chance of broaching or being rolled. Typically it feels counterintuitive when sailing in big waves to want to speed up. The ‘speed is your friend’ attitude can be difficult to get your head around. So although size is key, when sailing with waves, speed is very much your friend, too, as the energy transfer will be reduced when you are travelling at pace.’ ‘It’s really all about the wave energy transfer and the object that the energy is being transferred through, in this case, the boat. ‘To take that to an extreme, if you think about an oil tanker in the middle of an ocean, a wave that would barely wet the deck for her would be something big enough to roll a cruising yacht. ‘Fairly obviously, the bigger the boat you sail the less of a problem waves generally are,’ say Merfyn Owen of Owen Clark Yacht Design, himself a double Cape Horner and former BT Global Challenge skipper with over 250,000 miles under his belt. Understanding how to set up your boat for sailing in waves, to take advantage of them or ameliorate their worst traits is a skill that it is well worth understanding and practising in order to make your sailing more enjoyable, and to give you the confidence to sail in a wider range of conditions. However, it can also mean a thrilling surfing ride to your destination. “We don’t have federal funds or state funds or county funds to do a project down there to solve those problems, so the answer is either let them fall, or find some method to remove them, or find funding to do beach nourishment to protect them all those efforts are ongoing, but they are not successful yet.Sailing in waves can make for a jarring, juddering experience and long, uncomfortable passages and at worst, a dangerous, boat-rolling hazard. “We don’t have funds available,” Outten said from outside his county office in Manteo. There’s no money left over after Dare County spent around $72 million last year for much of the county. The only solution we have available to us is to do some type of beach nourishment down there.”īut there’s a big, multi-million dollar issue at play. “We don’t like the houses going in, but there are a few more in peril, and we are likely to have more. “We are concerned,” said Dare County manager Bobby Outten. It’s another example of how beach nourishment is essential for Rodanthe, and how it is greatly lacking. Two collapsed on the same day back in May. The house collapse is just about a mile north from Ocean Drive, the site of several collapses last year in the Outer Banks. (WAVY) – The house at 23228 East Point Drive in Rodanthe collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean from pounding surf and wind around noon Monday.
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