MOTOR-SAILING
Using sail and power for best speed on passage
Purists might not approve, but there’s no doubt that engine and sails can make a very useful combination. Sometimes you just have to push on and get there. We might be boosting our sail-power with a few revs from the engine to punch through a head sea – or perhaps there’s no wind, so we’re motoring with the mainsail up to reduce rolling. Whichever is providing most of the propulsion, it’s the combination of sails and engine that often produces the results when either alone simply wouldn’t. The trick is knowing how to make motor-sailing work most effectively; whether it’s worth hoisting the mainsail or unrolling the headsail if you’ve just been using just the engine, for example, or whether it would pay to point a few degrees off your course to get the mainsail filling so it adds some extra drive. Would the increased speed offset the greater distance – and which way would be the most comfortable?
Trial and error
To answer some of these questions, I headed out into the bay with Graham and Judith Davies and their Marcon 34, Tomboy. The Marcon was designed by the late David Thomas and sails better than many boats that are unashamedly motor-sailers. Nonetheless, she arguably nods in that direction with her heavy, full-sectioned hull, relatively modest rig and 35hp of Nanni diesel beneath the sole of a cockpit that separates the main living accommodation from the two-berth cabin in the stern.
We chose a day when a moderate onshore wind was kicking up enough of a chop for the angle of the boat to the waves to make a difference, inducing a fair amount of pitching at times and some rolling at others.