There are few problems that detract more from the pleasure of sailing than a bad case of weather helm, a surprisingly common affliction.
The good news is that the problem is usually fixable.
The bad news is that the cause is often a combination of things and many of them are not intuitively obvious.
Here are ten tips to fix weather helm.
But before we start, there are a couple of things we need to clarify.
Hidden Weather Helm
First, if you have a modern boat, you may have weather helm without even realizing it, since with a balanced spade rudder you won’t feel much load on the helm even if the boat is wildly out of balance.
To test for weather helm, first mark the king spoke on the wheel—spoke that is vertical when the rudder is centred—then put the boat on the wind in a fresh breeze and see how much the king spoke is off vertical.
On most boats about a quarter of a turn of weather helm, or 4° of rudder, is optimal—gives you a bit of feel and the boat a bit of bite to windward, without being excessive. Anything more than half a turn is too much and needs fixing. (I base this on our own Morgan’s Cloud where the wheel takes three full revolutions stop to stop.)
Wipe-Out Syndrome
Second, some hull forms, mostly modern ones with wide sterns, get badly out of balance as they heel because the shape of the water plane changes radically. Some of these boats will actually over power the rudder and even self-tack when hit by a hard puff of wind forward of the beam. In these cases, while these tips may help, they won’t fix the underlying problem.
Most Boats Can Be Fixed
Having said that, back in the day when I was making sails and tuning boats, many owners that I worked with blamed the boat and designer for weather helm, but in fact I found that most boats’ weather helm could be fixed with changes to the rig (with the exception of the situation I mention above).
So, let’s do it:
Check weight distribution. Shifting weight forward may be relevant & helpful. If so, this might be an additional reason to get more chain & a heavier anchor.
Hi Nick,
Great point. You see a lot of cruising boats that are badly down by the stern. Having said that, I would rather see that corrected by moving weight out of the stern rather than increasing it in the bow, which, if done to excess can be quite dangerous.
This sounds backwards to me. I believe you want to move the hull’s center of lateral resistance aft and the sail’s center of effort forward. This means reducing chain in the anchor locker, not adding more.
Hi Greg,
Hum…thinks…noodles on piece of paper…yup, I thing your right. Thanks for the correction.
Hmm??
Shifting weight forward tilts the mast forward. This moves the top of the mast forward – this moves the center of sail forward. More pressure on the bow & less on the stern. Which reduces weather helm.
And shifting weight forward brings the stern up, the bow down deeper – center of lateral resistance moves forward a little. Less pressure on the stern = more weather helm.
I’m guessing that the first is stronger than the second.
A when bunch of years ago I had a Morgan 32 – the Ted Brewer design. When I first got it there was simply more weather helm than there should be. The previous owner had set up the anchoring system with 100 feet of chain and a bunch of nylon rode. Since my sailing was on San Francisco Bay, I was not concerned about the line rubbing on rocks or coral. I decided to remove 80′ of the chain. The resulting reduction of weather helm was not subtle. Another benefit was a reduction of hobby horsing while going upwind in the waves.
Nick,
shifting weight forward moves the center of lateral resistance farther forward, which in turn will make the stern lighter and have the bow pushed to windward. I don’t think that the “induced mast rake” would add any significatnt effect in the waves.
We raced for the first five years of cruiser ownership on other people’s boats. The first two years was spent in learning how to win. The last three were occupied with learning why we didn’t. Racing is very instructive for cruisers, and we cruise as if we were racing, or that’s the aspiration. Sorting out weather helm is part of that.
Hi John,
This is a very good list and I think that you put it in a good order. A few thoughts on some of these:
Many people view mast rake incorrectly in my opinion. Since we use gravity as our reference axis instead of a reference on the boat, it is highly dependent on fore and aft trim. Therefore, I believe it is critical to fix trim issues first and then look at rake. Changing trim will affect weather helm as well. In our case, we had to move quite a bit of weight around before we got our trim to be acceptable. To add to your comment on looks, boats with multiple masts have to have increasing rake in each mast as you go aft or they look wrong.
Your point about jib size is completely right. Our current boat has hank-on sails and the best part of it is that we never sail with a reefed jib. Someday we will get old enough to switch to a roller furler but the difference in sailing qualities of using the right size jib is enormous. The most used sail for us is actually just under a 100% which produces a faster and better ride upwind in anything over 10 knots over our 150%.
Halyard stretch is the one for us that we have not fixed yet and I find it kind of embarrassing to look at the luff of the main in certain conditions. I finally decided earlier this season that I am going to open the checkbook this winter and get better halyards.
Eric
Hi Eric,
Very good point on trim’s affect on rake. (Nick too). I should have put that in.
Eric, we did this last year and saved money by buying a reel of Dyneema core 1/2″ line, about 410 feet, or four halyards with some left over. We are very happy with the results, although we don’t feel the need to go with Dyneema very many other places where a little stretch is desirable.
Shop around and if you don’t care about colour, you can find deals when you buy a lot. You could even split a reel with a fellow sailor.
Hi All,
I added to #5 that it’s important to make sure that the boat is floating to her marks fore and aft before checking rake. Thanks to Eric and Nick for pointing this out.
Hi John,
Really nice summary on the main factors involved in excess weather-helm on cruising yachts. Perhaps swap point 5,6&7 around though? Experimenting with adjustable mast-bend #7 is usually easier on the water than adjusting rake #5, or increasing mast pre-bend #6. Changing rake may also adversely affect other things like heaving-to and pointing. Then if adjustable mast bend #7 (with back-stay, baby inner fore-stay and kicker) is making a difference, you can increase mast pre-bend #6 to often multiply the effect of #7. One thing to remember with point #7 and #6 is you may need to ease the mast bend when reefing, especially with in-mast and in-boom systems, so the sails furl flat without creases. Slab reefed fully battened mains may also stow / reef easier with mast bend temporarily eased.
Having experimented successfully ourselves, first with an older staysail (as a jib) and then fitting a new purpose built jib, we would vote to promote point #9. The change was as much about the move from an outboard sheeted 120% genoa, to an inboard sheeted 100% jib. In not having to sail lower to have the genoa luff filling properly with the attendant heel that gave, the mainsail can be trimmed better and becomes more of a complimentary foil that creates lift and power, and less an independent sail that needed earlier reefing or the leech opened up high to avoid closing the slot to leeward and stalling both sails. From this change alone, we are able to sail 5-10 degrees closer to the wind, and also sail about 5-10 degrees more upright, which assists your point #3.
In lighter conditions, the jib performs as well as our old genoa in 10 knots of true wind or above (but our VMG is better), and below 8-10 knots we now use a code 0 going to windward deployed on a furler. We are almost as close winded in these conditions as with the old genoa, but about 2 knots faster than before – remarkably better! Overall our sail plan (3 sails) is much simpler and easier to handle, particularly through a tack. Think of it as a cheat’s cutter rig! We have a 120% genoa and cruising asymmetric kite for sale!
cheers,
Rob
Hi Rob,
Lot’s of good points, thank you. A couple of things: I think it’s better to get the rake right before setting pre-bend, otherwise one tends to go in circles, although having said that, the two variables affect each other, so some iteration is usually required to get things really right. Also, although we have quite a bit of bend (about 1 mast diameter) I can’t see why that would adversely affect slab reefing, it certainly never has for us.
And finally, I have not found that changing rake has a negative affect on pointing or heaving-to. In my experience getting rake and therefore rig balance right is a total win, with no downsides.
Hi John,
WRT slab reefing and pre-bend, we chartered a 13m sloop that had a fully battened main but no cars (only track slides), and the main was a devil to hoist and even harder to drop, or reef in a breeze. Only towards the end of the holiday did I realise the mast-bend was causing pressure on the slides (transferred from the battens?) and easing the back-stay straightened the mast and eased the slides, hence my comment.
cheers
Rob