{"id":156924,"date":"2025-03-12T06:22:51","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T06:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=156924"},"modified":"2025-03-12T06:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T06:23:09","slug":"5-expert-tips-how-to-prepare-for-a-cold-front-when-sailing-offshore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/5-tips\/5-expert-tips-how-to-prepare-for-a-cold-front-when-sailing-offshore-156924","title":{"rendered":"5 expert tips: How to prepare for a cold front when sailing offshore"},"content":"In the 50-year history of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/tag\/ocean-racing\">The Ocean Race<\/a> (ex-Whitbread\/Volvo), Leg 3 of the 2023 edition from Cape Town, South Africa through the Southern Ocean to Itaja\u00ed, Brazil, was the longest ever.\r\n\r\nJack Bouttell was crew on Charlie Enright\u2019s 11th Hour Racing Team, and became chief boat fixer over 14,840 miles as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/tag\/imoca-60\">IMOCA<\/a> suffered a series of breakdowns.\r\n\r\nBroken battens in the mainsail, two damaged rudders, damaged foil downlines, as well as a huge rip in the mainsail... time and time again the team had to dig deep for creative solutions to make repairs while keeping on racing.\r\n\r\nMany times the team wondered if the breakage would mean retirement from the leg but through ingenuity and sheer determination they worked their way through every problem. Here are Jack\u2019s five best tips for keeping the wheels on your wagon when things start breaking.\r\n<h2>1. Use checklists<\/h2>\r\nI\u2019m a big fan of checklists. If you\u2019re building up a spares list from scratch, then note down each department of the boat \u2013 sails, navigation, electronics, hydraulics, engine, and so on \u2013 and what you think could go wrong.\r\n\r\nAt the end of every leg of The Ocean Race we\u2019d debrief not just what happened on our boat but if there have been breakages on the other boats in the fleet. Then we\u2019ll make sure we cover off those areas too, and do our best to have a solution for our rivals\u2019 problems as well as the ones we experienced.\r\n<h2>2. Safety priority<\/h2>\r\nIt\u2019s important to divide every kind of breakage into two categories: safety or performance. Safety is always the priority and your spares and tool kit needs to have solutions to address all the potential problems that could put the safety of the crew at risk.\r\n\r\nOnce you\u2019ve got those priorities covered, you can think about the performance priorities and build your spares list to cover some of those areas. For dealing with breakages at sea it\u2019s the same mindset, a safety issue for the yacht or crew must be dealt with immediately and you have to forget about performance.\r\n\r\nFor a smaller breakage ask yourself: can we finish the race without a repair? What is the most opportune time to repair, to lose the least distance, and can we last until then without repairing the problem?\r\n\r\n<em>Article continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n<h2>3. Tailor your spares list<\/h2>\r\nThe longer you sail with your particular boat, the better the experience you have for knowing what\u2019s important to keep in your tool and repair kit. If you know what typically tends to break, you can build up a spares kit that\u2019s very specific to your boat.\r\n\r\nAs you gain experience you also learn what you can afford to leave behind, to save space and weight on board. Our spares kit got smaller throughout the last Ocean Race, but then we had a very different list for different legs of the course.\r\n\r\nHeaded into the Southern Ocean you\u2019ll need a lot more contingency and spares than a coastal race in the Mediterranean or even a Fastnet Race, because you\u2019re close to shore and have the option to stop somewhere.\r\n<h2>4. Get creative<\/h2>\r\nSometimes there\u2019s no obvious solution to the problem in front of you. We had this on the Southern Ocean leg when the tack of the mainsail ripped off at the first reef. It\u2019s one of the highest loaded areas of the sail and just putting a patch of sticky-back over the area was not going to do anything for very long.\r\n\r\nWe didn\u2019t have anything on board, no sewing machine. So we asked ourselves how we were going to fix it? After some thinking we decided to go for some carbon plate, cut it up into rectangles and bolted the carbon plate through the mainsail. Adapting a boatbuilding solution to solve a sail repair problem actually worked amazingly well.\r\n<h2>5. Spares must-haves<\/h2>\r\nCarbon plate is one of the must-haves in our repair kit, in various thicknesses for different applications. It\u2019s good to have a few shapes, little disks and a few squares, so if a padeye pulled out of the deck you could use it as a backing plate or to help plug a hole.\r\n\r\nWe always carry Sikaflex because you can glue pretty much anything even when it\u2019s wet. Sticky-back sail cloth material can be useful although it\u2019s hard to make it stick when wet, so I take plain sail cloth material and then use Sikaflex to glue it to the sail as and when needed.\r\n\r\nLengths of Dyneema lashings are always useful, and for stitching sails I have a push\/pull hand-sewing tool so you can do all the stitching from one side of the sail. For electronics, the big fail is fuses, and if you have hydraulics you\u2019ll probably want oil in case there are some leaks. For engines, impellers and alternator belts are your biggest must-haves.\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<h2><a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2JMgfA4\"><img class=\"alignright wp-image-120951 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/keyassets.timeincuk.net\/inspirewp\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2019\/05\/YW_JUNE19_-COVER-1-152x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"152\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>If you enjoyed this\u2026.<\/h2>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<div class=\"\"><em>Yachting World is the world's leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.<\/em><\/div>\r\n<div><\/div>\r\n<div class=\"\"><em>Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2JMgfA4\">latest offers<\/a> and save at least 30% off the cover price.<\/em><\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n<hr \/>","excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hugh Brayshaw wasn\u2019t long into his offshore career before he encountered the importance of negotiating a cold front in the right way. \u201cIt was the first leg of the 2017 Solitaire du Figaro, and we were in the middle of the Bay of Biscay with the prospect of a double cold front coming through,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWe knew before setting off this front was going to hit us on the second night of the race. The forecast was predicting these huge wave heights and the highest wind reading was 54 knots \u2013 which is still the most amount of breeze I\u2019ve been in. \u201cFortunately I\u2019d put in an early reef and was also early to switch down to the smaller jib. So maybe I lost a little bit to begin with, but three or four boats had to abandon because their mainsails ripped or blew apart from just over-flogging.\u201d From this and subsequent occasions, Brayshaw has seen the huge risks \u2013 and opportunities \u2013 that come with every cold front. \u201cIt\u2019s something I try to get across to my guys on the RORC Griffin Youth Programme. It\u2019s an opportunity to make some gains if you\u2019re behind, or extend your lead if you\u2019re already ahead. You might get hit by some hard rain and a lot of wind, but with the right attitude you can really make the cold front work to your advantage.\u201d Crack off In the English Channel typically you know that when a cold front is coming through, the wind will be coming from west-south-west and then does a right-hand shift with the front, after which the wind will move to more like west-north-west. Because you know there\u2019s going to be a shift at some point, it pays to crack off slightly to build speed and get to the shift a bit quicker than if you stayed on normal upwind VMG. For a conventional keelboat you might only be talking about cracking off 5\u00b0 or 10\u00b0, but on boats where you can handle more power \u2013 like a canting keel boat or a multihull \u2013 you might even crack off as much as 15\u00b0 because the extra distance sailed is more than justified by the extra boat speed. Be ready to tack Everyone on the crew needs to be aware of what\u2019s about to happen. You need to be ready for a quick tack when the cold front hits. If the front is arriving in the middle of the night, it\u2019s even more important to have fully briefed everyone on how things are going to be set up for the change of wind speed and angle. Make sure everyone is aware of what sort of compass numbers you\u2019re anticipating as the shift arrives, and how much the wind is likely to increase. Sometimes it\u2019s super obvious when you get to the shift, it\u2019s pretty much an \u2018autotack\u2019. But other times it can be really quite slow moving and there\u2019s not too much activity in the clouds. So it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/expert-sailing-techniques\/5-expert-tips-jack-bouttell-on-repairing-your-boat-mid-ocean-151824\">&hellip;Continue reading &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5203,"featured_media":156925,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[846,2447,1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5203"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156926,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156924\/revisions\/156926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156924"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=156924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}