quattroguy wrote:
Please get off your "gotta have a gas motor" soapbox and read the first post. It sounds like they are not experienced with multihulls and want to share a common frustration of all sailors, especially the multihull types. THEY DO NOT POINT Yes my prindle 16 out pointed my hobie 16 but my 470 beat the crap upwind out of both of them. Yet I prefer the multihulls. I am not a destination sailor, if I have to go to a specific place and want to get there quickly a motorboat is the answer. I am a pleasure sailor. Wander around a bay, sail along the coast and enjoy the journey.
So don't sweat the tacking, pedal a bit and you can point higher. Enjoy the day, the challenge of sailing well and the excitement of surfing a wave or two off the wind. Want to go downwind? File a notch in your paddle and use it to hold the sail out, or rig a barber hauler or get the spinnaker kit. This is sailing, a challenging skill in a great boat. If this isn't fun buy a motorboat. Or take up another sport.
In order to have a discussion such as this, it's
vital to specify which type of TI owners you want advice from, otherwise you're opening up the discussion to
every type of TI owner here and you're going to get all kinds of advice you may not want.
Let's just quickly get the motor issue completely out of the way first since it has already been inadvertently brought up and there may be new TI owners who haven't heard this before. Those who have, just skip over this paragraph. Those who buy the TI
exclusively for sailing, and sail within protected waters with a safe shore nearby in all directions,
do not need to have a motor. Those who use the TI on large bodies of water, and/or areas with high winds, waves, and strong currents, and/or especially off-shore, really do. This is not a soapbox, it's a warning. The TI is a great boat for its intended purpose, light day sailing in protected waters with shores always nearby. However, from what I see in this forum, many people, including myself, are commonly using it on large bodies of open water, in busy channels with heavy currents, in areas where weather can quickly cause dangerous conditions, and even off-shore in ocean areas. In these difficult and sometimes potentially treacherous areas, the TI can be easily/quickly overwhelmed and a motor is required for safe and effective operation when the TI fails to safely perform using its own rather limited inherent abilities. The
only possible exception would be for those who possess superb sailing skills, years of sailing experience, and the ability to deal with very difficult, potentially life-threatening sailing situations with a limited-performance sailboat.
Now that the motor issue is out of the way, let's discuss sailing.
If you're a non-destination sailor on a small, well-protected lake and would be able to make shore in any direction if blown off-course, then the TI is fine as-is. However, this just does not appear to be the typical TI owner. Anyone who is serious about sailing or is a purist sailor is rarely going to buy a TI. There are far better small sailboats to buy with much better sailing performance to hone sailing skills. The TI is a marginal-performance sailboat at best and it's not a great learning sailboat with its single boomless mainsail and limited maneuvering capabilities. You can learn only rudimentary, entry-level sailing from it. You'll never see it at a serious sailing school. However, if you own a TI and use it exclusively for sailing anyway, the very first thing that is abundantly evident is that it does not point well. Again, if anyone has a practical solution for this, all of us, even the adventure guys, would love to hear about it. Please post about it here. Personally, I gave up on trying to resolve this long ago but I would love to be proven wrong. That's all I have to offer on the subject, I knew going in that the TI was not a true sailboat, but I thought it would perform a bit better at sailing than it does. As an adventure boater, it doesn't matter much to me because I have workarounds, but it's evident that it does matter to others here, so please continue the discussion.
Please, going forward, if anyone wants to have a discussion thread
solely about the best pointing or other sailing practices using a TI, simply preface it by clearly stating that this is a TI
sailing-only discussion, not a general-use TI discussion. Otherwise, the adventure TI owners are fairly going to pipe in and suggest non-sailing methods to overcome any deficiencies. If you want a purist sailing discussion, simply say so up front and the rest of us will immediately back off, otherwise, it appears that you're trying to resolve a general use problem by any means available, and for that, we know the solutions.
So, adventure TI owners, now that this is clear, let's back off and leave the rest of this discussion to TI sailing only, no motors allowed.