Cold Weather Sailing

D

Dion

New Member
Today, I sailed Laser with 20 knots wind, temperature -3 degrees Celcius. I had some warm clothes under my drysuit, so that wasn't a problem.
But after sailing a few hundred meters, al the trimlines and the mainsheet were frozen. The sail couldn't flatter because the wet parts were frozen rock solid.
Are there more laser sailors who have encountered this problem? I didn't expect that everything would get hard en frozen within a few minuts of sailing.
 
Dion said:
Today, I sailed Laser with 20 knots wind, temperature -3 degrees Celcius. I had some warm clothes under my drysuit, so that wasn't a problem.
But after sailing a few hundred meters, al the trimlines and the mainsheet were frozen. The sail couldn't flatter because the wet parts were frozen rock solid.
Are there more laser sailors who have encountered this problem? I didn't expect that everything would get hard en frozen within a few minuts of sailing.
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I don't have any experience with that, but am wondering if you were able to shake the ice off? Ages ago my mother would do laundry without a dryer in the winter and hang the clothes out until they froze. She would go shake them until the ice came off, and the clothes would be dry.

Merrily
 
You can call it a problem, but it's really plain old physics. The (high) wind causes the (liquid) water to evaporate. This requires heat which cools the remaining water on the sail and causes it to freeze once the temp in the thin water layer drops to 32 F (0 C).

It's no different from biking in the rain with your face getting cold. And yes, this has happened to me as well, crewing on a J24 on the Chesapeake Bay in February. The temperature was around 35 F when we left and we had to cut some of the ice to get out of the harbor.
 
I was able to shake of the ice off. But it just worked temporary, after a few min., the sheets, etc were frozen again.
But I've to say it was really funny seeing how everything was slowly covered with a layer of ice.
 
did the sail freeze in a nicely trimmed position?

one day ill go sailing in that sort of weather, just for the experience
 
I've had a similar experience, wind blowing pretty good 20-25mph and temps at about 24F and rigging all froze. Vang came unhooked from boom when I pulled in the main after a wild downwind sailing by the lee run. The vang was frozen solid in the position it was in and ended up higher than the boom. I was able to head up and reattach the vang. I then turned the laser turtle to thaw the rigging a little and then righted it and continued for a bit. That worked fairly well, but now that everything was wet it froze and became unusable rather quickly. I repeated the thawing excersize 4 times or so, and then just called it a day. It was fun, but exhausting. In fact when I got in, I was covered with ice. I had a wetsuit and jacket on and was comfortable, actually a bit on the warm side and had to take my hood off to cool down.

James
 
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