Reading Time: 6 minutesWhich profile is ideal for the rudder blade, different to the Swede 55 keel fin? What was common in advanced boat building in the 1970s? What is used today? Which shape helps to avoid the stalling effect? How you determine the ideal profile for your boat. Following the first article on suitable bushings for the rudder bearing and the second …
Reading Time: 5 minutesWhatever moves on a boat wears out and eventually needs to be repaired. Even the rudder blade. After stopping the noise at my Swede 55 with suitable bushings as described here, I noticed that it was still rattling. The question was why. So I dismantled it in the fall and loaded it onto the luggage rack of my car to …
Reading Time: 6 minutesEverything that moves on a boat wears out over time and will eventually need to be repaired or replaced. Here’s the story of old and persistently replaced rudder bearing bushings until a suitable solution was found. One of the issues that occupied me for some time on board my Swede 55 was the rudder, specifically the guide of the rudder …
Reading Time: 6 minutesAn overlooked and notoriously underestimated topic is the weight of the boat. How heavy and thus under-rigged is it? Will it sail in light winds at all? And how much extra load, provisions, and luggage can it handle? Five examples. Concrete mixer or sailboat? Today, cruising boats are considered floating weekend condominiums. All the comforts are repeated aboard that we …
Reading Time: 2 minutesAre you still bobbing around or sailing already? Easygoing square metre boats answer this question in their way. These beautiful light air windmills make something out of nearly nothing. Around thirty boats, from classic 15 square metre boats to a modern cruising 55 are sailing the Slim & Tender Race (Schlank & Rank Regatta) off Fehmarn on the German coast …
Reading Time: 5 minutesHeadsail furling has obvious advantages. For cruising, where convenience and safety is paramount, the cloth is removed from the cockpit when wind picks up, before mooring or in an emergency. Further, this winding technique, which is in use now for decades, conveniently adjusts the sail area. This is interesting for charterers, beginners, the occasional sailor, small crew or an older …
Reading Time: 2 minutesIt towers 18 metres into the blue and is ten percent bigger than the previous one by Swiss sailmaker VM Sails, which came with a short foot luff in the nineties. Five battens, two of them continuous at the top, stabilise the cloth. In the fall before, sailmaker Arnd Deutsch and I had discussed a special sailcloth and other details. …
Reading Time: 4 minutesUntil this proudly remembered Friday, end of May 2019, one thing is clear aboard Gamle Swede: we will meet a Twelve-metre class only at the start of the race. Then this 22 metre upwind sailing machine, powered by 240 square metres, is gone. No reasonable sailor will take that pack with dull presumption, so we prepare with due realism in …
Reading Time: 4 minutesDoes a post about a new jib make sense? I think so, as sailing Swede 55 is mostly about upwind pleasure. And for a long time I sailed Gamle Swede with an old, worn out and to small jib. Believe it or not: It was made by Canon/Västervik in 1979. For that long, you can use polyester cloth, also known …
