Rudyard Reservoir

Day Sail at a local reservoir. The retrieve was particularly difficult due to the extra steep ramp here. I’m roping in by reversing the car up the ramp but when roping out I was losing traction due to the load and suffered catastrophically when my rope parted. It was a 750kg BS natural fibre type but the additional angle on the ramp pushed the overall load over the limit. A few extras lessons learned and a pressing need to figure out a stronger solution to launch and retrieve.

One piece of advice gained from a friendly source: on a 30 degree slope the load on the rope would be 50% of the overall weight. Since my rig weighs 2000kg to be extra safe I need a rope with BS in excess of 1 tonne. In fact, to be safe it needs to be three or even five times the maximum expected load which means a 3 to 5 tonne BS rope is needed.

In terms of sailing experience here I think the location is more suited to smaller open boats. Dinghies per se. The reservoir is also a bit limited in terms of size, is shape is long and narrow. It meant that tacking became hard to do for our boat, we barely had enough time to build up speed before we were forced to tack again or risk colliding with the shrubbery. On occasion there was not enough wind to track so we had to resort to paddling to come about. Since there were such steep banks thickly lined with trees, it was very picturesque but gave very confused wind. Required a tow back to the dock.

We did see some other cruising boats there some larger than us but maybe not as heavy. Perhaps they are there for afternoons almost without sailing. For me is more about the process and getting it right more to the point. I think we need to choose our launching points a bit more carefully.