If sails are the engines of the sailboat, my engines were sputtering. After 13 years of use, including crossings of the Atlantic and Caribbean, my original Dacron factory sails had seen their day. Restitching and replacing the UV covers had helped, but the sun had eventually gotten to the cloth, and the wind had made them sag. Our in-mast furling mainsail presented  particular problems. Bagged out in the wrong places, it bunched up when furling. 

I tried all the tricks, like varying the boom height and the pressure on the outhaul while furling, but unless I furled it with some wind in the sail, it jammed in the mast and became so difficult to unfurl that I swore like a bosun.

From my berth in La Conner, Washington, I sailed out Deception Pass, stopped at Bowman Bay to watch a spectacular sunset and even better sunrise, and then cruised down to Admiralty Inlet to see the crew at Port Townsend Sails. Globe-spanning sail trainer John Neal claims he’s gotten as much as 100,000 miles from a single mainsail that Port Townsend Sails built for him, and it’s fair to say that these women know their work. They pointed out some dry and brittle areas of sun damage on my sails. They patched them up as best they could for the season, but they gently recommended replacing them before any offshore passages. 

I began to shop around for new sails. To say that the art of sail construction has changed over the years is an understatement. I learned that the cheapest sails are predictably built in the Far East, with consulting and sales done by American dealers such as Precision Sails. They tended to steer customers toward Dacron as a material, for its robust strength and lower cost. They do build sails with low-stretch composite cloths, but at twice the price, they sell less of them. I looked at some of the sails they’d made, and they seemed strong and perfectly serviceable—a go-to solution for budget cruisers.

The bigger lofts—such as North, Doyle and Quantum—have their own manufacturing facilities to create composite, higher-end sails for racing and high-performance cruising. Sails are now designed on a computer, like most things, and the days of laying out ­everything on a table are ­pretty much a thing of the past. Composite sails are made on huge purpose-built tables, where load-bearing fibers are laid out along the load paths of the sail, radiating out from the corners.

Depending on the purpose of the sail, the composition will be different. For example, racing sails, where rigidity and light weight are key, will be made largely with carbon fiber, whereas cruising sails might have a higher component of high-strength durable fibers such as Technora, which is similar to Kevlar. So a sail could be composed of an infinite variety of materials, with a higher density of those materials for bigger loads, less stretch and longer life. A UV- and abrasion-­resistant scrim is usually added to protect the surface, and the sail is laminated under high heat and pressure. 

With such a huge variety of materials and unlimited options for combining them, I found myself in an information overload. Then, out of the blue, I got a call from a guy named David Armitage, who was interested in buying a sistership to my boat, Kāholo, a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 509. He wanted to know how the boat had held up to the open ocean. Having sailed Kāholo across from Portugal to Panama, as well as offshore in the Pacific Northwest, I was able to fill him in on a few common issues, although the boat has proved itself quite reliable. 

As luck would have it, he also happened to be a sail designer at Doyle Sails. A New Zealander who came to the United States with the successful Kiwi bid for the America’s Cup in San Diego, Armitage is still a keen racer. Like many Kiwis, he also happens to be a passionate cruising ­sailor. He lives aboard his fairly tricked-out Beneteau 473. And he had already done some preliminary sail designs for the Jeanneau 509.  

We talked about the challenges and how to overcome them. 

In-mast furling mains like mine present real challenges. They refuse to furl and set once the sail stretches out, and they have a less-than-optimal aerodynamic shape with a negative roach and cupped leeches. Unsurprisingly, many cruisers say they’d never go offshore with one. 

As for myself, after numerous ocean crossings as a delivery captain using every sort of furling system, I’ve actually come to appreciate the furling main. Sail shape might not be ideal, but at 2 a.m., when I am the only one on deck and I suddenly need to reduce sail, I like the safety and convenience of a main that I can reef alone, easily and quickly, to the exact area I want, from the safety of the cockpit, even off the wind. Shaking out the reef is even easier—when it works.

Armitage suggested a laminate specifically designed for offshore cruising, using high-strength Technora threads with some carbon to help reduce stretch. Vertical battens would support the leech, giving the sail better shape. Although early efforts to add battens caused jamming in narrow mast openings, Armitage explained that low-profile batten pockets can now be laminated into the construction of a low-stretch and less-bulky sail material. With less friction, the sails roll more easily into narrow mast openings. The battens also allow the leech to twist off for better sail shape, and support a slightly positive rather than a negative roach along the trailing edge of the sail. 

Doyle is not alone in this. Other ­major sailmakers, like North, which produces the vast majority of sails worldwide, are now adding battens to furling mains. Technology has improved and, like the furling jib, furling mains are now common, with many quality boatbuilders even supplying them as standard equipment. 

Armitage also recommended vertical battens for a new 105 percent furling jib. He sent over some computer-generated sail designs, showing the shape of the sails from several angles and the load paths along which fibers would be laid out. I ­decided to move forward with a new main and jib.  

His designs then went to their manufacturing facility in New Zealand, where the sails were laminated. Finally, they were sent to their loft in Rhode Island, where the panels were joined and the detail work was done on areas such as the head, tack and clew.  

Armitage seemed to have taken a personal interest in my project. Despite a busy racing schedule, he flew out from Rhode Island to Washington to fit my sails. I quickly saw that I’d added a real “sailor’s sailor” to my crew. 

He grew up outside Auckland, ­sailing Optimists as a kid up an estuary where they could sail only at high tide. Eventually, after the Kiwis won the America’s Cup in San Diego, he stayed in the United States, designing sails—that is, when he isn’t off racing competitive Grand Prix series aboard full-on racing yachts like TP52s. 

I was curious about another of his roles: building sails and trimming aboard mega-­yachts, where service-oriented Doyle has a substantial market share. As a trimmer, Armitage says, it is extremely stressful sailing, with massive carbon rigs and 2-inch-thick jib sheets loaded to tons of pressure. Walking around the deck with a remote control around his neck like a crane operator, he is constantly aware of what could happen if one of those sheets were to get loose during a tack and hit someone.  

My sails looked slick when hoisted, but because of the higher tack point on an aftermarket Harken jib furler I’d added, we found that the sheeting angle wasn’t quite right. This was, of course, no challenge for Armitage—just a simple adjustment compared with maintaining sail inventories for major racing campaigns. He had the sail recut and right back up in the air.  

We took Kāholo out for trials in breezy conditions in Puget Sound. Watching a gust roil the water to windward, my first thought was to depower, and ­maybe even reef the main. After years of offshore sailing on the boat, I’ve become familiar with how it handles. But despite a slightly increased sail area, the boat stayed on its feet, sailing through with less heel than I’d anticipated. 

I could feel a big change in Kāholo. The boat pointed higher and sailed faster, given the conditions, than it ever had. At the end of the day, both sails furled away, the main sliding into the mast with some ­resistance—but no swearing.  

If sails are indeed the engines of a sailboat, I’d just repowered with some surprisingly smooth and efficient motors. 

The post Revitalize Sailing: Upgrade Your Sails for New Adventures appeared first on Cruising World.

Most of us monohull sailors don’t let on that we ponder alternatives to deep-draft keels and the lead or iron we lug around. We do watch with some envy as multihulls slip blithely over the shoaling parts of the Great Bahama Bank and meander about the skinny waters of Chesapeake Bay. Curiosity often leads to serious conversation, and before long, there’s a new interest in the next boat show. 

At the moment, there’s no ­for-sale sign taped to the mast of my own cruising monohull, Wind Shadow. But I’m nautically curious and always on the lookout for worthy sailboats. I also realize that cruising conditions vary, as does the sailing ­interest and skillset of each crew. So, when I go boat-looking, I like to recall the seafaring wisdom of an old shipwright: “Be sure the tool you choose is the right one for the job at hand.” 

The same can be said about sailboats. When the job is coastal cruising and the setting is an abundance of estuaries, bays, rivers and sounds, plus some short-hop ocean passagemaking, the right tool may very well be a light, agile, folding-­ama trailerable trimaran. Its generous sail-area-to-displacement ratio means that even light winds will become a viable sailing breeze. Weight is the enemy, and payload limits must be viewed as sacrosanct numbers, not to be exceeded. 

 Sailing this kind of trimaran is akin to taking a street-legal sports car onto the track. Set a little less than full sail, don’t crowd the corners, and the encounter will be a free and easy romp. Push too hard in either case, and the ride gets more challenging. 

In both cases, well-practiced contingency plans pay off. These include keeping track of true-wind speed and sail-combo setups. Treat increases in sea state the way a driver handles a wet track. Factor in variables such as crew size and competence, along with how willing you are to push the limit, and contend with the consequences.

Trimaran advocates Charlie and Nona Pucciarello are good examples of hardcore multihull sailors who have transitioned into performance cruising. They savor the time spent sailing from anchorage to anchorage as much as they enjoy the harbors they visit. Charlie’s years of dinghy racing at the US Naval Academy and his aircraft carrier flight ops as an F-14 pilot left certain performance expectations in play, but today, he’s a more sedate airline pilot. Years of racing and cruising a Farrier-31 led to the Pucciarellos’ current Corsair 37, an appropriate blend of ­adventure and relaxation.

As a couple, they demonstrate that sailhandling and safety go hand in hand. Their routine is anything but a dialed-­back reefed-down slog. Hot Chocolate is set up to expedite sail trimming and reefing efficiency. Hardware upgrades vary from optimized winches to lead-block locations selected to maintain a fairlead. Charlie and Nona doublehand the Corsair 37, and they used the underway experiences garnered aboard their F-31 to help fine-tune the bigger Corsair. Their “been there, done that” database is equivalent to that of the veteran sports-car driver who has spun out a time or two and knows what’s necessary.

They like the idea of the latest headsail-handling hardware used on small to midsize trimarans, to minimize crew time on the foredeck. Either a reacher or an asymmetric spinnaker can be tacked to the retractable sprit pole. The roller-furling ­operation is initiated via an endless-line roller furler. It relies on a single large-diameter sheave that replaces the ­more-familiar roller-furling drum. The control rope is an end-to-end spliced loop with only one turn around the grooved and caged furling sheave. The double line is fed back to the cockpit using a series of twin-block fairleads. 

These foilless furlers substitute a stiff torsion-resistant line as the connection between the tack and the top ­swivel. Sails with narrower head girth (drifters and reachers) use a bottom-up furler. These units are designed to initiate the luff twist at deck level and then ­allow the torsion cable to project the furling rotation aloft to the head swivel. Because of the asymmetric spinnaker’s much-fuller head, it’s advantageous to have the furling ­process begin aloft and ­progress in a downward fashion. 

Top-down furling tends to be a bit more of a challenge. Sailors who are new to endless-line sprit-pole sailhandling are better off starting out with a ­moderately sized drifter/reacher (aka screacher) and handling it with a bottom-up endless-line furler.

The mainsail on the most ­efficient sailing multihulls is ­indeed a force to reckon with. And at the heart of good seamanship is knowing how to reef efficiently, along with recognizing when it’s time to do so. The process has been helped immensely thanks to lighter, stronger, much-less-stretch-prone cordage, and more-efficient turning blocks and rope clutches that lock line into place with the jaw hold of a gator. The absence of a backstay means there’s room for a square-top full-batten main, with lots of sail area aloft. It warrants a dedicated reefing winch, lazy jacks and a hammock, or a stack pack-style mainsail containment system.   

Every multihull sailor needs to develop a keen awareness of form stability and how it relates to angle of heel. The monohull sailor has a safety valve in the form of secondary righting moment derived from ballast. It ­delivers capsize resistance at deeper angles of heel. This secondary source of stability is missing in multihulls. 

However, widespread high-volume amas provide buoyancy that acts in opposition to the heeling moment. When the angle of heel is less than 20 degrees, a multihull’s resistance to capsize is far greater than that of a monohull. Still, in heavy weather offshore, large swells affect wave-face geometry, and the water plane on which a vessel floats can become steeply inclined. This can significantly decrease the influence of buoyancy derived from stability. Heavy-weather storm tactics for multihulls take this into consideration.

The post Rigged to Rip: How Trimarans Maximize Speed and Simplicity appeared first on Cruising World.

Rigging and spars live a hard life. They are fully exposed to rain, salt, and ultraviolet rays for years on end, along with extreme cyclical compression and tension loads. Considering the poor condition of many rigs I inspect, it’s a miracle that so few fail catastrophically.

It’s even more astonishing when you add the opportunities for corrosion that are peculiar to a primary alloy used in rigging and spars: stainless steel.

Stainless steel—as robust, durable and indispensable as it is—is not without its weaknesses. Superman’s nemesis is kryptonite. Stainless steel’s nemesis is far more common. It’s stagnant water.  

Stainless steel’s largest alloying element is iron, but it achieves its legendary corrosion resistance thanks to the addition of several other metals, which vary depending on the alloy. They can include nickel, chrome and molybdenum, in varying percentages, among others. The more exotic the stainless alloy, the more elements it usually contains.  

This metallurgical cocktail lets stainless steel form a tough, clear oxide coating as it is exposed to air. The coating is maintained as long as that exposure continues. In most cases, even the oxygen dissolved in moving water—fresh and salt—is adequate for stainless steel to maintain its corrosion resistance.

Why, then, are instances of corroded and failed stainless steel so common with everything from fasteners and rigging wire to turnbuckles and plumbing components? The answer is air. Deprive stainless steel of its constant exposure to air, and things go awry.

Once starved of oxygen, stainless steel goes from a ­passive to an active state. In other words, it begins to corrode. That’s why stagnant water is such a threat. The scenario can be as simple as trapping water against a fastener that passes through a deck or hull. Give it air, and stainless steel will survive.  

Prevention is the best cure, and in the case of crevice corrosion, that means avoiding water ­entrapment. Make certain that all ­stainless-­­steel-flanged hardware is fully bedded, not just the fasteners in polyurethane or polysulfide sealant. Avoid wrapping or covering stainless wire rigging or other hardware with plastic, rubber, or other materials that can retain water. Where this is unavoidable, the wraps or coverings should be periodically removed so that the area can be dried, cleaned and inspected. 

Stainless-steel fasteners that pass through hulls and decks, like those used for chainplates and padeyes, are particularly susceptible to crevice corrosion. Water can migrate into the hole that the fastener passes through. The fastener’s shank—the part that is not visible—is where the corrosion occurs. Make certain these fasteners are fully bedded, and remember that bedding and sealant have a finite life. After five to seven years, even the best product will need to be renewed.

One common error ­involves the act of­ ­bedding internal hardware, nuts, washers, and backing plates. This practice, while seemingly intuitive, will in fact facilitate the entrapment of water. Leaving these areas ­unsealed is preferable because if and when they leak, you know it’s time to rebed this hardware.  

This is especially true of chainplates. The external portions and their fasteners should be fully bedded, including where they pass through the deck; however, internal backing plates or other support structures should not be ­bedded. Avoid applying fiberglass fabric and resin to stainless steel because this too acts as a water-trapping wet blanket.

The telltale sign that stainless steel has gone from passive to active is the formation of brown streaks, often called “tea staining.” If you see these stains, it’s a clarion call for action. Delay could lead to a rig or other hardware failure. —Steve D’Antonio 

Steve D’Antonio offers services for boat owners and buyers through Steve D’Antonio Marine Consulting.

The post Crevice Corrosion: The Hidden Threat in Your Rigging appeared first on Cruising World.

The Pacific Ocean has about 30,000 islands spread across it. That seems like a lot, but given the Pacific’s 63.8 million square miles of ocean area, these islands are few and far between. About 4,000 years ago, humans in Eastern Asia set sail in canoes and found so many of these islands that today we attribute their success to navigators who read subtle signs, such as wave patterns and bird behavior. 

I think it was a party trick. Waves and birds? Pfft.

With a second Pacific Ocean crossing in my wake aboard our Stevens 47, Totem, I’ve concluded that ancient humans’ success at discovering islands was possible only because of sailmakers making sail repairs. 

Think about how often the tough, synthetic sails on modern cruising boats need care and maintenance. The pandanus fiber sails of those ancient voyagers must have been a disaster. Back then, a blown-out sail meant stopping dead in the water. Clearly, the drivers of success were the heroic sailmakers working tirelessly through fierce storms and under the blazing sun, repairing sails to keep moving onward to the next island discovery.

Maybe I’m a biased sailmaker who appreciates the value we get from working sails. This point is most evident to me when a sailor in a remote place with broken sails reaches out for help. Ironically, cruising sailors often know more about diesel engines, watermakers, solar chargers and outboards. Boats are complex machines, but sails are key.

To me, the primary ­ingredients of DIY sail repair are simple enough: sailcloth, thread, webbing and attachment hardware. Their purpose is to resist being pulled apart in the tug-of-war between wind and rigging. When a portion of sail is pulled apart—as in torn sailcloth, broken luff slides or clew straps ripped off—a good repair will ­reestablish material strength. 

Making Sail Repairs in the Field

Field repairs don’t need to be pretty; they need to be reliable enough. A sewing machine is a primary sailmaking tool but is not necessary for most field repairs. Often, the challenge in doing field repairs is the awkward area for hand-sewing or bonding pieces together on the side deck, in the cockpit, on a dock or parking lot, or—trickier still—when the sail is still up. 

Preparing the sail and space for the work needed will make it easier. A good example of this happened a few years back when the owners of a catamaran sailing off the coast of Tanzania asked for help. Their Dacron genoa was rotten from ultraviolet damage. They expected to replace it when they got to sailmakers in South Africa, but the passage was a sporty 1,600 nautical miles down the Mozambique Channel, and they realized that the sail wouldn’t make it. 

I assessed the sail from afar and then conveyed a plan to make patches that would reinforce large areas. Materials with fiber reinforcement such as a plastic tarp would add ­necessary strength when oriented across the tearing sailcloth. 

To join the new material and bad sailcloth, they needed reasonably strong adhesive. Some marine-grade polysulfide sealants work well; so might spray glue, contact cement or superglue. If you have ­something on board but are uncertain about the bond strength, a small test run can show how strong it is when cured.

The crew acquired an old Optimist dinghy sail from another cruiser for the patch. With tubes of marine sealant they had on board, they glued wide strips from the dinghy sail across the worst areas of rotten sailcloth. The genoa wasn’t pretty, but it was enough. A few weeks later, the crew sailed safely into port in South Africa, headsail repair intact.

Another tough lesson ­happened last year with a ­cruiser we’d met while ­preparing to sail from Mexico to the Pacific. He reached out with a passage tale about an unexpected squall and an ­unplanned jibe that had resulted in a number of broken mainsail luff slides. He hadn’t thought to bring spare luff slides, so he needed a work-around. 

Hand-sewing on luff slides is an easy DIY repair, but ­unfortunately, there weren’t enough good slides to work. The sailor had to go without a mainsail for the last few ­passages of the season. He learned a lot about advance planning for a sail-repair kit.

Yet another incident happened about a third of the way between Fiji and Japan, when solo sailor Raffi Patatian noticed a tear in the in-mast furling mainsail of his Hallberg-Rassy 43, Wind River. As Raffi’s weather router, I was aware of his situational context: thousands of miles from anything resembling a sail loft, and 25-knot winds pushing up 8- to 10-foot waves. The tear ran vertically up from the foot, just forward of the clew reinforcement patch. It was only 5 inches long, but the location bears high loads that would tear apart the sail unless he repaired it.

The passage was a sporty 1,600 ­nautical miles down the Mozambique Channel, and they realized that the sail wouldn’t make it.

What is a high-load tear? By deflecting wind, a sail gains force—or load—across its entire surface. That force becomes directional as it pulls against the corner attachment points, head, tack and clew; to a lesser degree, it also pulls luff attachments. Load paths form between any two corners. In Raffi’s mainsail, the vertical tear was being pulled apart by the horizontal load between the clew and tack. This is a high-load tear, which requires a stronger patch than a low-load tear.

When the tear and the load are parallel (a low-load tear), there isn’t force pulling at the tear, so it’s an easy fix. Clean and dry the damaged area, and slap some sail-repair tape (or even duct tape) over the tear on both sides of the sail. That’s an adequate, temporary repair. 

Taking this approach on a high-load tear, however, would quickly fail. Raffi had a nicely stocked sail-repair kit, including a sewing machine. Unfortunately, the machine stayed in a locker because the boat’s motion made using the machine impossible. Instead, hand-sewing and 3M 4200 Fast Cure (a polysulfide sealant) would do the job. Rather than taking down the sail to repair it, furling the sail most of the way and stabilizing the boom would be easier and faster because of the tear location.

The first task was to hand-sew heavy webbing along the foot, spanning the tear. Before leaving the cockpit, Raffi cut the webbing about 18 inches long and used a marker to make dots in a zigzag pattern as a sewing guide. He then prepared the hand-sewing needle with a long length of four-strand waxed thread. 

Tethered to the dodger, he sewed half of the webbing to the foot, forward of the tear. Then he pulled the torn sailcloth sides together, held webbing in place across the tear, and secured them with a clamp. No sailmaker would rate this sewing as pretty, but it was strong.

To finish the repair, we wanted to add a Dacron patch over the torn portion so that it would be joined by more than webbing. Hand-sewing the patch was an option, but bonding the patch in place would be faster and stronger. The key to a bonded repair on a high-load tear is surface area. The patch needs to be four or five times wider than a sewn seam would be on each side of the tear (and wider still on sails with higher loads, such as roachy ­catamaran mainsails). 

Raffi had spare sailcloth to work with. First, he oriented the strongest yarns to the load path across the tear, and then marked and cut out the patch. With the repair area cleaned and dried, he spread the 4200 Fast Cure all over one side of the patch. Then the patch was placed across the tear and firmly pressed to the sail. The last step was sail-repair tape (or duct tape) around the ­perimeter to ensure that it stayed in place until it cured.

Raffi made it safely to Okinawa, Japan. The patch held, but near the end of the passage, more tears near the patch formed. The sail should be replaced, like the genoa on the boat off Tanzania. Or should it? 

Make the materials strong again with more DIY repairs. When the Tanzania boat got to South Africa, the crew bought a new genoa but didn’t bend it on. That mangy sail repair crossed the Atlantic and lived to see the Caribbean, believe it or not. 

As those ancient voyagers learned, your sails will get you there—if you can keep them together. Just watch for changes in the waves and seabirds to reveal when you’re almost there.

The post Sail Repairs That Keep You Sailing appeared first on Cruising World.

In monohull sailing, when you leave too much sail up in a building breeze the signs are clear: The rail is ­underwater, the dishes are on the floor, Grandma is terrified. The boat is dealing with ­excess energy by trying to ­lever a 5-ton lead weight out of the water; in other words, it’s heeling, spilling breeze, slowing down and rounding up.

Multihulls don’t behave that way. When you overpower a cat, it can only accelerate, dig a hole in the water or bust gear. No-heel sailing has a lot of advantages, but one drawback is the temptation to sail badly. You might easily go sailing with breakfast dishes on the table and postpone reefing until you’ve cleaned things up. In the meantime, the breeze is on, the boat’s impossible to steer and you shred a sail. One key to safe catamaran sailing is to learn when — and how — to reduce sail.

The best place to learn how to tuck in a reef is at the dock. Pick a morning with zero wind, and hoist. Practice reefing and un-reefing till you can do it in less than three minutes, blindfolded. If something jams or snags, stop. Find the source, figure out the cause and fix it. Look for inherent weak spots, chafe areas and jammed lines or sail slides. Study the whole system in slow motion and ­imagine how it will behave in howling wind, thrashing seas or on pitch-dark nights.

With the main down and flaked on the boom, go to the mast and haul up the main halyard, hoisting the sail as far as you can with two hands and no winch. Let it drop. Repeat and get a feel for the amount of friction built in to this most simple system. Then, if your lines lead to the cockpit, go back and repeat the procedure from where you would normally hoist the sail. Note how every bend and turn adds friction.

It’s important to have a solid understanding of your boat’s base-line resistance. When something jams in the dark, at sea, and you’re alone in the cockpit, you have to know nature’s little warning signs. Your evil inner voice will say, “You’re just tired. Put that thing on the electric winch!” You have to be able to argue back, “No, this is not the normal amount of friction. Something’s wrong.” Remember: There are no snag problems an electric winch can’t make worse.

While you’re at the mast, study the gooseneck. With the first reef in, look at the way the reef line is led to the deck and back to the cockpit. Look for friction and chafe. Push the boom out and back, making sure the reef line doesn’t change tension. Look back at the tail end of the boom, where the reef line passes through the leech. The reef line should pull both reef points in two directions: down and forward at the luff, and down and back at the leech. It should run through all its turns, from boom to cockpit, with minimal resistance. It might appear to be all clean and peaceful at the dock, but on big seas, everything is in motion. The slightest chafe whittles line down to bird-nest fodder in no time.

Next, work out your own checklist for reefing. It should be a simple list of the basic steps, in an order that goes something like this: 1) Ease mainsheet. 2) Set topping lift. 3) Ease halyard. 4) Tighten and secure reef line. 5) Re-tension halyard. 6) Trim sheet.

Reach for It

Once you’ve got it down pat at the dock and you’re ready for a test run, pack a lunch and look for a steady 15-knot breeze with plenty of sea room. Set a heading on a close reach, check sea room again and punch in the autopilot. Watch the autopilot drive for five minutes while you review your checklist.

When you’re ready, ease the mainsheet and let the traveler down until the main is completely de-powered. Adjust jib trim and autopilot heading until the boat stays on course, powered only by the jib; don’t fall off and let the luffing main fill again. The speed will go down sailing only on the jib, but the boat should balance, still on a close reach. Now go through your checklist and practice it step by step for both the first and second reef, hauling the sail up and down until you have it down cold or run out of sea room.

Reefing on a close reach has its own tricks and hassles, but I find it far easier than starting engines, pushing the bow into the wind, leaping off wave crests, pounding in troughs, watching for stray lines in the props and minding the ­flogging boom.

In the distant past, when mainsails had short (or no) battens, the sail flogged when luffing. This was considered hard on the sailcloth. The full-length battens on modern ­catamaran mainsails take the flog out of the sail but put it in the boom. This is considered hard on skulls, should they be in the way. An out-of-control boom also flails slack lines, which snag, bend, remove hardware and tie themselves in weird knots. It’s a deadly menace to life and property. I try to avoid it at every ­opportunity. Still, it’s good to ­practice reefing nose-to-wind, and also heaving to. It’s difficult, it tests boathandling skills and it helps prepare you for the toughest challenge: reefing while sailing on a run.

Before we head off downwind, let’s heave to for a ­minute and review. We like to practice at the dock, in dead calm, because, well, it’s calm. Everything’s easy.

So how to know when to reef? The first obvious answer is the wind-speed indicator. If your boat has an owner’s manual, it probably recommends reefing at 18, 28 and 35 knots or so. Every boat is different, and no rule fits every situation, but take it on faith that these are ballpark figures. Pick your own numbers, but be conservative, watch the wind speedo (hopefully it’s been calibrated) and stick to your rules till you know your boat well.

Do you put in the first reef at 18 knots true or apparent? Great question. Most cats pick up a lot of speed when they head downwind. This exaggerates the difference ­between true-and apparent-wind speed. You’ll especially notice this if you have set a gennaker or spinnaker and the wind is building. If you head up even a few degrees on these sails, the apparent-wind speed builds so fast you might have a shredded sail quicker than you can say “snap fill.”

Write your reefing-guide checklist with true-wind speed in mind, and make a note to clearly understand how your boat’s speed and heading affect apparent-wind speed and angle. Then make a note on the dashboard for downwind drivers: “Steer down in a puff.” The deeper downwind angle you sail, the less the apparent wind. And vice versa.

Most catamarans have shrouds placed far aft, and no backstay. That means the boom cannot swing out as far as on typical monohulls, and therefore the jibe angle is smaller. The boat has a narrower range of downwind sailing angles. For this reason, and a few other architectural ones, cat sailors don’t often sail dead downwind, at least not with the main up. It’s a big sail, with lots of roach in the leech; long, heavy battens; and, on many boats, a traveler that’s 10 or more feet long. When you jibe one of these accidentally in 25 knots, it’s like lifting a cat by the tail: You discover new things that can’t be learned any other way.

A lot of good sailors will say you can’t reef that big sail when it’s loaded on a run. But something about turning into a huge following sea is a motivator to try. When you turn into the wind to reef, and start taking big waves on the beam, even though you know that in ­theory your boat was designed not to capsize, all your senses will scream, “We’re going over!”

So before you get caught out in 20-foot seas with too much canvas up, it’s best to learn how to reef the big main while sailing hard, downwind.

Downwind Basics

You can work out the basic moves and hardware at the dock. But to feel the pressure, the friction you’re up against when sailing on a run, it’s good to have a long stretch of wide, flat water and at least 15 knots of steady breeze.

If you have the luxury of crew, this is the time to put your best downwind driver at the wheel. If you are cruising alone, or with a mate, your autopilot is your best friend and the most important piece of gear on the boat. Most autopilots have a wind function; instead of a magnetic heading, they will steer to an apparent-wind direction. This is where you learn to use it, adjust it and trust it. The boat has to maintain a rock-solid wind angle, and you need to be able to tweak it a few degrees, up or down, and trust it won’t lurch into a round-down wild jibe.

Before you punch the autopilot into duty, set your heading and sail trim on a deep downwind angle that’s balanced and easy to steer. If you’re struggling, zigging off and zagging back, fighting a heavy wheel, the pilot will struggle too. Eventually something will break. If your ­heading swings too far, the autopilot may give up trying to hold course and eventually switch itself off. (There’s a Catch-22 to all this: If you’re overpowered and out of balance, it’s hard to safely reef because it’s hard to hold course. But this is when you need that reef the most. Practice in lighter breeze and work up to the big stuff. And learn to reef sooner rather than later.)

Even in lighter wind, with the main sheeted out and traveler down, there’s plenty of friction on the mainsail’s luff cars. The sail likely won’t come down on its own, and even the reef line on a winch won’t feel effective. The simplest solution is for someone to stand at the mast and pull down on the luff of the sail. If you can safely get there in the dark and reach the sail, this method, being the simplest, has beauty.

But regardless, you already thought about this back at the dock, and you have rigged some kind of downhaul that lets you pull down on the sail from a position where you feel safe. It can be as simple as a separate line, tied to the top luff car, that is led to the base of the mast, or better yet to a manual winch either on the mast, cabin top or at the helm (to be used as a last resort!).

There are times when even an athlete at the mast, using a well-rigged downhaul, won’t budge the sail. Try bringing the mainsheet in 2 feet and try again. No? Alter heading slightly and try again. Bring in a couple more feet of sheet. ­Double-check the main halyard. No snags? Keep tinkering with sheet angle and heading, downhaul and reef-line pressure in tiny increments — but don’t jibe! Try even moving the traveler up a foot or two. ­Remember, the reef line has to pull the boom up a bit to meet the lowering leech cringle, so changing the sheet geometry can help.

If all else fails, you might have to put your downhaul on the (manual!) winch. Here, again, all your dock practice pays off because you need a good feel for how much friction is too much. You need to know if something is about to break.

If you keep tweaking the sheet and heading in small bites, and you don’t break something, the sail will finally move down an inch or two, and that’s all you need, a start. From there you can keep ­inching it down.

When you have the reef point locked down, give the autopilot a break. Steer the boat to see if it’s easier and better balanced with less sail. If you still have sea room in your practice space, take a break, open the lunch bag, review your checklist and then practice reefing the jib. You’ll find challenges there too in big wind, even though it rolls up.

Practice Makes Perfect

Every boat and every sea condition is a little different. Experimenting in all kinds of settings is the only way to learn the personality of your boat. There are devilish details: lazy jacks that snag battens, sail covers and Biminis that block the view. Besides their sails, catamarans have lots of sail area in fiberglass and gelcoat. When you’re sailing downwind, all that vertical surface you see from behind equates to sail area, and most of it is aft of the mast. I’ve sailed cats at more than 17 knots with no sails at all! So the dynamic balance of a cat is different from a monohull.

When you start tinkering, you’ll find most cats sail well, even tacking upwind, on jib alone. But they hardly sail at all on just the main. As big as the main is, that seems counterintuitive. But when I’m alone on the boat and both engines die at the worst moment, the first thing I reach for is the jib sheet and furling line. Before the anchor, before the radio, before the life jacket, I roll out the jib. Try it.

Learn your boat! When you understand how it reacts in various conditions, you’ll pick up other little clues that tell you if it’s overpowered. I can tell a lot just from the sound of the water tumbling off the transom. There are lots of cat sailors out there now. Go to school on the stuff they broke. Like electrics, every mechanical system should have a fuse. If you break something, before you beef it up, ask yourself if that was the best place for an overload failure. A raceboat owner summed that up best for me years ago, and I never forgot: “Guys, we sailed hard enough to break some stuff, but it wasn’t ­expensive. Great job!”

Don Margraf is a West Coast multihull sailor, rigger and yacht broker who mastered the finer points of boathandling at Trial & Error U.

The post Controlling Your Sails On A Catamaran appeared first on Cruising World.

3Di Outlasts The Adventure
Francois Gabart and his 30-meter trimaran Macif broke the solo around-the-world speed record in December 2017 with a 3Di mainsail that had 45,000 miles BEFORE the start of his record run. 3Di powered all three around-the-world speeds records currently held.

No Film. No Delamination.
3Di is composite technology, not a sail laminate. All other sailmakers use laminates of which Mylar film is an integral component. Moisture, sunlight, and fatigue degrade both the adhesives used with the film, and the Mylar itself. These cause delamination and film failure over time.

Another Dimension
North Sails created 3D technology and is the only sailmaker to utilize full-sized molds. 3Di uses reconfigurable molds that are set to the sail’s intended flying shape.

Made By Robots (mostly)
The only sewing on a 3Di sail is for attaching details such as corner reinforcements and clew straps.
The majority of the 3Di process is automated and run by computers.

Unique To You North Sails has four versions of 3Di to suit different sailing styles and budgets.

It Has To Be North
3Di is a patented sail technology that is exclusive to North Sails. There are many “black” and “gray” sails on the market, but they are actually Mylar based string sails hidden underneath a cover layer giving them the superficial appearance of 3Di without the performance.

The post North Sails 3Di – What You Need to Know appeared first on Cruising World.

Sails do not last forever, but with proper care, cruising sails made of a high-quality Dacron sailcloth will provide many years of service. I know this because I spent more than 70 years maintaining sails, often turning for advice to Graham Knight, of Antigua Sails, who has been repairing sails in Antigua since 1970. Knight has repaired or supervised the repairs to more sails than anyone else I can think of.

My sailing career began in the days of cotton sails and manila or linen running rigging. It was a good school in which to learn how to repair sails, as there were few sailmakers in the Caribbean in the late 1950s, just a few locals who made or repaired canvas sails entirely by hand. We yacht owners did most of our own sail maintenance, also by hand.

When Dacron sails first arrived on the scene, we thought it was heaven. Dacron was unaffected by changes in moisture. Gone were the days of having to carefully ease the halyard and outhaul as you sailed into a fog, or when rain soaked the sail. Gone were the days of carefully drying sails to make sure they did not get mildewed, and we could forget about putting on the sailcover to keep the nighttime dew off the sail. I did, though, miss the most comfortable place to sleep in a boat: curled up on a dry cotton spinnaker in the fo’c’sle.

Over time, we learned from experience that Dacron sails become damaged in three ways: as a result of weak stitching, from flogging, and by degradation from exposure to UV radiation from the sun. The stitching was a particular weakness in those early Dacron sails, in part due to the sensitivity of the thread to UV exposure.

A Stitch in Time

I quickly learned that when the stitching fails, a sail will split from the leech in, seldom from the body of the sail out. If on Iolaire we noticed a seam opening up in the body of a sail, my crew or I would restitch it by hand at the end of the day. If a seam started to fail from the leech in, it would split all the way to the luff before we could get the sail down. I vividly recall spreading a mainsail across the fuel dock at Yacht Haven in St. Thomas, restitching by hand where it had split from luff to leech — two rows of stitches, each 15 feet long. That taught me to regularly inspect the leech of every sail and restitch the weak points before they failed.

Just before my late wife, Marilyn, and I decided to emigrate to Grenada, I acquired a heavy-duty Pfaff electric zigzag sewing machine mounted in a proper table. We disassembled it and packed it in Iolaire’s port pilot berth so it would be on the windward side going to Grenada. Periodically, I set up the sewing machine in the bar at the Grenada Yacht Club, where I could spread the sails out. I regularly restitched them along the leech and along the seams to 3 feet in from the leech. I did the same along the foot of the high-cut yankee. That ended the weak-stitching problem for Iolaire.

Take it from me, you will substantially increase the life of your sails by periodically taking them to a sailmaker who can inspect them, make any obvious repairs and do as I have described above. Also, have the batten pockets restitched if the stitching looks weak.

Once a sail is two or three years old, it will become apparent where it chafes on shrouds and spreaders. Have your sailmaker glue on reinforcement patches in the way of the spreaders and narrow strips over the seams where they chafe on shrouds. Taking these simple steps will lengthen the life of the sail considerably.

Knight recommends you persuade the sailmaker to use Gore Tenara thread when you have your sails restitched. Sailmakers do not like to use it because it is expensive and the machine must be specially set up for it, but the thread will last longer than the sail.

Shaken to Pieces

Flogging is another major cause of sail damage or destruction. In the days when Iolaire had cotton sails, I had a lot of trouble with the batten pockets or the sail under them tearing when the sail flogged during a tack or when reefing. When I ordered my first Dacron mainsail from Charlie “Butch” Ulmer, I asked for a battenless main. This eliminated the problem of broken battens, and battens fouling in the rigging when sails were hoisted or doused, but introduced another: I always had a fluttering leech unless the leech line was pulled taut, and then I had a curled leech.

When the battenless main was coming to the end of its life I replaced it with a main with battens. To keep the wooden battens (plastic battens did not yet exist) from breaking and tearing the batten pocket or sail, I installed three very thin battens in each pocket. The thin battens would bend more without breaking than a single thicker batten. I also removed the batten pockets, sewed a patch under each pocket, then reinstalled the pockets. As a result, if a batten did break and tear a hole, because of the double thickness, the hole was usually in the batten pocket rather than in the sail. A hole in the batten pocket was much easier to repair than a hole in the sail.

The problem of the flogging mainsail was solved in 1989, when Robbie Doyle gave Iolaire a fully battened mainsail with one of his first StackPacks. I will not get into the debate about which sails are faster, but from the cruising sailor’s standpoint, a fully battened sail beats the battened soft sail six ways to Sunday. A fully battened sail does not flog when it’s being reefed. If a squall approaches and the skipper feels it will only be a brief one, the main can be eased so it’s completely depowered but will not flog. It may take some strange shapes, but it will be depowered. It can be retrimmed once the squall has passed.

We discovered a few problems with the Doyle StackPack as originally conceived, but we sorted them out over time. A fully battened sail installed in a StackPack or a similar cover will last virtually forever.

After six hard seasons in the Caribbean and a transatlantic passage, I replaced Iolaire’s original StackPack with a Street Pack — a Doyle StackPack installed with zippers (see “From StackPack to Street Pack,” page 85). I replaced it not because the sail was worn out but because the cover and the membrane were falling apart and, being all sewn together, were too difficult to repair. Since then, the cover and membrane have been removed and repaired three times, but the sail was still going strong when I sold Iolaire 17 years later!

Many sailmakers make their own versions of the StackPack. Before ordering one, make sure the sail, cover and membrane (if fitted) are all connected with zippers rather than being sewn together.

UV and Polyester

We discovered the hard way in the tropics just how susceptible to rapid degradation polyester fabrics like Dacron are when exposed to UV rays. Knight showed me how to determine how severe the damage was. He pushes a sail needle through the cloth. If it goes through cleanly, all is well and the sail can be restitched and repaired. But if the needle goes through the material with a pop, the cloth is toast.

We also discovered that the light, easily handled Dacron sailcovers were not the answer; they did not protect the sails from UV damage. The solution was to make the covers out of mildew-proofed Vivitex or, later, Sunbrella. The life expectancy of boom-stowed sails on all rigs was greatly increased if the crew put on the sailcovers every day as soon as the sail was dropped. The StackPack took care of the UV problem to a great extent, on Iolaire’s mainsail anyway. Headsails were another matter.

On Iolaire, we fought the problem of UV degradation on roller headsails for 50 years. In 1961, I installed a jib and a staysail that roller-furled on their own luff wires. We made them work by setting them up on two-part halyards led to a winch. The luff wires were the same diameter as the stays, and we tensioned the luff wires until the head and staysail stays were slack. The system worked well, but the sails were all the way out or all the way in. To minimize damage from UV rays, any time we would not be sailing for two or three days, we lowered the sails and stowed them coiled in bags.

Eventually, the leech and foot of the yankee, which remained exposed when the sail was furled, were shot. The body of the sail was fine, so my crew and I laid out the sail and removed the luff wire. I then had a sailmaker cut 18 inches off the leech and foot and rebuild the head, tack and clew corners. My mate and I shortened the luff wire to suit the new luff length, fed it through the sail and tensioned it between two palm trees with a four-part tackle. We then adjusted the luff tension of the sail, secured the head and tack cringles to the ends of the wire, and secured the sail to the luff wire. We now had a good J2 and bought a new J1.

This same operation, cutting the sunburned material from the leech and foot of a high-cut jib, can also be done on a genoa, reducing a 150 percent genoa to a 135. With headsails fitted to a roller-­reefing foil, this operation is much easier than with the old sails with luff wires.

Roller Reefing

In 1986, Olaf Harken offered me a very good discount on Harken’s headsail ­roller-reefing gear. From the late 1960s to the ’80s, bent-up and ­broken-down roller-reefing headsail gear was stacked like cordwood in rigging lofts across the Caribbean, so despite the limitations of my roller-furling headsail rig, I was not at all interested in switching to a roller-reefing headsail on a foil.

What Harken really wanted was for me to test his company’s new gear for larger boats. When he offered to give me the gear and a headsail to go with it, I accepted. The gear worked perfectly for nine hard years in the Caribbean, three transatlantics, 17 years cruising and racing in Europe, and was still going strong when I sold Iolaire.

In one way, though, it was a step backward. To protect the sail from UV rays, we removed it whenever we were not sailing for any amount of time. With the headsail it replaced, one person could slack the halyard, drop the sail and, with some difficulty, coil the furled sail into its bag. By contrast, removing the big yankee from the headstay was a three-person job, as was hoisting it. Thus we did not do it with the frequency we had with the roller-furling sails, and the sail suffered.

To eliminate the sunburn problem, many cruisers have a protective layer of Sunbrella about 18 inches wide sewn on the leech and foot. It looks like hell and does not improve the set of the sail. The better solution for a roller-reefing headsail is a cover of the kind I first saw on German yachts in the Baltic in the late ’90s and is now becoming common elsewhere. The cover, which is a long sleeve, is hoisted, usually with the spinnaker halyard, then tightened with a lanyard threaded through a series of hooks and eyes. It covers the sail completely and does not flap in the breeze. However, friction imposes a limit as to how big a sleeve can be made and still be practical to hoist and douse. Knight says the maximum practical luff length is about 60 feet. A sail with a luff any longer than 60 feet is too big to regularly take down when the boat is not being sailed, so it is left up and the leech and foot remain exposed to UV rays. Some skippers, rather than use a colored protective material, have sacrificial strips of cloth the same color as the sail sewn on the leech and foot. Mark Fitzgerald, the longtime skipper of the 115-foot high-tech ketch Sojana, coats the leech and foot with white emulsion paint, which has proved to minimize UV damage. North Sails has a liquid “ink” that reduces UV damage. It is available in several colors and can be sprayed on existing sails if they are clean.

Be sure when you furl your sail on a roller furler that the drum turns in the ­direction that leaves the Sunbrella cover and not the sail itself exposed.

I have been told by Evelyne Nye, head of Custom Canvas and the North Sails agent in St. Thomas, that the best headsail covers are made by Etienne Giroire, a French singlehanded racing skipper who does business as ATN (atninc.com). This certainly looks like the solution to the UV problem with roller-furling headsails.

With diligent care, Dacron sails can be made to last a good long time: Don’t let them flog, inspect and restitch vulnerable areas on a regular basis, and protect them from sunlight.

– – –

Voyaging legend Donald M. Street Jr. has been racing and cruising on both sides of the Atlantic — and writing about his exploits — for over five decades.

The post Making Your Sails Last appeared first on Cruising World.

North Sails has been the exclusive official supplier to the Volvo Ocean Race since the debut of the VO65 one design fleet in the 2014-15 edition. Now, after analyzing extensive race data,further modeling and listening to feedback from Volvo Ocean Race sailors, North has created a new 171m² sail to fill an apparent gap between the masthead code 0 (MH0) and the J1 jib, boosting the performance of the VO65s in the process.

In the most recent edition of the historic race, sailors reported having to constantly switch between the MH0 and the J1, two of the biggest sails carried onboard, in search of the configuration that gave them the best speed.

Crucially the introduction of the J0 will eradicate the need to change headsails so frequently – welcome news for the sailors, who expend thousands of calories a day manually hoisting the massive sails.

“The most important feedback we got from the last race was that there was a gap between the J1 and the masthead zero,” said North Sails designer Gautier Sergent, a Volvo Ocean Race expert.

“Between ten and 15 knots of wind the crews were forever changing sails as they looked for the best configuration. We wanted to provide a solution for this gap, so we introduced a new J0 that fits perfectly between the J1 and the masthead 0.

“The teams will still have to stack the J0 but they don’t need to tack or gybe every day when they are sailing offshore, so overall it is a net gain with fewer sail changes.“

North Sails has spent a lot of time comparing recent race data with historic weather routings, using software developed with Great Circle, to guarantee the J0 strikes the perfect balance among the VO65 fleet’s sail inventory.

AkzoNobel training

Targeted for conditions between eight and 15 knots upwind and up range reaching, the bowsprit-set J0 is already proving a useful tool in a much wide range of conditions.

Not only will the Volvo Ocean Race crews now have a new sail to play with but they will also get better use of their existing arsenal.

The masthead code 0 will be much more effective while the fractional code 0, which had a very narrow range in upwind conditions in the 2014-15 race, becomes a dedicated downwind sail.

“The addition of the J0 is better suited to the new race course, which has more of a Southern Ocean routing,” Sergent added. “It also allows the fractional and masthead code zeros to become more efficient and the fractional zero to become more downwind-oriented.”

The current crop of Volvo Ocean Race sailors got their chance to put the new sail through its paces during Leg Zero, the four-stage qualifying series that included the iconic Fastnet offshore race.

Early feedback from the teams has been overwhelmingly positive.

Leg Zero, Departure delivery Sanxenxo to Gosport. Photo by Ugo Fonolla/Volvo Ocean Race. 26July, 2017

“North Sails have done a really good job – they listened to the feedback and developed the J0 for this edition, which is what we need,” said Dongfeng Race Team crewman Daryl Wislang. “Upwind it’s a very versatile sail but it can be used at the wider angles as well. It’s going to get a lot of use.”

Dee Caffari, skipper of Turn the Tide on Plastic, added: “It’s the first time we’ve even seen a J0, and I think it’s my new favorite sail. It’s a really interesting space that it fits into so we’ll have a look at that in more detail. It’s a big change for the sail wardrobe for this edition of the race.”

Leg Zero, two boat training with Dongfeng Race Team and MAPFRE in Sanxenxo, Spain. Photo by Jeremie Lecaudey/Volvo Ocean Race. 31 August, 2017

Pablo Arrarte, watch captain on MAPFRE, said each team must decide how best to use the J0. “It is a critical sail, new for everyone, and we have to test it intensely,” he said. “Each team will make their own conclusions while training about how to use it to their best advantage.”

Just like the rest of North Sails’ Volvo Ocean Race inventory, the cutting-edge J0 is made from its unique 3Di technology that pushes the boundaries of sail design.

The patented technology, developed for the Volvo Ocean Race, uses tiny pre-impregnated filament tapes to mirror the load-bearing and shape-holding qualities of a rigid aerofoil wing while remaining lightweight and durable.

The Volvo Ocean Race begins in Alicante, Spain, on October 14, with the opening round of the In-Port Race Series before the fleet departs for Lisbon, Portugal, on the first of 11 offshore legs on October 22.

Learn how North Sails 3Di can transform your on-the-water experience, no matter what type of sailing you do: northsails.com/sailing/en/sails/materials

AkzoNobel

The post New Versatile Sail Completes North Sails VOR Inventory appeared first on Cruising World.

The mazu iPad app allows cruisers access to weather, email, text messaging and navigation anywhere in the world at an affordable cost. Mazu can be used for free when connected to the Internet. While offshore, use the mSeries hardware to stay connected whe

For over 60 years, woven polyester sailcloth has been the default choice for cruising sails because it produced structurally durable sails at a low cost. 3Di NORDAC is a revolutionary sail technology which transforms polyest

The new J/121 is a 40’ offshore speedster that can be day-raced or distance-sailed by a crew of five or less. Features include a low drag, efficient hull with high form stability and exceptional balance, a rig, sail and deck plan that simplifies sail hand

Built to the highest standards with striking good looks and innovative features which include a side opening tender garage, large hydraulic swim platform, indoor/outdoor galley, and a wheelhouse with a 360-degree view. The Z55 will satisfy the most discer

Simple, inexpensive device to alert captains to dangerous hydrocarbon accumulations in bilge water. The Hydrocarbon Notifier alarm sounds off (push-button can silence alarm, but stays lit) when a pre-determined amount of oil or fuel is detected in the Oil

The new 45 offers 2 staterooms w/ 2 full heads, a half-up galley and spacious cockpit. Her unique proposition is the functional utility space between the engine room and guest stateroom–reserved for optional accessories such as washer/dryer, gyro stabiliz

The Hinckley Dasher was chosen as both the Best Powerboat Under 35′ and the Green Boat Award winner.

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Headsails are getting smaller on the latest generation of boats as designers, builders and sailors embrace the ease of handling and simplicity provided by large mainsails and smaller foretriangles. Genoas no longer exist on modern racing boats, but the day of the overlapping genoa is also numbered for cruising sailors. They will not be missed!

Roller furling has been standard issue for generations and still the go-to system whenever possible. On sails with overlapping headsails this is typically a medium to large roller furling genoa. For the latest designs this can be a non-overlapping sail that is as large as possible but still fits in the foretriangle.

Having the right sized headsail with the right amount of overlap will make all of the difference when it comes to handling and managing it. Here are the factors you’ll need to consider and some options to meet your needs.

Foretriangle vs Mainsail Size

The larger the mainsail relative to the headsails, the smaller the genoa needs to be. Check the foot length of the mainsail (“E”) versus the base of the foretriangle from mast to stem (“J”). If they are equal, or if E is longer than J, the boat relies more on its mainsail for horsepower and the jibs can be smaller. The latest performance cruising boats have huge mainsails and use non-overlapping jibs as the primary sail. On the other side of the coin, more traditional cruising boats have relatively small mainsails and big “J” dimensions. These are genoa dependent, and will need larger headsails.

“J” vs LP

LP is the shortest distance from clew to luff. It is expressed as a percentage of “J” (150% LP = 1.5 x J). It does not relate directly to area, but is a measure of overlap. For a given percentage of overlap, you get a much bigger sail on a boat with a long J dimension. (See Figure 1 below.)

Crew & Conditions

The make-up of your crew and your normal conditions aren’t part of your boat measurements, per se, but they are important factors to keep in mind as you make an optimized sail plan. The larger, stronger and more experienced your normal sailing companions are, the bigger the sail you can manage. Power winches can assist in sail handling as well.

When considering what size headsail will be best for your boat, factor in the average wind speeds for the region in which you will sail most frequently.

Performance

Going larger (say from a 135% to a 150%) is usually only a benefit in under eight to ten knots of breeze. Additional LP is a liability in more breeze. It is also only of marginal, if any, benefit while reaching and running. With sheets eased, most of the back end of a genoa is turned back into the boat. A higher clew is actually the biggest help when reaching because it keeps the sheeting angle consistent so you don’t lose the top of the sail.

Furling Ability

Genoas for roller furling are usually sold on the premise that they can be used partly furled. This is true from a structural standpoint if allowances are made in the initial construction. Shape deteriorates with the amount of sail furled. Most sailmakers will quote reasonably effective reduction of up to 30% of the original LP. Beyond this, you have a triangle but not much of an airfoil. When sailing off-the-wind this probably isn’t that important, but it is if you want to go upwind.

The bottom line is that handling and versatility considerations suggest keeping the genoa as small as possible. Build only enough size to maintain the ability to drive the boat reasonably well in light to moderate conditions. The more easily the boat drives, and the larger the mainsail relative to the headsail, the smaller the LP can be.

The Working Jib

Now that we’ve looked at all the factors needed to make an informed decision on headsail size, let’s look at the working jib.

For serious offshore work, a smaller, second headsail is required. The second headsail should be a heavy working jib, with an LP between 85% and 100%. In more than 15 to 18 knots of breeze, depending on the same performance versus foretriangle size considerations which applied to the genoa, this will become the sail you will need.

If the boat were staying strictly in a light air area, it would be the sail of choice in the spring and fall, or whenever windy conditions were anticipated and could be used on the primary roller furling system. However, the difficulty of changing sails on a furling system should be recognized.

For sailing offshore, building this sail for use on an inner forestay installed separately with some type of quick release mechanism should be considered. The stay should be located well forward (unlike the classic cutter layout which puts the stay 40% of J aft), so that the working jib size does not get too small. It needs to remain large enough to be useful. In light air and constricted water, the inner forestay could be secured at the mast most of the time. This setup would allow the sail to be hanked on and ready to go when sailing offshore, and would avoid the somewhat messy change from big sail to little sail on the furling system. Roll the big sail up, attach a halyard, and hoist. The genoa could still be designed to allow for partial furling, but there is no substitute for having a purpose-built small sail for the job. Having the small jib will also protect and extend the life of the genoa, and provide needed insurance against complete sail failure when far from home. Offshore, the working jib is likely to be the correct sail a large percentage of the time. The other beauty of a separate inner forestay is that it is the perfect place to hank on a true storm jib.

The other possibility to consider would be to use a second conventional furling system on the inner forestay for the small jib. This is more of a true offshore configuration because the system will make it impossible to make the inner forestay easily removable. Tacking around the stay is the problem. However, for pure, never-go-up-on-the-foredeck ease, this setup cannot be beat.

There is a third alternative; however: the structural furler. This is a relatively recent development that is now standard issue on Super Yachts and on high performance multihulls and single-handed racing boats. Instead of a permanent stay or a wire stay that connects when needed, the system uses a hi-modulus (aramid or PBO) super rigid torsional rope inside the luff of the sail. The furling system is a free flying top-down or bottom-up model that attaches to the torsional rope. On big cruising boats the sail is hoisted up and locked off and then tensioned from the bottom (usually with a hydraulic ram) to get enough stay tension. You don’t want sag in an inner forestay designed for a heavy air sail. Usually this also requires running backstays to help keep the mast straight and the stay tight. This is not a system you would try to hoist into place in breezy conditions. This should be set up at the dock in light air before heading out on a long passage. All of this, of course, comes at a price and really requires the boat to be designed around the system from the outset.

Be sure to include your sailmaker anytime you look into optimizing your sail plan. Even if the result isn’t incorporating a new sail, having a better understanding of how your sails work together and which one to use when is invaluable. You might also be surprised to find an extra furler or some additional hardware could make all the difference in handling your headsail!

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This cruising tip was brought to you by Quantum Sails.

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