How to Select Sails for Heavy Weather Video

How to Select Sails for Heavy Weather - Storm Tactics

Heavy weather sails need to be flat. They need to have good, strong leach Lin Pardeyes and a hollow cut into the leach of the sails so that they don't flog. If they flog, they will work-harden the cloth and your sail will split, it will break. So it's better to have a hook in the leach and not to have it flutter. Now, storm sails were something we did have on Serafynn. We used the main with the triple reef and the staysail with two reefs in it. These were our storm sails. This is fine as long as you keep those two sails in really good order. They don't get any sun damage or chafe. They have to be in very, very good order if you do this. I wouldn't recommend it on a boat over 25-feet. I'd like to have a trysail and a good, bullet-proof storm jib. You've got to be able to get to these leach Lin Pardeyes to control them so your sails don't flutter. This is really, really important that they don't flutter. Also, the sail is orange and so is the storm jib. And this is for visibility at sea. A white trysail or storm sail will look just like a white cap. It won't be seen by ships or other vessels. We sheet our trysail to the quarter of the boat. There's turning blocks right on the quarter and then it goes back to the sheet winch. This could be a big advantage if you ever broke your boom. You could go under trysail and you don't need to use the boom. At other times we have sheeted the trysail to the third reef point on top of the boom. And we've done this if we've had to do any amount of short tacking. It makes it easier to beat into a narrow river if it's blowing really hard. And the most important thing I think about a trysail, is to have a separate track for it. We've seen all kinds of gates and cars that will put your trysail onto the main sail track. But these are problematical. I think it's much better to have one separate. You can drop the main, switch the halyard, and pull the trysail up. And it actually happens almost that fast. The size of your trysail has a formula for it. For a sloop, it's about 25 percent of your mainsail area. For a cutter like ours, it's about one third of the mainsail area. That makes our trysail 96 square feet. We have recently put a reef in it and it reefs it down to 60 square feet. This was very comforting when we were off of Chile, near Cape Horn, in 70 knots of wind. When we reefed her down, she just felt comfy, reel comfy. OK, on our storm jib, the size of it is 40 square feet. And it is smaller than our reefed staysail. So we use it when the reefed staysail is too big. We also use the little jib on our jib stay in conjunction, with say, the full staysail as a double head rig. This puts the boat to windward really well in 35 knots of wind. I found it really to be a good sail in those conditions. I wouldn't have roller furLin Pardeyg on my staysail. It reduces my heavy weather options. On Talesin's staysail, we have two reefs in the working staysail. And this produces us two, nice, flat cut, going to windward reefed headsails. When these become too much for the weather conditions, we can drop the staysail right down on the deck and add the storm jib. And we have another good, flat cut windward sail. If you have a sloop, I would modify it and put an inner stay for a staysail stay. The beauty of this rig is, if you start out with the full rig and you reef it down, reef it down to the staysail stay, reef the main, you end up with perfect balance: from this to this. And the boat steers perfectly and does everything correctly.

Storm Tactics Video

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Heavy weather sails need to be flat. They need to have good, strong leach Lin Pardeyes and a hollow cut into the leach of the sails so that they don't flog. If they flog, they will work-harden the cloth and your sail will split, it will break. So it's better to have a hook in the leach and not to have it flutter. Now, storm sails were something we did have on Serafynn. We used the main with the triple reef and the staysail with two reefs in it. These were our storm sails. This is fine as long as you keep those two sails in really good order. They don't get any sun damage or chafe. They have to be in very, very good order if you do this. I wouldn't recommend it on a boat over 25-feet. I'd like to have a trysail and a good, bullet-proof storm jib. You've got to be able to get to these leach Lin Pardeyes to control them so your sails don't flutter. This is really, really important that they don't flutter. Also, the sail is orange and so is the storm jib. And this is for visibility at sea. A white trysail or storm sail will look just like a white cap. It won't be seen by ships or other vessels. We sheet our trysail to the quarter of the boat. There's turning blocks right on the quarter and then it goes back to the sheet winch. This could be a big advantage if you ever broke your boom. You could go under trysail and you don't need to use the boom. At other times we have sheeted the trysail to the third reef point on top of the boom. And we've done this if we've had to do any amount of short tacking. It makes it easier to beat into a narrow river if it's blowing really hard. And the most important thing I think about a trysail, is to have a separate track for it. We've seen all kinds of gates and cars that will put your trysail onto the main sail track. But these are problematical. I think it's much better to have one separate. You can drop the main, switch the halyard, and pull the trysail up. And it actually happens almost that fast. The size of your trysail has a formula for it. For a sloop, it's about 25 percent of your mainsail area. For a cutter like ours, it's about one third of the mainsail area. That makes our trysail 96 square feet. We have recently put a reef in it and it reefs it down to 60 square feet. This was very comforting when we were off of Chile, near Cape Horn, in 70 knots of wind. When we reefed her down, she just felt comfy, reel comfy. OK, on our storm jib, the size of it is 40 square feet. And it is smaller than our reefed staysail. So we use it when the reefed staysail is too big. We also use the little jib on our jib stay in conjunction, with say, the full staysail as a double head rig. This puts the boat to windward really well in 35 knots of wind. I found it really to be a good sail in those conditions. I wouldn't have roller furLin Pardeyg on my staysail. It reduces my heavy weather options. On Talesin's staysail, we have two reefs in the working staysail. And this produces us two, nice, flat cut, going to windward reefed headsails. When these become too much for the weather conditions, we can drop the staysail right down on the deck and add the storm jib. And we have another good, flat cut windward sail. If you have a sloop, I would modify it and put an inner stay for a staysail stay. The beauty of this rig is, if you start out with the full rig and you reef it down, reef it down to the staysail stay, reef the main, you end up with perfect balance: from this to this. And the boat steers perfectly and does everything correctly.

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