Excerpted from How to Sail Around the World
After trying many sails and lots of sail-handling schemes, I have learned which sails to buy and how to use them quickly and efficiently. I’ve discovered nothing new or startling, but my wife and I have been able to make our sailing easier and keep the yacht going better by the use of slab reefs, roller furling, deck bags, and furling socks.
I’ve tried to sort all this into a reasonable progression – a sort of master plan – so that in the normal wind range (say 0-30 knots), our transition from one sail to another is reasonable and orderly. We want to make the maximum use of each sail for its wind range and to avoid overlaps. We consider the weight of all the sails, their cost, and the room they take up when stored. We know that the seven sails in our inventory (plus two spares for a world-ranging yacht) include some compromises but ensure the following:
- Good performance in strong and light airs, both in and off the wind.
- Ease in dealing with and changing sails, with a minimum of hazardous foredeck work. In particular, there’s no changing down from a large genoa rigged on a forestay furling system when it breezes up.
- Reasonable spares in case of emergency.
We are learning all the time, and when we find something that’s better, we switch to it. Our golden rule is the simpler the better.
Our yacht Whisper is a 35-foot masthead sloop. She has a sail area of 640 square feet, which includes a 100 percent foretriangle of 359 square feet. Like many International Offshore Rule (IOR) boats designed twenty years ago, the boat has a tall and skinny high-aspect mainsail (of 281 sq. ft. for us). The top of her mast is 53 feet above the water. Her designed displacement is 14,148 pounds. My guess is that with all her cruising gear on board (anchors, tools, fastenings, sails, clothing, charts, books, dingies, spare parts, food, liquids, etc.), she would hit the bathroom scales at a real-world weight of 18,000 pounds.
Whisper’s sail inventory consists of seven sails, plus two spares. The sails: mainsail, jib, staysail, storm jib, trysail, gennaker and spinnaker. The spares are an old mainsail and jib.
For more cruising lessons, advice and stories, purchase Hal Roth’s How to Sail Around the World from Practical Sailor.
