A complete shorthand sail inventory

After underwater race finish (part 1 part 2 and part 3) in 2019, the one priority in 2020 is to try out a new and complete shorthand sail inventory. It consists of mainsail, medium jib, heavy jib, light, all-purpose and heavy spinnakers.

As main and medium/heavy jib gave up on the last sailing of the previous season, they where ordered and we started off with a new mainsail, a new medium jib from the UK Sails Gothenburg loft.

They are both Carbon X-Drive with a taffeta on the port side, which although increases a little the overall weight, provides additional support and protection to sails that are sailed single and shorthanded, inshore and offshore.

Mainsail

The main sail has 2 reefs. As we use single line reefs, I asked the sail-maker to sew low friction rings on both leech and luff, 1st reef on port and 2nd reef on starboard. The 1st reef is a 25% reduction and the 2nd is 50%.

Medium jib

The medium jib has 3 vertical battens, it rolls very well, it has a lot of form at the bottom and works really well up to 18kn. The sweet spot for the sheeting angle is at 9 degrees, which means that although the sheets go to the genoa cars, they need inhaulers to trim in just above the coachroof as a standard setting. It is however possible to sheet in to about 8 degrees in some conditions. The combo of genoa car and inhauler gives us a pretty good 3d trim configuration.

All-purpose spinnaker

The existing spinnaker was an All-Purpose sewn by Hamel Sails in 0.9oz nylon. It has a very wide range of TWA and TWS. The sail is in pretty good conditions, it has a little smaller shoulders, which makes it more versatile and forgiving, which is often required when sailing shorthanded, in larger seas or with the autopilot on.

It was a good and simple set of sails, however, guided by Albotross Segel sailmaker loft, we identified some large improvement areas.

Heavy jib

The 2 reefs made it possible to sail in heavier winds, but not effectively as we miss hiking weight in gusts or higher TWS, and we were underpowered in lulls. The answer was a heavy jib that is effective already at 20kn wind. A reef in the existing jib was an alternative, probably easier to set, however we did not want to lose out on the benefits of a furling jib. The new heavy jib is laminated and very heavy duty and can be raised on the profile or threaded through with ropes or soft shackles in case of emergency. The sail is very effective and, in spite of the hull form and lack of hiking crew, we can reach target speed to windward and sail up to 22kn with no reefs.

Sail changes with vertical battens was however a nightmare, not really practical, even less shorthanded. I have then asked the sailmaker to sew additional horizontal batten pockets in the medium jib. However as we are sailing with profile, we liked the possibility to roll in and out the headsail when flying a spinnaker; I then asked that the horizontal pockets would be shorter and for furling battens. This made sail changes much easier, if not, simply possible.

We are a little underpowered to windward in very light air, however, an overlapping genoa would give us a quite high penalty in the handicap system we sail most. To overcome such penalty we would need extremely fast headsail change to exploit those small ranges where a larger genoa pays off. Sailing shorthanded, we decided not to have any additional headsails (at least as long as we sail with a profile – it may be different with a simple forestay). A code 0 or flying J0 would both overpower us very quickly and give us a great penalty as well.

Light spinnaker

The AP spinnaker has a great range, however we found that it does not fly well in very light air where we want the boat to keep moving. We also found that this is a quite common scenario in night and evening races which we participate in. We added a light air VMG spinnaker in 0.5oz nylon and a little rounder than common VMG spinnaker to be able to sail a little deeper inshore, sewn by Albatros Segel. It is a fantastic sail and it allow us to move faster and deeper than the standard polar shows in very light air. One negative remark is that the reinforcement on the clews and head are a little too wide and stiff, which makes it harder to pack on the fly and it has sometimes struggled to come down as the head got stuck over the forestay. Problem solved, by releasing the halyard 10cm before dousing.

Heavy spinnaker

As we put time on the water and gained confidence we found that we were missing flying a spinnaker over 20kn, both single and shorthanded and our AP would probably rip over that wind speed. I then purchased a second-hand heavy reacher from Hyde Sails in 2.2oz nylon which allows us to sail a spinnaker over 20kn and at lower TWS, with a higher TWA, in fact so high, that at very low TWS it eats up some of the range that we would cover with an overlapping genoa.

As we are only 2 onboard, we do not peel our spinnakers, but perform a takedown-up sequence instead that we can perform within 2 minutes. To avoid complications with too much rope in the cockpit we only have a set of guys, light enough for the light air spi and strong enough for the heavy reacher. We were also unsatisfied with the tylaska shackles on the guys and chopped off the guys ends and just tie a bowtie following the principle Keep-It-Simple.

We feel that we can now sail the boat in most wind conditions, shorthanded and effectively.

If I were to go back and change something to the inventory, I would trow away the headsail profile and furler and order only one jib with hooks and a reef. Perhaps something that will happen …