The 705 sq ft. main, is the workhorse of the sail inventory. We do not carry a storm trysail as I felt it added complexity at a time when I would already be very busy. Instead the main has three reefs, the third reef leaving about the same sail area (35%) as is specified for a trysail by the Offshore Racing Council. The main is reefed by old school slab reefing and further controlled by a hydraulic vang and hydraulic outhaul.
The jib is slightly smaller than the main and set on a furler. The staysail is set on a removable kevlar inner forestay with soft hanks. The spinnaker is 1,800 sq ft, the smallest the sailmaker would agree to build and down 33% from his original proposal of 2,700 sq ft. The spinnaker will be set on a Bamar Rollgen spinnaker furler, but we have had plenty of wind so it has never been out of the bag; I expect it will come out of the bag when we turn west.
See Cockpit & Deck Plan for more details on sail handling.
The sails were all built by Maine Sailing Partners. The main and jib are both Hydranet Radial 433 from Dimension-Polyant, a woven material of polyester and Dyneema. The staysail is 11oz Dacron and the spinnaker is Airx 900 from Bainbridge.
Thus far we have done 90% of our sailing with just the main and jib and we’d be happy to see the staysail stay in the bag!
Since the jib is slightly smaller than the main, but tacks to a much lower point than the main, we have a fractional rig to produce a jib that could be controlled and useable off the wind. With a masthead rig the jib would have been even taller and the top sections of the sail very, very narrow for a boat that plans do to a lot of sailing off the wind.
From a safety perspective, the hard dodger governed the minimum height of the boom above the cockpit sole and the result was that the boom could not possibly strike any crew member less than 7’ tall.
From a performance perspective, a higher aspect ratio sail plan (i.e., vertical / horizontal dimensions) is more efficient for upwind sailing and not a significant detriment to down wind sailing. One result of a higher aspect ratio sail plan is that the boom is shorter. In our case the boom barely extends past the end of the hard dodger. This again contributed to safety since when steering or adjusting the sails we are always aft of the end of the boom. A higher aspect sail plan resulted in better safety, visibility and performance.
Chuck Paine’s challenge was to balance the sail plan with the righting moment of the boat (i.e., its desire to stay upright or resist heeling). This is where many factors interact. The higher the aspect ratio of the sail plan, the higher the center of effort of the sails and the greater heeling force they generate. The taller sail plan also results in a taller mast and the increased weight of the mast, rigging and spreaders then contribute further to the heeling force. These heeling forces can be offset by either a deeper keel or a heavier keel. But a heavier keel will result in a heavier boat overall which then requires more sail area to move the boat through the water (like a heavier car needs a bigger engine), which in turn creates more heeling forces necessitating a heavier or deeper keel, etc., etc. A heavier keel means the boat sits deeper in the water which changes how the hull should be shaped. Racing boats solve this problem with a deeper keel, but as discussed earlier that introduces other benefits and problems. I could go on and on, but suffice to say there is where Chuck’s design expertise and experience is really critical. He must balance all of these tradeoffs to achieve the best possible performance, adjusting the sail plan and keel design to balance all the relevant forces. He did a great job!
However, the rig is perhaps the area where the design details are most in the hands of the supplier. Chuck freely admitted that with a carbon fiber rig he had no specific knowledge of the mast and boom sections, or their final weight. These are the closely guarded secrets of the mast builders and complicate Chuck’s design problem. We put the initial spar out to bid with three spar builders and then selected Offshore Spars. They were absolutely fantastic to work with both before and after delivery of the rig. They continue to provide outstanding support and I can recommend them without hesitation.
There were two areas of the rig design where I did have specific input. The first was on the angle of the spreaders. Swept back spreaders provide additional support for the mast, but limit the degree to which the boom can be eased when sailing downwind; another performance or safety trade off. We decided the increased mast safety was a significant benefit and compromised on 16 degrees of sweep.
One side effect of the outboard shrouds is that the D1 (lowest diagonal shroud) cuts across the side deck. After a week of bumping my head on the D1 of a bareboat charter boat in Croatia I came back and specified that the D1 would terminate inboard, but continue to terminate the vertical shrouds outboard. Offshore Spars then advised me that we would need three spreaders due to the narrower base of the D1, but the three spreader rig would be lighter than the two spreader rig. So I didn’t have to worry about bumping my head and we reduced the weight of the mast; a twofer.
A few more details: The backstay was split to provide unencumbered access to the cockpit from the swim platform. The inner forestay and running backstays are all Kevlar. A carbon fiber spinnaker pole is stored on the mast. Additional details are in the final proposal from Offshore Spars.