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Windleblo - Day Eighteen



Trade wind sailing is the perfect time to experiment with different downwind sail plans. On this voyage, we've tried three.

The first is simply reaching as deep downwind as possible on a port tack, then jibing the boat and reaching deep downwind on a starboard tack. The end result is a zigzag downwind course.

The second is a twin headsail arrangement.

Many boats fly two headsails raised on a common forestay furler that has two headsail luff slots. Windleblo is equipped with such a furler, but we choose not to use it based on lessons learned at a pre-ARC downwind sailing seminar.

There, the presenter compared twin headsails to a parachute. The earliest parachutes were solid cloth. As the parachute descended, it filled with air. But the air had nowhere to go once inside the canopy and piled up until finally spilling back out the bottom of the chute, churning the air and causing the parachutist to swing wildly.

Parachute designers came up with a solution. They sewed a relatively small reinforced hole in the center of the chute to allow the air to escape out the top. With this improvement, the descent was smoother and safer.

The same phenomenon occurs with twin headsails. If both are attached to the forestay furler, there is nowhere for the air to go once the sails are filled. As with a descending parachute, the air piles up until it spills haphazardly out the sides of the sails. This causes the boat to roll and yaw, making the ride uncomfortable.

Our answer on Windleblo is to pole out a furler mounted 130% genoa to windward and fly the 100% jib like a gennaker with the tack attached to the bowsprit and the sail raised using a spare halyard. Both sails are controlled by a single sheet running outside the lifelines to a block on the aft quarter rail. The mainsail is completely furled. By flying the two headsails separately, a gap is created between them for air to escape, reducing roll and yaw.

The third downwind sail plan we have used on this voyage is the mainsail in tandem with the 130% genoa poled out to windward. A preventer is required on the boom and, as with the twin headsail arrangement, a whisker pole is held securely in place by a topping lift and two downhaul lines attached near the outboard end of the pole.

Both the dual head sail and wing-on-wing mainsail/genoa plans allow a heading directly downwind, whereas the deep reach & jibe approach, while resulting in higher boat speeds, requires a longer zigzag course downwind.

Of the three sail plans, we have found the wing-on-wing mainsail/poled out genoa to be the most effective. Its virtues include better stability, greater ease of sail handling (reefing, furling, etc.), and higher net boat speed vs. the other two plans. While the dual head sails require fewer lines, and therefore less potential for chafe, we find the performance of the wing-on-wing sail plan outweighs this benefit.

The trade wind sailing on this passage offers a fantastic laboratory for our experimentation with different downwind sailing. We are thoroughly enjoying it.

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