Furling Solent vs Gale Sail

[nfbr]

Large cat. Solent is a flat heavy dacron sail on a self tacking track.

I also have a storm jib, 1/3 the area of the solent.

(Genoa is 130%, Assymetric is bigger)

To fly the storm jib I need to pull down the heavy, big solent. ~450sqft

I'm debating having the storm jib modified by ATN so I can slide it over, or, just part furling the solent. It's a pretty flat sail (not orange though)

Any comments on cats - furled heavy flat solent vs storm jib? (Inner forestay is not a practical option)

Thanks
Paul

[fxykty]

It depends on your standard configuration: you mention both a self-tacking solent (-95%?) and a 130% genoa. Presumably you can use either as your primary furling sail - you would just need to decide ahead of time. Any furling sail with proper luff padding can be used efficiently up to 20% furled and adequately but not great with 50% furled. More than that and there’s too much drag for any upwind sailing. Just pick the primary furling sail for the area and conditions that you will be sailing.

For the storm jib you have two options - modifying the luff to create a sleeve that goes over the furled regular sail, or flying it using a tensioned halyard as the forestay (this can be done immediately behind the furled sail and use the fitting on the top of the furling drum to attach the tack pennant of the storm jib). However, you would need a 2:1 halyard to provide proper tension. The sleeve over top is easier to use and you can use a 1:1 spinnaker halyard to hoist it. You don’t need to use ATN to do the modification; any sailmaker will be able to do it.

Especially if you use the self tacking solent your use of a storm jib will hopefully be very rare. We have friends with a 40’ Hanse monohull and they used their sleeved storm jib a few times on a recent passage from Fiji to NZ. They found that you have to lead the sheets from the solent clew down below the sleeve so that it slides over the furl - it wouldn’t slide up over the sheets when wound around the sail. Their sailmaker added Velcro to the clew to help hold it in place while getting the storm jib up or down.

Whatever you do, don’t make a plan that depends on dropping your primary furled sail to replace it with a storm jib on your furling forestay.

FYI and for context, on our 55’ cat we have a notional inner forestay about 50cm behind our primary forestay. The tack fitting is supported by stays to the hulls and the two sails, a staysail and a storm jib, use the same bottom furler and top swivel. The halyard is 2:1 and a 53 ratio winch provides the required tension (up to 4t working load, so about 1.5t winch load and 2t clutch load). They both use the same self-tacking sheet system as the jib. The staysail has a structured luff and 4m anti-torque cable at the top so that the exposed 2:1 halyard is very short. The storm jib is sleeved and lashed top and bottom to a full length anti-torque cable.

[arsenelupiga]

our standard forestay can sail with furled sail up to ~ 42 kn app upwind. After that forestay starts dancing and forget progress. It is not common for us to get in this situation so not much experience but if/when it happens next time, say exiting windy anchorage, would choose 2 or 3rd reef main. simpler to tack and more stable.