How to fly storm jib w/o 2nd headstay?

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by Auspicious

Sure. When you roll up the headsail the leech and sun cover wrap around the furler in a descending spiral from the head to the clew. Looking top down that's either clockwise or counterclockwise. Wind the spinnaker halyard around the sail in the opposite direction. This helps keep the wind from getting under the sail and causing a tear that precedes all Hell breaking loose. From the clew down the halyard and the sail go the same direction. If that bothers you a few sail ties will do the trick.



Yep. The Gale Sail is slightly lower but just as far forward. I'm not impressed by wrapping the jib sheets around the headsail down to the tack either. Using a piece of jib is no worse and arguably better from a sailing point of view.

BUT...



You're on point. You missed a failure mode with the infinitely adjustable jib: the furling line. Chafe, a failed line stopper, a slipping cleat hitch, ... any one of a number of ways for that line to fail and the entire sail comes rolling out RIGHT NOW. The technical term for that is "bad. Very bad."

As to your other related questions, you do care about geometry in heavy weather to help keep rudder loads down and yaw loads low. Keeping the CE of each individual sail low and longitudinally centered is good practice. Generally you try to depower the sails by flattening them. In principle you want enough lift to maintain forward motion as opposed to all leeway. In practice you can't get the sails flat enough to worry about too flat.

Thanks for the explanations, that all makes sense and it would definitely be bad to deploy the entire jib in 60 knots!

I think my confusion on the sail shape comes from the fact that I'm looking at it from a catamaran perspective where rudder loads aren't nearly as big of a factor as a mono, so I get where you're coming from there as well.

[redneckrob]

Originally Posted by CFS Klopas

The wind generating that extra power in heavy air is also causing drag on the parts of your boat that aren't sails. Efficient generation of lift is also needed. I don't have much experience with this, but I've seen enough stories here of boats unable to make progress to windward in rough conditions or maybe 1-2kts VMG to know it can be difficult.

Auspicious points out that the GaleSail also has a lot of spare cloth on the headstay, but the traditional storm jib is hanked on.

I think the difficulty making progress to windward with 60 knot winds is independent of the power being generated by the sails. I've been on a 110' ship with two 2,250 hp engines in the inaptly named Fairweather Grounds in Alaska in where we abandoned any attempts at going to windward, and it didn't have anything to do with lack of power. I can't even imagine being in that situation in my sailboat, but if I was I would most certainly not be trying to close haul or close reach, and definitely not worrying about my pointing angle! If I was being set on a lee shore and had to make VMG to windward to avoid it I wouldn't be putting up storm jibs, I would be calling my old friends in the Coast Guard and trying to generally aim for the part of the shore that would be the least painful to hit.

[Auspicious]

Originally Posted by redneckrob

If I was being set on a lee shore and had to make VMG to windward to avoid it I wouldn't be putting up storm jibs, I would be calling my old friends in the Coast Guard and trying to generally aim for the part of the shore that would be the least painful to hit.

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