Issue 14: Sept/Oct 2000
Sail shape isn’t as important to me as it is to my sailing partner, technical editor, co-conspirator, and husband. He’s a consummate sailor, one who honed his skills in the one-design fleets where a tug on this or a loosening of that made all the difference in a fraction of a knot and the results of a race.
I’m happy just to get from point to point . . . under sail . . . quietly . . . safely . . . comfortably. Sometimes we get there too slowly for my tastes. Sometimes we get there a bit too fast and with a tad too much incline as indicated by occasional crashing noises below in the cabin. I prefer flatter and more serene and am often (but not always) the first to advocate reefs or smaller headsails.
But the careful sail tweaking that Jerry does? Or that last wrenching yank on the halyard, the Cunningham, or the sheet to get things as perfect as possible? I appreciate these efforts, but I am a bit too lax to keep after the trim with such vigilance, or the tension with such force.
Why then would I be in favor of hanked-on headsails? They demand a lot of work. Where we sail, in and among islands, the winds are never steady enough to allow us to have the same sail up for long. They take up an inordinate amount of room whether they’re stored on deck, in the V-berth, or in a cockpit lazarette. We’ve tried all these storage “solutions” and are currently in the “bags-on-deck mode.” They create more windage on deck. They cost more. They must be more expensive, if only by virtue of their numbers. We have three “everyday sails,” all of which replace one roller furling sail. And we have two storm jibs. We don’t own a spinnaker. We played with those much too often in high-pressure situations in the one-design fleets.
Wouldn’t it be easier, faster, cheaper, and more convenient to have a roller furler, especially since proper sail shape is a bit too esoteric a science for me? Not at all. The beauty of bags on deck is clear in the photo here. You can’t lounge in comfort on your roller-furling jib, now can you?
* Er, no, I wasn’t referring to the editor as the “bag on deck.”
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