450 Stay sail - Some tricks
I have a 450 with a factory installed mid-deck stay as well. We purchased a used 110 jib from a San Juan 28. It works great now but!!! First we had to find a two new blocks to fit on the rail. Second we had to work out the sheet arrangement (through the two inner stays). Finally, although we have two sets of winches we found that we like to sheet in on the larger winch because we use this sail in storm conditions, so we had to figure out an arrangement to get the jib sheets out of the way. We actually hang our jib sheets up under our dodger, which works very well. We used this sail for most of our sail down the west coast last year. It is large enough to deliver good power in 15-18 knots close hauled in a lumpy sea way. We actually find that we can point higher with this sail and will tend to use it under these conditions even when the normal jib would work fine. However, the big benefit came in running down wind. We used the stay sail exclusively for 2.5 days running in winds from 30 to 40 knots with gusts in the low 40s. The seas were in the 15 to 20 foot range. The sail was large enough to deliver enough power to keep us moving at 5.5 to 9.0 knots but under powered enough that the autopilot could handle the conditions. In fact once we got use to the seaway, it was one of the better parts of the trip. The stay sail has a long (2 ft) tape on the foot. So the sail is off the deck. This allows to store a diny on the deck. All in all it is one of our favorite sails.
