I have been sailing many years, owned several boats from my old Lightning to my present Pasage 450 by Hunter. But I have never had a staysail before or sailed one! My P-450 has the adjustable stay so it can be stowed if not in use. I realize I should have acquired this knowledge somewhere along the line, but I never did. My question is: When do you use the staysail? What's it's advantage? Can a staysail also be used in lieu of the genoa in heavy weather as a storm sail? Thanks for your kindness in not remarking ( At least to the forum )about those who send in really dumb questions.
When?
- Thread starter Critter
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Not a dumb question - no such thing
Boats that are rigged with a staysail usually have smaller jibs (100% or 110%). The advantage is that when you tack you don't have a huge jib to grind in to place. You do sometimes have to walk the jib out and around the staysail rigging. Using a staysail in heavy weather will balance the sail plan much better than a roller reefed headsail. The position of effort of the stay sail is matched better against the reefed main than if you had your head sail reefed because both the staysail and main fly near the mast. If you have to head sails it allows more options. If you blew out a sail, you still have another flying. We have the 426 and with the 110% jib it would be nice to have a staysail, but we are not currently rigged for one. I don't think our cabin deck would support the bottom end of the stay.
Boats that are rigged with a staysail usually have smaller jibs (100% or 110%). The advantage is that when you tack you don't have a huge jib to grind in to place. You do sometimes have to walk the jib out and around the staysail rigging. Using a staysail in heavy weather will balance the sail plan much better than a roller reefed headsail. The position of effort of the stay sail is matched better against the reefed main than if you had your head sail reefed because both the staysail and main fly near the mast. If you have to head sails it allows more options. If you blew out a sail, you still have another flying. We have the 426 and with the 110% jib it would be nice to have a staysail, but we are not currently rigged for one. I don't think our cabin deck would support the bottom end of the stay.
Critter: Steve A has it right on both points (the stay sail) and especially his heading "no such thing as a dumb question" but there are a lot of dumb answers and I try to be very careful with my answers. Part of my problem, when I got back into sailing many years ago, was trying to figure out the correct question to ask because "a man does not know what he doesn't know". The answers I would get, with hindsight, were unbelievable but I did not know any better - until I went out sailing and tried them on my boat and I found that most didn't work. To illustrate, try this with your sailing friends. Ask them to describe draft depth and draft position and then ask them what controls are used to adjust each element (review my articles on both items before you ask the question). You probably won't get past the first section of the question and they'll be describing twist plus everything else you could imagine or ask them to explain the function of the traveler and the outhaul. Every sailor and I mean EVERY sailor goes through the same learning sequence and the questions they ask are the same - they just ask them differently. I talk to sailors all over the world about sail trim in conjunction with my sail trim book and chart and I think I have heard every question about sail trim that anyone could think of. Sooo, just fire away. On a lot of the questions, I think to myself, I should have thought of that question!!
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