Our new North 3Di staysail arrived on Monday and the guys installed it on Tuesday. Another beautifully made sail from North, these guys really do produce a high quality product, not a single blemish, mark or defect, and it fits exactly on the boat.
New staysail hoisted, tying off the halyard at the mast
Tensioning the luff
Staysail clewboard
We installed a guide on the crossbeam to lead the gennaker furling line back to the winch
The aft end of the gennaker furling line leader (left of the clutches) that positions the line correctly on the winch. The larger clutch is for the gennaker tack line and the two small ones are for the staysail furling line. The gennaker tack line is long enough to allow us to pull the tack over to either of the bows. This lets us run deeper downwind angles using the Code-D or an asymmetric spinnaker.
The only thing left to do now is to rig a tensioner for the slack section of the furling lines to keep them running smoothly when furling and unfurling the sails. We will do that next week, then go for a test sail to make sure everything is working correctly!
Pardon my ignorance, but what is the difference between a staysail and a jib?
Awesome looking Sails Doug, will you do a youtube of the test sail? I’d like to see how your furling winch arrangement will all work.
Hi Mal, yes I’ll shoot video of the test sail for sure. Stay tuned…
Reply To: What’s the difference between a staysail and a jib? That’s a really good question. On Wildling there is no difference between a staysail and a jib. A jib is just a headsail that does not overlap the mast. A staysail is a headsail that is flown on an inner stay (other than the main forestay). On Wildling, we have our genoa on the main forestay (or headstay). It’s a genoa, not a jib, because when fully unfurled it reaches past the mast. We have our self tacking jib on an inner forestay and we have our storm jib on another inner forestay. Both the jibs are staysails. Confused yet? Sailors have adopted a sort of naming convention when referring to all these different sails to make it a bit clearer. So on a boat where the main working jib is on the headstay, it’s called the jib (that’s what we used to have on Wildling) but if you move it to an inner stay, while it’s still a jib, we now call it a staysail, to indicate it’s no longer our main working headsail. The storm jib is always called a storm jib no matter where it’s flown, but many folks call it an ORC which stands for Ocean Racing Congress – The ORC is the international body that drafted rules on the size and shape of storm sails. So on Wilding we have two jibs and a genoa. Or to most people we have a genoa, a staysail and an ORC. And there you have it! Now you know more than you probably every wanted to about headsails 🙂
Looks very good. You are now probably ready to do a Vendee Globe race with all the sails you have. Should make it non stop.
Does the added cover on your tack line end up in the clutch? is the cover performing, does it slip any? We have a problem with our 2-1 main halyard slipping in regular Spinlock clutch and are considering upgrading to the XX Spinlock like you have there
We definitely want to be setup to circumnavigate, but it would be a very slow Vendée Globe!
The gennaker tack line is fully pulled in on the photo and the cover does not enter the clutch. I had a bit of trouble with the main halyard slipping at few times when the lines were new. It would maybe slip by an inch or two. It stopped slipping after a couple of weeks of sailing and we haven’t had any problems with it since.
Doug,
Will the staysail remain permanently rigged the stay? You may have issues tacking your genoa in light air with it still rigged. While rolling the genoa up before tacking may be an option, you will lose a lot of power needed to get the boat through the eye of the wind.
Hi James, yes the staysail is permanently rigged. You are correct about tacking, the genoa needs to be furled to tack or gybe so it doesn’t get damaged. This is unfortunately the downside of multi-headsail setups. With the new electric furling system, switching between the genoa and staysail and back is pretty fast, but it is a hassle nonetheless. If we’re sailing a route where we have to do a lot of frequent tacking and we’re feeling lazy, then we can just switch down to the staysail and not use the genoa.
Hey Doug, love the site. Really appreciate all the learnings you have shared here. Fantastic!!! How’s the headsail project coming along? Have you had a chance to take Wildling out for a test sail in her new vestments. Love to see how those 3Di sails and rigging look and perform under load 🙂