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I'm looking for trim observations on the boomed staysail. I know some have removed the boom.
With the boom from the standard rigging configuration, trim is different, a single control line and it's self adjusting. Info on trimming for cutters in conjunction with the jib is a bit obscure and there seems to be dissent regarding the usefulness of a staysail in general, or especially with different sized jibs.
One reference is SAIL's "The Best of Sail Trim"
which has excerpts at http://books.google.co.uk/book.....MeEL0Pts0C
Trim of course is specific to our line of DE's, so it is a good discussion to have here.
I've yet to find the pivot point when staysail is up and also have yet to experiment with boom angle. With jib down and staysail up, control is very simple with the consideration of lack of pointing ability.
Can anyone lend some opinions or observations on performance of the staysail at various points? Or preferred times to raise or lower the staysail.
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As far as I'm concerned on a DE38 the staysail is the secret weapon of sail power. To me the staysail is sort of the turbo charger of the sail system. With just the jib and main up the boat handles and sails ok. If you put the stay sail up she just comes to life. The boat is stiff enough that if we are pushing just a little we don't reef till 22 to 24 knots of wind. I'm sure we could push it a bit farther but I haven't.
As far as trim I wish I could give you specifics, but I just sort of play with it till if feels right..ie the boat comes alive and and then just sail.. We have about a 150% jib.. I find the staysail improves performance for it all the way out to rolled up to about 100%. You have to make sure you maintain a slot between the jib and the stay sail. If you close off that slot performance suffers.
I have the stock boom on the boat and other than the staysail sheet you only have two other controls for the sail. An outhaul to tighten or loosen the foot and the halyard to tighten or loosen the luff. In light winds we tend to let them out and get as much belly into it as possible and in stronger winds tighten it up. I think we have some reefing points in the staysail also but we have never used them.
Reefing tends to start with the jib for us. Rolling some if it up and then the main. Finally we will take the jib in totallly after the second reef in the main and we will sail on two reefs in the main and the staysail. I have never sailed her in winds strong enough to go below that and to be honest we could probably have only reefed to the first reef in the main. When it gets rough out I tend to de-power more than necessary just to make life easier on myself and the crew.
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I love my staysail! The magic of a cutter design. I had a double headed gaff ketch, back in the eighties, that was hard to trim when going to weather but after lots of experimentation I found the sweet spot and she would come alive as if we had turned on the nitrous. Well... you know. Relatively faster,ok?
I think part of the key, most of it actually, are the sails. It really helps if they fit together. Designed with each in mind. When I first got my DE32, all it had, was a 150-ish jib on a roller and a main which was threatening to blow out when I needed it most. I first tried to use a strange assortment of small headsails from smaller boats, which I try to sell at swap meets, as a staysail. They kinda worked, but there was always some conflict on some point of sail with very little, if any speed gain. I had to get this boat moving. Badly trimmed Westsails were showing me their transoms.
I had to do it. I sold everything and anything, (Who needs kids anyway?) and went to my local sailmaker. I still have a balance due but I do have a new main, full batten, three reefs. A new staysail with a reef point. A new 130 yankee with a high clew on the roller furler and a asymmetrical spinnaker. What a difference it makes when it is all designed together. Yes, it cost a bundle but, to me, it's the most important part of a sailboat.
Now the staysail really works. It's powerful enough to drive, with the main, to short tack around the harbor and with the high clew yankee it really gives her a bone to chew on and looks great doing it. The staysail was designed for two separate sheets which is still a handful when single handing but I have just set up a single line setup to allow for self-tacking. I have not tried it as yet but I'm planing on going out any day now. I'm just waiting for a weather window to coincide with all my live aboard crap being put away.
Back to the staysail... learn to use it. I think it's one of the most useful sails on our boats. If you have problems with trim, talk to a sailmaker. There could be a solution with just some simple changes without selling the farm. It's nice to own a Cutter. I love mine.
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Forgot to mention that I am not using a boom for the staysail, mainly because I did not have one but after talking to the sailmaker, we decided we could get a better overall shape combination without it. I do not have enough sea miles on this set up to say one way or the other on the speed but I believe it is safer without the boom.
That scraper is calling my name so I'd better go for now.
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A rigger recommended a staysail setup as follows:
. get rid of the staysail boom
. make the staysail stay (i.e. the smaller forestay stay) detachable. When not using the staysail, the stay is hooked somewhere near the mast for ease of rigging. When in use, it attaches to the normal staysail stay termination. This allows tacking with the jib and not getting caught on the staysail's stay.
. rig the staysail sheets so there is still only one control line. (Not sure of his solution, though he said it is straightforward to do, to keep the easy-trim aspect of the boomed staysail setup)
I haven't done this, no plans to rig such a setup yet. It seems I have not yet found a rigger who strongly recommends keeping the staysail boom even though I would guess the boom allows for finer control.
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I have thought about doing that but have wondered how losing the boom would affect sail trim. Valkyr's staysail performs so well as is that its scary to mess with it. I am planing going to roller furling on the staysail also and the boom helps with rigging an outhaul.
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In the interest of resurrecting old posts...any updates on this?
We are talking about our sail formation and that boom on the staysail is just a bummer...totally clutters the deck. Since we're working on the decks now, it's a constant subject of conversation. 🙂 We replaced the halyards and aren't going to change much else until next year but keep thinking how clean all the lines would look if the stay was roller furling.
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I got rid of the boom years ago and have been happy with the results. I added tracks and winches to each side of the cabin top. The biggest advantage for me is the foredeck space. I store my dinghy up there when on passage. It also allows you to open the forward hatch and to walk around the deck. As an added bonus, leaving the staysail sheeted in while tacking helps guide the jib through the slot. Once you get the jib across and sheeted in, then you tack the staysail around.
I've got the stock DE32 staysail design. I find that I only fly the staysail when close to beam reaching in 8-12 knots or when wind pipes up over 30 knots and I've got the jib rolled up. I've been thinking for years about getting an overlapping staysail. Once you lose the boom and have tracks far enough aft, there's no reason not to go with a bigger sail. I think that I'd use it more if it had a bit more punch to it. I also think that I'd use it more if I had it on a furler as well.
Jason
DE32 Bodhran
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That's interesting that it's not a go to sail for you. We find that using it with the jib on our 38 give a very perceptible performance increase. We equate it to the turbo charger of the boat. I also really like the self tacking feature of the stock setup. I can see the performance advantages in sail trim for having tracks and port and starboard sheets on it but the days we have put the jib up and just used the stay sail and main... even in light winds... we have really loved it. The only person doing anything but laying around is the guy at the helm. One day we tacked into the cape fear inlet and up the cape fear river.. with the wind on the nose and about 2 knots of current against us we only were making about 1 knot of way over ground but it was just relaxing. Nothing touched but the wheel for a couple hours to tack back and forth up the river. In lighter winds dead downwind we do drop it as it messes with the jib unless we pole them out.. Pole the jib out and put a preventer on the stay sail and it is great wing and wing.
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Scott Carle said:
That's interesting that it's not a go to sail for you. We find that using it with the jib on our 38 give a very perceptible performance increase. We equate it to the turbo charger of the boat. I also really like the self tacking feature of the stock setup. I can see the performance advantages in sail trim for having tracks and port and starboard sheets on it but the days we have put the jib up and just used the stay sail and main... even in light winds... we have really loved it. The only person doing anything but laying around is the guy at the helm. One day we tacked into the cape fear inlet and up the cape fear river.. with the wind on the nose and about 2 knots of current against us we only were making about 1 knot of way over ground but it was just relaxing. Nothing touched but the wheel for a couple hours to tack back and forth up the river. In lighter winds dead downwind we do drop it as it messes with the jib unless we pole them out.. Pole the jib out and put a preventer on the stay sail and it is great wing and wing.
It's stuck what you have said before about liking the performance of the staysail, Scott. Losing the self tending is one of the reasons I'm hesitating. Since it will usually just be two of us sailing, the self-tending seems like a HUGE bonus. Travis (who apparently does read the forums occasionally, I better watch what I say) brought that to my attention the other night. "I read online somewhere that one DE 38 owner said the staysail was really like a turbo charger for performance...maybe we need to think about leaving it..." I giggled because I knew EXACTLY where he had read that...I guess the WWW is a small place. I just love the clean look of having both on a roller furling, my thoughts are that it's a great spot for the dinghy as well. We aren't changing anything until the end of sailing season next year, til we have a chance to get out and use it and play with it in our lovely Bay winds, 5-25 knots on any given afternoon (in any given hour!) Only replaced the halyards because it was a must.
I wonder, since Jason has the DE 32, if that makes much difference in how he feels the sail configuration is the most efficient?
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There is no reason not to put it on a roller furler and still be self tending. with the boom there it is especially easy to have an out haul for the furler that can tighten the foot of the sail on the boom. I have a friend with a used furler that if it is still in ok condition, we plan on installing it on valkyr for the stay sail. I will attach it to the top of the fitting that the boom is attached to. 🙂 where the standard stay terminates now.
yep… the turbo charger analogy as far as I can remember is all mine. lol…. it really does seem to make a large difference in performance to us. I would at least sail the boat a few times with it as is and test it and see if does for your boat. I am sure that the shape of your jib vs staysail will make a bit of difference also. Different sails on jib and staysail might give different performance results. you can even do away with the boom I believe and just attach the double block on the end of the boom to the tack of the staysail and fly it that way.. I have heard… not done so myself. I think you will lose a lot of control of the shape of the sail though without the boom to tighen the foot on.
Jason's solution gives you back control of sail shape without the boom but loses the self tending aspect and needs tracks and sheets on both sides of the cabin with winches on both also. Without having sailed like that I would hazard he picked up a bit of performance at the lose of a bit of ease of use. Self tending with boom is probably middle of the road performance between his solution and having it without the boom with the current sheeting arrangement. One day I will try it all three ways just to see what I think. I could put a couple snatch blocks on the rails or such to imitate a track for a test and take the boom off.
scott
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Scott Carle said:
Jason's solution gives you back control of sail shape without the boom but loses the self tending aspect and needs tracks and sheets on both sides of the cabin with winches on both also. Without having sailed like that I would hazard he picked up a bit of performance at the lose of a bit of ease of use.
This depends on how often a skipper plans to tack. Can sail from California to Hawaii with only tacking twice. Going up a narrow channel or river though, there might be a tack back & forth every few minutes. With those two ends of the sailing spectrum it comes down to the performance vs. self-tending vs. place being sailed.
I got a couple other DVD's on sail trim though as usual they focus most on spinnaker trim and only touch on stay sail. So still looking for references on how to best trim the staysail with boom, in addition to trying things out. Where's the user manual, lol.
Also has anyone set up lazy jacks or a kind of hanging bib on the boomed stay sail, not sure how that would work, it is an intermediate soution to installing a furler. The sail is tall so there is more folding needed than might be guessed..
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You know it would be fairly simple to set it up to do both. If your crossing the ocean and want to maximize efficiency or racing, then just switch out to tracks with winches on both sides. Or just hook up the standard a frame sheeting arrangement when you think your want a lot of lazy self tacking.
User manual would be this book. I have read it a couple times and learn something new each time as my understanding increases with experience.
Sail Power by Wallace Ross
Sail Power: The Complete Guide to Sails and Sail Handling
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