Downwind Sail Plans

While most sail plans include the obvious sails such as a mainsail and a jib or genoa, there are other sails to consider! Some of these sails will end up being useless and others more useful than expected.

By far, the most useless sail to invest in is the spinnaker while the most useful sail is the trysail. The spinnaker is a large unruly downwind sail that no one ever flies. It takes a competent crew to set and douse it, and if anything goes awry, it happens quickly and severely. Out of fear or laziness, there is always an excuse not to fly the spinnaker.

Now for the most useful sail: the trysail! This little sail is sold as a storm sail, but it has so much more potential than that. We use our trysail whenever we are sailing downwind, light or heavy airs. The trysail doesn't use the boom, so accidental jibes go from a fear to a nuisance. Being such a small sail, it won't produce sufficient weather helm to bring the boat up into the wind when paired with a well sized headsail, such as a 100% Jib, Genoa, or Drifter. Best of all, the trysail keeps its forces on the boat within the deck.

What I mean here is the trysail is set on the mast and sheeted to the aft toe rail. As you ease the sheets while going downwind, the sail will fill up its belly next to the mast within the spreaders. The clew will simply move forward and not outboard. This means that the Center of Effort (CE) is kept midship and merely moves forward, not out.

A third reefed main is about the same size as a trysail, but set on the boom. As you ease the reefed main, the boom will move the clew very far outboard of the rigging and deck. The result is a long lever arm aft of the mast that is pushing the yacht to weather. This will create a lot of weather helm and may begin to struggle against the headsails lee helm.

When sailing downwind, the last thing you want is weather helm. You want to go downwind, and so should your sails. Instead of spending money on a downwind spinnaker you will never use, consider buying a trysail and adding it to your downwind sail plan.

One last point, you might be wondering why even fly the trysail since it is such a small scrap of cloth. The answer is simple, it adds sail area. Albeit not very much, but more than you had before you hoisted it up!

​Tip-toeing Around Monsters

When you picture a cloud, you probably see the white puffy part hovering high in the sky. The base is clearly visible above the horizon and the top of the cloud is also in view. These are happy clouds that grace you with shade on a hot ocean day!

Monster clouds are the ones that rise up over the horizon with no visible base. These clouds are so massive that they are located somewhere beyond the curvature of the Earth yet they still take up almost half of the visible sky! These are pressure systems, so massive that they have a different air pressure than their surroundings.

If you are in a high pressure with clear blue skies, these low pressure monsters will look like massive white hazes in the distance. If they are far enough they will look like a white dome, if they are closer, just a hazy white horizon. The winds in these creatures can be quite powerful, so it is best to avoid them.

To do this, you choose your course based on where they are going and stay out of their way. You are a literal ant in a room full of elephants when you are sailing the ocean blue. Don't get stepped on!

Spinal Pain

Maddie and I have both been suffering from an odd issue. We are young and healthy, yet each morning we awake with pain in our lower back, specifically around the lumbar spine. We were perplexed since we have tried sleeping in different beds thinking it was the mattress, and sleeping in different positions, thinking it was how we slept. Nothing seemed to change, we kept waking up with soar spines!

This morning I awoke halfway, the point where you are mentally awake but your body hasn't begun to move or respond yet. I noticed something. With each wave, my torso remained static along with my head, but my hips jostled around with my legs. Each wave for the 4 hours we get to sleep while off watch is twisting our spine round and round. Each wave is jiggling us and jogging us. Each wave on this endless ocean is moving our spines as we sleep, for hours!

By wake time, its not that we are soar from bracing ourselves; we are soar from constantly being moved as we slumber.

Tonight we will try to wedge our bodies into the berth with pillows to minimize the movement of our sleepy selves and see if that can't help resolve this pain in the back.

Day 23 Azores

I just saw a magnificent shooting star. It was slow and left a thick yellow trail. I don't know whether to look up or down. The bioluminescence is especially brilliant tonight, but the stars have also never been more clear. The night isn't dark. It's radiant. Today we approached Corvo. It rose up to greet us like a giant gray shadow. As we sailed closer and its details came into focus, I lost my breath. It was equally lush and harsh. It served as the perfect beacon as we entered the Azores. Now we are only 75 miles from our destination and the whole trip suddenly feels like a dream that I'm about to wake up from. Only instead of Florida or Bermuda, I'll be in a mountainous fairy land. We have worked so hard for tomorrow. It will be a relief and a wonder. I think I might cry. Until then, I have Scorpio beside me, and the rest of the sky.

Day 22 Azores

We've turned South toward Horta. Mars is leading the way like a great orange beacon. I don't need to check the map as long as Mars is in view ahead. I can also see Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus. Scorpio is almost showing off tonight. I've learned that the orange star near his front is 300 times bigger than the sun and my mind can't even handle that information. We're coming down to the last few nights. I know I will miss the stars. I don't think I'll miss anything else, but the stars have a special power over me, particularly Scorpio. I look up at the same ones each night, yet each night I am newly enchanted by their abundant splendor. I don't feel small when I look at them. I don't feel insignificant. I feel thankful. I feel blessed with the gift of existence in a world that offers such a view.