Sea trialing our storm try-sail

January 11th, 2023

The passing-by of cyclone Hale provided a window of 20-35 knt SW winds, meaning here in the Bay of Islands, wind off the land of high strength for sailing. This was a perfect opportunity to trial our try-sail.

The try-sail takes the place of a main sail in storm sailing conditions. The basic idea is the very small sail area is appropriate for very high wind speeds.

There is also redundancy insofar as the try-sail is 1) a replacement for a very deeply reefed main, 2) independent of the boom, meaning the try-sail can be pressed into service should the main or boom be damaged.

As you can probably tell, the try-sail is the sort of sail you hope you never need to fly. If the try-sail is out you know conditions are serious.

Te Tāiko’s mainsail has four reefing points, which in storm conditions reefs 3 and 4 adjust the sail area as follows:

• Main with 3 reefs 14.8sqm
• Main with 4 reefs 6.25sqm

The try-sail has an area of 6sqm making it the smallest sail on the boat and roughly equivalent to the fourth reef.

So today I took Tāiko out in 20-30 knts and here’s how it went.

I actually fitted and raised the sail at anchor. This is obviously not going to be possible in most circumstances but given this was the first fitting it helped.

• The lazy jacks needed dropping.
• The luff of the flaked main interfered with the raising of the try as the try is on a second track parallel with the main. Just took some fiddling to address.
• The try flew beautifully above the stack pack!
• The sheet diameter is too narrow to use on the aft coaming winch. They are also coloured black which is the same as genoa sheets and the main halyard! Too many black lines gets confusing! The sheets could also do with being a little longer. I will address these issues.
• The sheeting angle conflicted with the forward edge of the Bimini on port tack. Bimini would best be folded away to prevent damage to it.

Other than that, everything was good with the try-sail sea trial.

Cheers from Skipper Adam.