Ulmer likes lightweight sailcloth because the typical cruiser won’t use the chute in a lot of wind, but he adds that material weight and specific sizes can be fine-tuned for your home port’s weather or the conditions expected during a long passage.Īnother consideration when purchasing gear is whether the furler unit is big enough for the sail you plan to use, says Keith Magnussen, of Ullman Sails Newport Beach. “Thus a cruising chute is invaluable when making long passages, because sailboats have such limited fuel capacity,” he says. “Sailmakers can easily build a more specialized sail that has a profile geared toward running or close reaching, but the All-Purpose spinnaker, with its broad range, fits the bill for most cruisers,” he says.īutch Ulmer, of UK Sailmakers, recommends cruising spinnakers to his customers because they make it possible to sail at speeds typically achieved only by turning on the motor. Jerry Latell, of Ullman Sails Virginia, suggests a similar angle range - 75 degrees apparent in light air and up to 130 degrees in breeze - for Ullman’s All-Purpose spinnaker. “The shape is very forgiving, so it can roll in at the luff quite a bit before collapsing,” he adds. Hood Sails’ Multi-Purpose spinnaker can reach from about 70 degrees apparent (a close reach) in light air to 130 degrees apparent (a broad reach) in up to about 20 knots true if you’re attentive to steering and trim, says Hood’s Joe Cooper. Additionally, says Blumhorst, if you have a short bowsprit that gets the spinnaker out in front of the boat, the sail will be capable of sailing as deep as 155 degrees apparent (a very broad reach) in moderate wind up to 15 knots, and up to about 90 degrees apparent for a beam reach. This is because the big genoa is adequate for close reaching in these conditions, but it would be blanketed by the mainsail at deeper angles. “The shoulders help the sail float out to windward and make it possible to sail deeper angles downwind.” For a boat with a traditional overlapping genoa, like a Bristol 41.1, Blumhorst recommends a cruising asymmetric sail optimized for broad reaching and running in light to moderate breeze. “What makes a top-down furler better than a bottom-up furler for cruising spinnakers is that it can handle furling a sail with wider ‘shoulders,’ as long as they’re not too high,” says Judy Blumhorst, of Hyde Sails. Most sailmakers offer a sail that can be rigged on such a system. When set, the sail flies freely away from the cable, allowing for a moderately deep downwind sail with a luff that projects to windward. The head is attached to a fitting at the top of the anti-torsion cable the cable spins when you pull the furling line, rolling the sail around the cable from the top down. (The furler further simplifies things because the sail can simply be rolled in and set on the other tack after jibing.) With a top-down furler, the tack of a spinnaker attaches to a free-spinning ring on the top of the furling drum, which is fastened to the deck or bowsprit.
Sailmakers solved the sailhandling problem with asymmetric sails, whose luff is somewhat longer than the leech, eliminating the need for a pole and allowing the sail to be jibed inside or in front of the foretriangle. These sails were quite powerful and had sides of equal length, requiring the pole to be jibed along with the sail. In racing circles, sailors used to set symmetric spinnakers, which required a heavy pole and many bodies on the bow. Wrapping a sheet a few times around a furled spinnaker will help keep the sail from unrolling. The luff of a spinnaker on a top-down furler flies freely away from the anti-torsion cable (left). In an ideal world, both the light-air upwind/close-reaching sail and the running spinnaker would find their way into your inventory, but based on your boat and budget, you may decide one of these categories fits your needs better than the other. Any of these sails will be able to sail closer reaches in lighter wind and farther downwind as the breeze builds, but generally speaking, the flatter the sail, the higher the angles that will be attainable. Modern downwind sails designed to be set and snuffed using socks or some type of flexible furler basically fall into two camps: full-bodied asymmetric cruising spinnakers, for very broad reaching and running, and slightly flatter jib-spinnaker hybrids that excel in light wind and at tighter angles, meaning they can be flown anywhere from a close reach to well off the breeze.
Top-down furlers, designed to tame large, billowing downwind sails, have greatly reduced the sailhandling headaches faced by shorthanded crews, but they open the door to a prodigious array of sails that can be designed to fit your boat and sailing plans. Top-down Furlers (right) are designed for asymmetric downwind spinnakers.
Code Zero sails (left) are well suited to reaching in light breeze and can be set on conventional, flexible furlers.
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