On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:01:13 +0000, Roger Long wrote:

After a couple of season of sailing my masthead rig Endeavour 32 using
mostly the 130% roller genoa, I've been astounded to find out how much
better it goes to windward with the small working jib. In winds strong
enough to need some rolls on the genoa and a reef in the main, there is
nearly a knot of difference in speed due to the cleaner leading edge and
better shape. In lighter winds, the boat doesn't go much faster but
feels better and steers more easily.

The downside is losing the increase in speed when the sheets are eased.
I miss that feeling of rocketing away on a reach. Instead, the boat just
maintains about the same speed as it was going to windward.

I'm going to sail a lot more with the working jib and am having a leach
doubling sewn onto it this winter so I can leave it up more often
without suffering sun damage. A cruising spinnaker was low on my list
because I was pretty happy with the performance under the genoa for
cruising and didn't think I wanted to deal with getting a downwind sail
out of the bag and up. Now that I've seen how well the working jib is
for windward work, I'm re-thinking.

I end up doing a lot of beating to windward. If I carry the genoa as my
primary headsail, I'm now going to want to switch to the working jib for
any long windward legs if there is any real breeze. That's an involved
operation. Carrying the working jib as the primary headsail and getting
an asymetrical spinnaker out for long reaching and downwind legs might
be more fun and less work.

Interesting. This shows how shape matters, and sail area isn't everything.

With the working jib, are your leads closer to centerline (in degrees),
than with the genoa? This could make a big difference in your pointing
ability and speed. Also, is your working jib simply newer, or otherwise
better than your genoa?

Cruising spinnakers are great, but definitely more work than jibs.
Screachers on roller furlers (detachable) are almost as easy as a jibs,
but don't go deep downwind as well as spinnakers. However if you're happy
with a genoa as a downwind sail, a screacher may be a good compromise.

Also, sorry to be a pain, but your last two wonderful messages were
almost unreadable with a text-only newsreader. There were no line breaks,
so I had to scroll horizontally. Outlook Express is famous for such
problems. I recommend turning HTML off and posting text-only, plus maybe
using an add-on like OE-Quotefix. Or changing newsreaders.

Matt O.