Reducing Sail Size

An interesting point brought up at the weekend has had me thinking.

In most none SMOD classes there are just maximums for sail measurements so a reduced size sail is completely in accordance with class rules and there can be no possible objection if they race off the standard handicap - provided at least there's nothing in class rules about how many sails you can buy or something. In the days before modern gust responsive rigs it was quite common for International Moths to use small sails in big winds.

The big problem is, as I discovered when I built a stumping rig for my one off singlehander, is that you lose so much performance off wind with a small sail that if you can possibly somehow hang on to the big rig up to the windward mark then you will be much better off downwind. However we have at least one Solo at our club which has a small sail for when its windy, and although it isn't very competitive like that, it enables a mature gentleman to sail in winds where the rest of his age group are sitting on the beach, which seems like a good thing to me.

Where you might have a problem is if classes turn into multiple rig boats where they have different rigs for different wind strengths and then the cost of owning a boat goes up. That doesn't seem healthy to me. Because of the offwind performance issue I think multiple rigs are a bigger potential issue for two handed boats unless the boats are handicapped for the different rigs: rather defeats the point of having a Laser if you pick between Rooster 8.1, standard radial and 4.7 rigs according to wind strength and so everyone has to buy all of them and the sailor wants the club to give him the "all weather" handicap when he's only using each rig in its optimum conditions.

Edited by JimC - 04 Feb 14 at 2:13pm

The trouble with "pick the rig for the wind", as pretty much any experienced 18 sailor would admit if pressed, is that its a right pain in the neck. Pick the wrong rig and you're toast, which also means that rigging the boat has to be left until its a last minute panic in case the wind changes.

At our windy (sometimes) but gusty (always) club people have tried small sails on Supernova and Lightning. They look like a good idea at the time but when actually racing they are never fast because of varying wind speeds. What does seem to work were flat cut sails on Phantoms.

Well to my mind it is entirely logical and a total mystery as to why it hasn't happened until now.

Eventually my EPS will be equipped with 3 sails.