Question on what sail for Crossing in 35ft IROC

[RapidTransit]

I am leaving Florida for Australia in my 35ft 1975 IROC I have an older roller furling and was wondering the best sail set up for the crossing should i get a Cruising chute, twin headsail on a single track Or go wing an wing? My boat does not need much sail to get going and I think if I am getting 15 to 20 knts from astern i am going to be hitting hull speed very easly. It is a deep fin keel boat. There will only be 2 of us to crew
Thanks Drew

[MarkJ]

I found most of the way too heavy for a kite. Prolly averaging 18 kts apparent, ie well over 20 knots true and I think thats too much for a scardy cat like me who doesnt like blowing kites when its my money!

I didn't have a pole to pole out the genoa and thats my biggest problem as the wind was often too far behind - 150 to 180 degrees.

So I would go furling genoa poled out and main, but you can just drop the main and still be near hull speed.

Or double headsails wing on wing as long as you can furl them

I don't know if the wind was a bit up everytime we put to sea but the pilot charts said Force 4. I don't think we ever had Force 4 unless it was dropping from Force 6 to zero

All the best, its a truly wonderful trip!

Mark

[maxingout]

We used a double headsail downwind rig with two poles and no main when sailing to OZ in the trades. It worked great on our catamaran.

Monohulls seem to do equally well with the twizzle rig which uses two poles. You should be able to find a thread that explains the twizzle downwind rig. An Ozzie that I know has used this rig for tradewind sailing, and he reports that it works great, and because the poles are "floating" rather than attached directly to the mast, it causes less rolling downwind.

[RapidTransit]

Hi guy thanks a lot for that you have just saved me some money and I have also learnt something new