GENOA vs. JIB: choosing from 90% to 110%

[TheThunderbird]

Uncivilized, i am not kind of ipse dixit person.. :-) but read my answer.

The high clew of yankee , with a sheet line exactly symmetrical on the Lp, was intended to avoid ocean waves, and necessarily for medium to strong winds.
A light air yankee sounds a bit nonsensical to me, WADRespect

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

Dockhead, thanks for posting, especially the bit on your sails. As to your siggy line, I knew what it said, but not what it meant. Funny (as in odd) language.
On the AWA thing. I think that you overstate this concept a bit much as it applies to your boat, given the amount of lead you're hauling around. While you sail in some damn cold places, yours is not an iceboat.

The following question isn’t just aimed at Dockhead. And it's relevant to this thread, & sailing in general:
Which is that I can’t understand the devotion to Yankee jibs. In my mind they’re inefficient, period. Particularly if you have adjustable jib leads, meaning the type which can be tuned without needing to do anything more than pull on their control lines from the cockpit. As with them most standard jibs achieve quite good shape as you go from beating to reaching. So then where is the (hypothetical) advantage of a Yankee? And even if you have a cutter rig, it makes sense to keep a mid-sized to large jib on your furler. Rolling it up when the wind goes above F4-F5, & then switching to your staysail or solent. Non?

The other part is that Yankees probably have no more sail area than does a conventional 100-105% jib. And when measured in terms of drive/efficacy due to shape, & greater drag from same, they’re a good ways behind such a sail. Especially when you consider that a 100% jib can on many boats, be sheeted inside of the shrouds if it’s cut properly. So then it’s a far more close winded than a Yankee as well. As would be an optimized 90-95% jib having battens: on all of the above counts. Including retaining a far better shape when you begin to move the breeze astern. So again, efficiency bonus, conventionally cut headsail.

Even as noted by Dockhead, the only real perk to the Yankee is off of the wind in lighter breezes. A time when sail area is king, & it’s small extra sqft over the blade allows it to win out. Which isn’t a surprise. And for wind that’s anywhere aft of 70 deg. AWA it only makes sense to hoist a bigger sail that has it’s shape designed for reaching, or downwind work. Since any jib will be ultra anemic in comparison, efficacy wise, & in terms of area. Not to mention that a jib’s heavier fabric is at odds with the lower AWS at such wind angles.

I’m thinking that I must be missing something about Yankees. Either that, or that someone switched me to decaf when I was sleeping Please help.

I can't really comment on the yankee vs genoa question, as I've never tried both types of sail on the same boat.

English boats with cutter rig always have yankees rather than genoas -- I think to make it easier to tack the sail.

But yankee sails for sure have an advantage off the wind, as the sheeting angle and shape is better. Genoas are crap once you get near a beam reach.

Whether genoas work better upwind for not -- whether it's the lower part of the sail doing the work as The Thunderbird says -- I don't know. I'd be interested in learning more about it, if someone understands it.

My yankee works reasonably well upwind. Even with the old blown-out one I have been able to vanquish pretty capable smaller boats in upwind tacking duels. A Beneteau First 40 once, which had carbon sails and Swedish racing numbers, sailed very hard in the archipelago, for example. A long hard duel, several hours, towards a gap in the rocks of the Stockholm Archipelago. With the worn-out sail, we sailed much lower, but much faster, and in the end we beat him. A LWL thing I guess, but the yankee sail could not have been all that bad.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by TheThunderbird

DH
Can you be more specific about the brand name of your carbon-technora, and the weight of the two sails , please?
Or, since laminate sails are not rated by oz., any idea of the total surface and weight of each one!?

Upwind, the lower portion of sail, close to deck, is the most powerful one. No doubt the yankee is designed for going on a beam reach, it cannot grasp the wind on tacking so efficiently. That sail makes good point only on ocean passages imo.

Frankly, if i have to make a critic to your sailmaker (may I?) i would have made for a yankee 60% for when you sail in 25kn or more and dont need to fight for AWA degrees, 'cause of waves and practical inability. But then, also a staysail can go, lower and closer to CE (we love cutters)

PS you seem to have furlers. How do you switch from one fore sail to another? It doesn't look much practical to me to work on those alu-slides... do you have two drums, or a solent rig? Or else!?
:-)

I can't remember the maker of the sailcloth and I'm not on the boat. Made in South Africa IIRC and exactly the same cloth as used on the Swan 60 Nordstream racers.

The cloth is lighter than the old dacron sails, but not radically so, with all the taffeta.


Switching foresails is a royal PITA -- impossible for one person, almost impossible for two, and a big job for 4 strapping guys. So I do it much less often than I would like.

This year I used the yankee all the way from the UK to Finland, then switched at my Eastern most point -- Hamina, Finland, to the blade in order to deal with the prevailing SW winds.

That's really why keeping both these sails doesn't seem to make all that much sense. I don't want a solent stay because of the windage, weight aloft and stay tension issues. The blade plus Cruising Code Zero would seem like a good combination, and the Code 0 can go on a temporary stay on a bowsprit.

Basically I use the yankee only if I'm on a long trip along prevailing winds and/or in summer high pressure conditions with nothing upwind expected. Otherwise the blade, which is more versatile. The blade shines upwind and doesn't actually suck in any conditions; just need to add the motor in light winds and wind abaft the beam. It has a surprisingly good shape sailing very deep.