Thoughts on Solent Rig?

[Dockhead]

My friend and I are in the process of buying a large sailing yacht which has a Solent rig.


I've never sailed one and would like to know what people think about them.


The boat has a self-tacking blade jib on one forestay, and a 140% light genoa on the other. No inner forestay and no staysail.


Obviously in average/normal conditions this is really convenient -- sailing upwind or in stronger conditions (but not that strong), you just use the blade (I love the blade on my boat). In lighter offwind conditions, just roll up the blade and roll out the genoa.


But it becomes difficult in really strong conditions. Jibs and especially

high aspect jibs don't like to be reefed -- the shape sucks and it's hard on the sail. On my cutter-rigged boat, we change over to the staysail when there's too much wind for the full blade (about 30-33 knots apparent when going upwind).



And what do you do for a storm jib?


We think maybe at least add a removeable inner forestay for a hanked-on storm jib.


The boat has been around the world, but trade winds circumnavs are not that challenging. We think about crossing the Atlantic to the Carib, then next year sailing back to Europe via the Northern route, Iceland, Faroes, Scotland. At the very least I would think we will need a storm jib.


All thoughts appreciated.

[wingssail]

Consider normal reefing points on the self tacking jib.

When the breeze is too much for the blade, lower it to the reef tack point and run the sheet up to a reef clew point. Some reefing ties will tidy it up.

Someone will have to go forward to pull it down (and the friction of the sail in the luff groove will have to be removed prior to departure by cleaning and lubricating) but the idea of setting a removable inner stay and hanking on a storm jib isn't any better. Some one still has to go forward.

In this photo the boat to leeward has a hanked on jib which has been reefed, but it works just as well with a luff tape.

[JPA Cate]

The problem with the releasable inner forestay is that it is difficult to get decent enough tension on it, so the luff has to be really hollow, for that sail to work well. Sailmakers seem to have a hard time getting it hollow enough.... We eventually put a furler on in its place. That is not good because the extra windage forward (combined with little bite on the water, with the knuckle right at the water line) makes the boat sail around a lot at anchor.

The problem with reefing headsails is that nasty bundle of foot at the bottom, after you have learned how to tie it up well enough for it to not flog itself undone. We had one on the Yankee 30 for a while, and it was never satisfactory in use. A reasonable idea, but biting the bullet and making a proper headsail change would have been better.

You could get caught out and need a storm jib, though, for the high latitude part of the voyage. Suggest heading up to vastly slow the boat to about 3 knots, then drop the blade jib into a bag that is already secured, zip it up, and set the storm jib. When we did this, we kept the old sheets on the blade, and kept the storm jib sheets with the storm jib. Time on the foredeck is limited by having everything all set up for when the time comes. I would think you could use soft shackles to go around the furler, or wire, however it is set up, and be good to go. At the time, we used the piston-less one-hand Wichard shackles for our storm jib, so you could hold on with your non-dominant hand, and slam them onto the stay with the other. The stay tension doesn't have to change at all between the two sails on that stay.

Ann

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

The problem with the releasable inner forestay is that it is difficult to get decent enough tension on it, so the luff has to be really hollow, for that sail to work well. Sailmakers seem to have a hard time getting it hollow enough.... We eventually put a furler on in its place. That is not good because the extra windage forward (combined with little bite on the water, with the knuckle right at the water line) makes the boat sail around a lot at anchor.

The problem with reefing headsails is that nasty bundle of foot at the bottom, after you have learned how to tie it up well enough for it to not flog itself undone. We had one on the Yankee 30 for a while, and it was never satisfactory in use. A reasonable idea, but biting the bullet and making a proper headsail change would have been better.

You could get caught out and need a storm jib, though, for the high latitude part of the voyage. Suggest heading up to vastly slow the boat to about 3 knots, then drop the blade jib into a bag that is already secured, zip it up, and set the storm jib. When we did this, we kept the old sheets on the blade, and kept the storm jib sheets with the storm jib. Time on the foredeck is limited by having everything all set up for when the time comes. I would think you could use soft shackles to go around the furler, or wire, however it is set up, and be good to go. At the time, we used the piston-less one-hand Wichard shackles for our storm jib, so you could hold on with your non-dominant hand, and slam them onto the stay with the other. The stay tension doesn't have to change at all between the two sails on that stay.

Ann

Ann, your comments are right on the mark. Sometimes we get trapped by the OP's suggested solutions and need to step back to the basics.

On our boat we carry a storm jib with luff tape. We can drop the blade jib and send up the storm jib. Of course the conditions in which we would need to do this make going forward to do that change quite unattractive.

However, we have had very good success with an alternate path:

Drop the jib early and go with reefed main and no headsail!

Many boats will sail sufficiently well to get through a storm with a 2nd or 3rd reef in the main and no headsail. If you need to go upwind in some storm, and the boat won't do it without a jib, turn on the motor and give it a little boost.

In 35 years, going through a lot of heavy weather along the way, we've never truly needed to use the storm jib. In fact, we never have used it. But we've gone bare headed a few times and no harm done.

[JPA Cate]

Good point, Fred.

In fact, with our last two boats, we're able to jog along under a triple reefed main, and no heads'l at about 60 deg toward the wind, higher to slow down more. Totally safe, no one on the foredeck.

However, Dockhead enjoys driving his boats hard, and may not like the idea of slowing down to put up the storm sail. He's quite an experienced high latitude sailor. Everybody's different. Slowing down for foredeck work only came late in our sailing history, to intentionally make it easier and safer. Never thought it unsafe, for years, but things changed.

Ann

[HankOnthewater]

Hi dockhead, not sure if an answer to your question is in this thread:
https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ay-191263.html.
I think that there were some other threads on Solent rigs as well.

BTW, I have such rig, and happy with that, never had to use a storm jib, and as far as I know the previous owner never did not either (sailing halfway around the world).
But if I had to redo my head sails, I would have the large jib with a touch lighter fabric, and the solent one a touch smaller and with a touch heavier fabric.
At the moment I can use the head sail to approx 20 knots, the solent to 30 knots and then I have to furl a little, but I never drive my boat hard. And often change the sails or reduce sails before the mentioned wind speeds.

[Jim Cate]

Seems to me with the variant of the Solent that you describe, adding a dyneema inner stay and a hank on storm sail makes an easy and reasonable fix. Keeping the mast straight may be an issue, so runners may be needed to help keep some tension on the inner stay.

Not knowing anything about the subject boat, I've no opinion about sailing under main alone, reefed or not... but it works in our fractional Solent rig.

Jim

[Joli]

You're really not going to be changing out head sails on a boat that size with a short handed crew, especially when the weather goes to ****. Better to add a furler and a smaller staysail. Last year's trip to the Caribbean saw 5 days of 30 AWA with up to 55 knots across the deck. We sailed most of it triple reefed and a staysail.

Removing sails from a big boat isn't a small job.

One other thing, make sure the boat is rigged with a carbon spinnaker pole. If aluminum, replace it.

[northwestsailor]

We have a Solent rig on our aluminum Joubert designed Meta Dalu 47. The two forward stays have roller furlers then inner is hank on. For reefing that sail you just drop it to the reef points and tie up the unused sail. Obviously you also have to re attach the sheets to the reefed clew.

This Solent rig is a plain for short tacking in a harbor or going up or down river. However using the self tacking features of the staysail make easy work of it albeit with less power than the Solent or genoa would provide.

For points of sail forward of the beam we will usually set up the genoa or Solent with the staysail. This creates a very nice slot and often improves boat speed by 1/2 kt or more.

All in all this rig is more complicated and costly to maintain but on the flip side you have much more flexibility for sail plan to suit the conditions. Even DDW is easy with both larger headsails poled out. In this case no need for the mainsail at all unless reefed down for roll control occasionally.

[Dockhead]

Thanks very much for all the interesting -- if not encouraging! -- comments.



I haven't heard anything which really sounds like a good solution.


I hadn't thought about changing jibs, but maybe that's not worse than anything else. The problem of course is taking down the blade short handed and in rising weather -- the boat has an almost 100' mast so the blade is still a very big sail. I don't think it could be safely done with less than 3 aboard.


The most complicated and expensive but possibly best solution would be to rerig the blade as non-self tacking, and install a permanent inner forestay with furler and staysail. I'd have to consult the designer but I guess on top of everything else (new tracks and sheet leads for the jib, new inner forestay, chainplate, furler, etc. etc.) we would need to add runners to tension the inner forestay. Ick! There aren't even winches enough for runners. Unlike my boat with 10 winches, this one only has 7.



Seems to me not such a good type of rig for offshore sailing. Hmmm.

[DMCantor]

We have sailed our Outbound 46 with solent rig in the Eastern Caribbean for 10 years now, and really like the rig. We've experienced sustained winds above 40 knots with little difficulty.


In contrast with your experience, we find it very practical to reef the inner jib when needed. Ours is cut extremely flat, and I think that helps. Reefing the full-cut Genoa doesn't work very well, and when there's too much wind for a full Genoa we simply put it away and use the jib.


At least on our boat, this is a very balanced rig, and it doesn't matter much whether we reef main or headsail.


Tacking or gybing with the Genoa requires rolling it in and re-deploying on the other side. Cruising in the trade winds, that's a once-a-day or less exercise, so not really a problem. If we ever need to do multiple tacks, we switch to the jib.

[MJH]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

My friend and I are in the process of buying a large sailing yacht which has a Solent rig.

I've never sailed one and would like to know what people think about them.

The boat has a self-tacking blade jib on one forestay, and a 140% light genoa on the other. No inner forestay and no staysail.

Obviously in average/normal conditions this is really convenient -- sailing upwind or in stronger conditions (but not that strong), you just use the blade (I love the blade on my boat). In lighter offwind conditions, just roll up the blade and roll out the genoa.

But it becomes difficult in really strong conditions. Jibs and especially

high aspect jibs don't like to be reefed -- the shape sucks and it's hard on the sail. On my cutter-rigged boat, we change over to the staysail when there's too much wind for the full blade (about 30-33 knots apparent when going upwind).

And what do you do for a storm jib?

We think maybe at least add a removeable inner forestay for a hanked-on storm jib.

The boat has been around the world, but trade winds circumnavs are not that challenging. We think about crossing the Atlantic to the Carib, then next year sailing back to Europe via the Northern route, Iceland, Faroes, Scotland. At the very least I would think we will need a storm jib.

All thoughts appreciated.

Plan for the worst and hope for the best!

"If anything is going to happen, it is going to happen out there." --Captain Ron

~ ~ _/) ~ ~ MJH

[rslifkin]

If both sails are on furlers and you're expecting to be doing moderate or high wind sailing for a bit, would it be possible to drop the genoa, move the jib up forward and put a smaller jib on the second furler? Then you still have 2 sails to choose from on demand, you've just changed from large and medium to medium and small as the quick choices.

[Joli]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Thanks very much for all the interesting -- if not encouraging! -- comments.



I haven't heard anything which really sounds like a good solution.


I hadn't thought about changing jibs, but maybe that's not worse than anything else. The problem of course is taking down the blade short handed and in rising weather -- the boat has an almost 100' mast so the blade is still a very big sail. I don't think it could be safely done with less than 3 aboard.


The most complicated and expensive but possibly best solution would be to rerig the blade as non-self tacking, and install a permanent inner forestay with furler and staysail. I'd have to consult the designer but I guess on top of everything else (new tracks and sheet leads for the jib, new inner forestay, chainplate, furler, etc. etc.) we would need to add runners to tension the inner forestay. Ick! There aren't even winches enough for runners. Unlike my boat with 10 winches, this one only has 7.



Seems to me not such a good type of rig for offshore sailing. Hmmm.

It sounds like you have it pretty well sorted. Get the inner forestay with a roller furling jib, it requires running backs and a substantial ring frame or cable to carry the load from deck to hull. When adding the sheave box look to see where your pole lift exits the mast, its best if it is above the exit of the inner forestay.

Regarding changing headsails at sea. Without a large crew it's tough to do partially because the sails are big and partially because the luff is loose, the sail can and will go everywhere. When we were racing it took half a dozen guys to change from a #1 to a #3 and we always tried to do it inside out (ie raise the new sail on the inner track, tack then lower the old sail, now on the inside against the sail you just raised). Then you have to put away the sail you just brought down. That requires a sausage bag and bricking the sail into thirds, stuffing it into the bag and dragging the bag below. Depending on the jib the weight could be 150#'s.

Sailing a big boat with a small crew requires window shades forward of the mast, an easily reefed main and easy way to project sail when going downwind so a carbon pole and socks are needed.

Hope this helps. Our rig is 93' off the water, we've learned a lot over the past 20 years we've owned the boat.

Photo below of the misses changing out the main halyard from the very tough sail from the East Coast to the Caribbean last fall. Thanks to FKG in St Martin for fixing us up with a new halyard and North Sails for repairing the staysail which is not on the furler in this picture.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by rslifkin

If both sails are on furlers and you're expecting to be doing moderate or high wind sailing for a bit, would it be possible to drop the genoa, move the jib up forward and put a smaller jib on the second furler? Then you still have 2 sails to choose from on demand, you've just changed from large and medium to medium and small as the quick choices.

Interesting idea. But the smaller jib would have to go forward; the self tacker won't work on that stay.

Still - could be a solution.