Schooner Sails: A Story of Ever-Shrinking Overlap
Where We Started
As we look back across the eight years we’ve owned MAYAN we’ve noticed a steady trend in how we choose which sails to set. Yes, we’re going to get a little esoteric here. Those of you who aren’t keenly interested in how sails interact with each other, are trimmed for optimal performance, and are happy to just keep ’em from flapping while you hold your cocktail, might find this a bit pedantic.
This all started with a question from one of our best crew members: “Why do we keep making the sails smaller and yet we’re going faster and pointing higher when sailing upwind?” The simple answer was: “They’re backwinding each other, less backwinding, more speed.” But, like many things on a boat, there’s more to it than that.
We’ll start with the decades-old sails that Pete Sutter had made for MAYAN in Sausalito that arrived bent to the spars when we bought her. Despite the extremely high quality of the Sutter Sails, they had done their job and been on watch for far too long. Their draft was deep and too far aft.
The America’s Schooner Cup regatta at the Silver Gate YC in San Diego was in a few weeks, there was no time to build new sails, and we were itching to sail MAYAN alongside other schooners. in the picture below, you can see MAYAN in the middle, about halfway through the race. We had a blast!
We ended up finishing mid-fleet, which our crew considered a “success”. At this stage, we knew we had a lot of work to do to allow MAYAN to live up to her potential, but it was a great feeling to be able to sail alongside the other schooners our size.
What We Learned
In the pictures above and below, you can see the significant overlap of the genoa with the fore staysail flying inside it and the overlap between the main staysail and the large fisherman staysail flying outside and above it. As we tried to get MAYAN to sail upwind, the genoa made the fore staysail almost useless. It was backwinded in the slot between the genoa and the sails flying between the masts. The large fisherman flying between the masts caused the main staysail to be equally useless except along its foot, and backwinded the mainsail. All these problems disappeared on a reach, which can be seen in the picture above. With the sheets eased the backwinding stopped and the over-full sails were no longer a problem. But, going upwind, we had work to do.
New Sails & More To Learn
Once the first-year projects were underway, we had our good friend Dave Hodges of Ullman Sails come down from Santa Cruz to measure MAYAN for an entirely new set of sails. Beau has been a student of schooner rigs for a long time, since serving aboard the SALEE in Los Angeles as a young man. As a result, he was keen to try a few sails that evolved from Starling Burgess’ rig designs for the staysail schooner ADVANCE.
With her short rigs, MAYAN felt underpowered in San Diego. Like most sailors, Beau sought out a solution to that by adding overlap and hoped to solve the upwind problem by having Dave cut the sails flatter. The new sails first flew in a race at the Elkhorn YC called the Otter Cup. In the picture below you can see how much sail area you can load onto a schooner by filling every inch of the rig with sail and overlapping as much as we dared.
The genoa overlapped the fore staysail, and despite both sails being new and flat, that just didn’t work. We eventually lowered the fore staysail when sailing upwind. The advance staysail (Named in honor of the Burgess schooner ADVANCE), the sail flying between the masts above overlaps the mainsail by about 14% and caused a significant backwind in the mainsail when sailing upwind. Again, despite new flatter sails, MAYAN just couldn’t point.
In the picture above, we were first beating to windward and then tight reaching towards Monterey. On the return trip in the photo below, you can see every sail drawing well as we reach back towards Moss Landing. There were smiles all around amongst the crew as MAYAN rolled along at 10 knots in 11 knots of wind. Clearly she moved beautifully through the water. But we still hadn’t solved the upwind problem.
Later that year, we entered the Master Mariner’s Regatta and continued to work with various sail combinations to get MAYAN going upwind. Thankfully, the race committee provided us with a course that was almost all reaching and running. With the genoa, advance, and mainsail, MAYAN rumbled along beautifully pressed against her hull speed almost continuously.
What We Learned
Regardless of how flat the fore staysail was, it wasn’t going to live well inside of the genoa. It was starved for air. Secondly, while the advance was an amazing sail once the apparent wind angle got to anything over 55°, MAYAN just couldn’t point with it flying as the mainmast shrouds were keeping the clew too far to leeward and stopping us from rounding the sail appropriately.
Just Take It DOWN
The San Francisco Bay is a windy venue. While MAYAN is a stiff boat and stands up to a breeze well, even she has a time when the crew must shorten sail. The next race on our agenda was the Leukemia Cup, a wonderful fundraising event that is sailed out of San Francisco YC.
With a strong wind already blowing at the start, we knew it would be a windy race. Starting with the sails set as they were in the Master Mariner’s Regatta we rapidly discovered that we were faster without the advance staysail sailing upwind. Down it came, and MAYAN could point 5° higher.
The reaches and runs to the east SF Bay had everything flying, but as we approached the leeward mark gusts to 30k of winds were frequent. Down came the advance and spinnaker, and MAYAN powered upwind past the rocky shore of Alcatraz to finish 1st in class.
What We Learned
The most important thing was that once MAYAN is going hull speed, more sail area doesn’t do any good. The critical question is: How high can she point and hold hull speed? There was enough wind that day to keep her flying upwind without a fisherman staysail of any kind, let alone the giant advance, but that wasn’t always going to be the case. We still needed to find a way to point while flying more sail-area for lighter wind days.
Genoa Down. Set The Yankee!
After much discussion with our sailmaker and crew, we went out sail-testing. With the B&G recording our performance and everyone focused on sailing the boat without the distractions of next-marks, competitors, and commercial traffic, we set about measuring the upwind performance with the genoa vs the combination of the fore staysail and the small yankee jib flying above it.
Within an hour the answer was obvious. Not only could MAYAN point about 3° higher with the yankee, but she was also going the same speed, and we were MUCH faster going through a tack without having to haul in yards of genoa sheet. With the upcoming 2019 edition of the Rolex Big Boat Series, it was clear that short tacking the City Front with the yankee would be a big win.
What We Learned
Not only was it much faster to tack MAYAN with the small yankee flying on the outer stay, but she was as fast reaching also. This refreshed the lesson we’d learned earlier: “When your boat is going hull speed, more sail area doesn’t make her faster.” Moreover, the sails further aft were much less affected by the yankee, compared to the genoa, and seemed to be performing better. (We hate it when we learn the same lesson twice.)
About That flounder… and about that yankee and staysail…
After the experience of the advance staysail, the sailmaker and crew worked to find a non-overlapping sail that would fill the space between the main and fore masts above the main staysail, trim inside of the main mast shrouds, and be cut flat targeting upwind performance. The result was a very large flat fisherman staysail, that was christened “The Flounder”, as in a flat fish.
This sail was an immediate hit with the team. It is larger than the mainsail, up high flying in relatively undisturbed air, and pulled so hard on the sheet it bent a bronze pad eye rated at 2,500 lbs.
However, there was still a lot of fussing about going on regarding the trim of the fore staysail that had to live in the small slot between the yankee, the flounder, and the main staysail. Various extremely competent trimmers had tried everything: sheet barber haulers, topping the staysail boom to twist of the head, finally, they just dropped the fore staysail and MAYAN went faster. It turned out that there just wasn’t a place in that spot in the rig for a sail when on the wind.
One of our most experienced trimmers announced: “Well, now that the staysail is gone, we can get rid of the staysail stay and build a proper jib that tacks quickly.” We had our doubts. Certainly, one jib that nearly filled the fore triangle would be faster because it was much more efficient than two little sails, but no staysail stay?? We’d be hanging the foremast off of the tip of the bowsprit as the foremast has no forward tending shrouds or stays. A compromise was reached that we’d build a removable staysail stay and set it between tacks and during maneuvers like starting and mark roundings when the proximity of other boats made the situation higher risk.
What We Learned
Sails that have to live in disturbed air have trouble generating enough lift to make up for their drag. We were better off without the fore staysail. Sails in clean air work great, (to state the obvious) but the flounder was making life miserable for the top 1/3 of the mainsail.
MAYAN’s Final Form As A Staysail Schooner
Everything we’d learned over the first seven years of owning MAYAN came together with a much simpler rig, almost no overlapping sails, and a steadily improving performance level.
In the picture below, MAYAN is heading up to Blackauler Buoy during the 2021 Rolex Big Boat Series on her way to a 1st place finish in the Classic Class. She is flying an 82% jib, flounder fisherman staysail, main staysail, and mainsail. This beautiful picture, provided by a competitor shows her reaching near hull speed in approximately 17k of wind. The jib and flounder are operating in relatively undisturbed air, while the main staysail and top of the mainsail are suffering from being in the back of the boat.
We feel extremely lucky to have this picture. MAYAN won’t be rigged like this again in our lifetime, if ever. Four months ago we started a complete re-rigging project to repaint and refurbish both wooden masts, replace all her running and standing rigging, and return her rig to the form that John G. Alden designed.
In the picture below, you can see that MAYAN originally flew a gaff foresail on the foremast. We’re nearly done restoring her to her original rig in time to race her again in the 2022 edition of the Rolex Big Boat Series. There has been a bit of head scratching about her handicap, as very few of the folks in the handicapping field have rated gaff-rigged boats against marconi-rigged boats. But, we’re confident that the rating authorities will come through with a fair rating.
In an interesting footnote on schooners in general, the last schooner to win the Newport to Bermuda race was NIÑA, a Starling Burgess-designed staysail schooner in 1962. As a new boat in 1928, she won the Trans-Atlantic and Fastnet races.
Some have asked why we’d change MAYAN to a gaff-rigged foresail, known as a “Transitional Schnooner Rig”. There are multiple reasons for the change.
First, without the sail area of the gaff foresail between the masts, MAYAN was unbalanced by having too much sail area aft unless one flew a relatively large fisherman staysail and kept a lot of sail area in front of the foremast. This made it hard to reduce sail area easily to allow a couple (like MAYAN’s owners) to sail her long distances. The gaff foresail is directly above the centerboard and moves the center of effort of the rig, when not flying a fisherman staysail, a long way forward counteracting her significant weather helm with a staysail schooner rig. MAYAN will sail quite nicely with just the gaff foresail and fore staysail in winds well above 40 knots.
Second, as successful a sail as the flounder turned out to be, it still badly fouls the air for the top third of the mainsail, requiring that the trimmer carry the sail sheeted in further than he should. This is because the head (called the peak) of the flounder can’t be eased away from the main masthead to allow the flounder to twist off to leeward as it gains altitude. This is the opposite of what a competent trimmer wishes to do, but it’s forced by the way all fisherman staysails must be cut. The solution, which John G. Alden knew well was to keep the foremast as a gaff sail while the mainmast carried a modern and easier-to-use marconi sail. We’re hoping that the loss of about 322 sq. ft. of upwind sail area will be balanced against the better efficiency of the gaff foresail working better with the marconi mainsail.
Finally, while we are somewhat non-traditional in our choices of sailcloth and lines, we don’t use canvas and hemp, we are quite traditional about the way it feels to sail MAYAN. Her B&G sailing instruments are usually hidden away while cruising. The chart table folds up to hide the RADAR and Chart Plotter. The boat speed is determined by the helmsperson looking over the lee rails and saying: “Looks like a bit over 5 knots.” The course is read on a big Danforth Constellation compass; and most of all, the chatter, clatter, and natter of modern life are left behind. We sail MAYAN by how she feels and love every moment of it.
More later….. Once we’re sailing.
