Sailing under Trisail

Last Week (December 2011) produced a strong NE wind which we though we would take advantage of and practice some heavy weather sailing. We have a short video of our Trisail in action for you… At the tiller is my daughter Jessica, aged 16 & my wife, Michaela.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3RXzhJEqw0

Many students ask us about our storm sails but we don’t often have enough wind and safe enough conditions to demonstrate it so we made a brief video of my wife and daughter sailing Good Point with the Trisail attached. On this day the wind was gusting about 22 to 27 knots. We found even with the main fully reefed and a No.4 jib on there was still too much weather helm (tiller pulling hard) and our sailing angle was uncomfortable. We lowered the mainsail from the mast track, bound it to the boom and fitted the Trisail. Note the Trisail does not attach to the boom, lowering the boom to the deck gave us a safer environment to work in.

The Trisail

The Trisail is about 30% the size of the reefed mainsail, the Clew of the mainsail attached to the rear two cleats at the stern, and is cleated tight, think of it like a self tacking jib. Because of the height of the Trisail its sheets went above our head at the tiller making it very comfortable to manoeuvre in the cockpit.

Upwind performance:

A broad reach was fine, we were accomplishing about 5-6 knots, downwind about 4-5 but we could not fully close haul. We tightened our mainsheets to the back cleats and achieved a better angle but not as good as normal close hauling, however we were going upwind at an angle of about 50-60 degrees rather then 45-50, this gave us confidence that we could get out of a Lee shore wind situation however the wave height was a short choppy 1.5mtrs and this kept pushing the bow back.

Weather Helm

The weather helm was extremely light and manageable, so was the sailing angle, much more relaxed then before.

Heaving Too:

(Jib back winded and tiller hard over) Good Point hove too extremely well and did not constantly spin off wind, in the cabin the conditions were calm enough to make a coffee or have a break for a while. A very pleasing outcome

Gybing & tacking

Probably the most impressive feature of the Trisail was being able to gybe without any crashes or bangs, If a tack stalled and we ended up in irons (which happened a few times) then a Gybe was always going to work, This gave me great confidence in manoeuvring in heavy wind without compromising crew safety or yacht breakages.