The most unseamanlike sail

I HAVE LONG REGARDED the spinnaker as the most unseamanlike sail ever invented. This view was confirmed when I was the navigator/helmsman aboard a 33-foot sloop called Diana K and we raced across the Atlantic from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro. During that race we flew a spinnaker for 3,000 miles.

That darned sail encouraged the boat to roll from side to side, gunwale to gunwale, for days and weeks on end. In order to keep it filled in light winds we always had to head off-course slightly to one side or the other. We could hardly ever steer the boat exactly where we wanted her to go, because it didn’t suit the blasted spinnaker. That rig — mainsail and spinnaker — must be the most frustrating combination known to man for downwind work in the trades.

The continual necessity to jibe, forced upon us by slight wind-shifts, wore us out. Every little change in wind direction meant long spells of hard work for the one man on deck who wasn’t steering. He had to handle the sheets, the guys, the uphauls, the downhauls, and the spinnaker poles themselves.

All this constant work was bad enough in the daytime, but at night it took on a new and frightening dimension. In the dark, the power of the spinnaker seemed ominous, specially in hard winds.

My watchmate, Eddie, was the first to admit openly that he hated charging into the black of the night with the spinnaker up. “It’s like driving down the freeway blindfolded,” he complained.

My friend Nick chimed in: “You can stand it for about half an hour,” he said, “then the mind begins to boggle.” Nevertheless, we did it. We did it because we were racing. If we didn’t do it, our competitors would, and we’d be left miles behind.

At the back of all our minds was the fact that if one of us fell overboard the spinnaker would have to come down before the boat could be turned around. And we knew from experience that sometimes spinnakers don’t come down without a fight. They get caught up on things. They wrap themselves around the forestay. They fall in the water, slide under the hull, foul the rudder and propeller, and generally cause havoc.

To handle a spinnaker at all requires some skill, and to douse one in a strong wind calls for some brute force. And to do this successfully at night takes a bit of luck as well, which is not surprising when you think about the large sail area you’re dealing with.  Diana K’s spinnakers had a surface area of 670 square feet each. Her mainsail and fore triangle, by way of comparison, totaled 420 square feet.

I guess that racing boats will always use spinnakers, symmetrical or asymmetrical, around the buoys and across oceans, but if you’re planning to cruise across an ocean I’d advise you not to touch one with a barge pole. Try a square sail. Try twin jibs. Try the twistle rig. Try anything but a spinnaker.

Today’s Thought

One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
’Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales
Which tells us the way to go.

-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Tailpiece

A peasant in Afghanistan was handed a sealed ballot at the polling booth. He started to tear it open.

 “What do you think you’re doing?” screamed an official.

“I just wanted to see who I voted for,” he replied.

“Are you crazy?” the official exclaimed. “This is supposed to be a secret ballot.”

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