A Ballad of many Sails

While sailing thousands of miles in our Ballad, we had a chance to try various sail combinations and test the rig in most weather conditions. Some things worked as intended, some didn't. I am hoping that an in-depth summary of our experience can be of use to other small yacht sailors - whether you are sailing an Albin Ballad or a different make, whether cruising in coastal waters or crossing oceans.

Sailing downwind in a gale

The scope of this article is somewhat ambitious, especially considering the shear number of books written on the subjects of sail trim, heavy weather sailing and cruising rigs. So I will stick to what we learned ourselves, with a few speculations on potentially desirable improvements thrown in for good measure.

Storm Staysail - Ready to Hoist!

The staysail, kindly donated by Richard F., is ready for it's next big adventure. Initially equipped with a luff tape and a head strop to be hoisted on a boat's main forestay, it had to be adapted to Auriga. As explained before, we decided to have hanked-on headsails throughout. Further, the luff extended with the strop was too long for our inner forestay. Thus, we had to shorten it while keeping the full-strength eye for attaching the halyard, and insert stainless grommets and hanks along the length of the luff. While Matt was preparing for his viva, I made best use of Richard B.'s living room to work on the staysail, as well as to finish stitching on the remaining jibs.

A Helping Hand

The inner forestay is in the mail, and the structural reinforcements are nearing completion (more on that in a separate post). The only problem? Until a few days ago, we had no staysail to hoist in a real blow, when our storm jib starts looking rather oversized for the job. Meet Richard Fawcett.

Richard comparing boats

Modifying the sails - Part 2

After my previous entry on our motivations, here is an update on the work we have done so far modifying our sails for hanks.

Unpicking the old stiching

The sails we have are fitted with boltropes for the luff foil. There are 3 ropes sewed into the luff of each sail. As the grommets to take the new hanks have to be at the very leading edge of the sail, that means two of the ropes had to be removed.

Tired after the first sail. 7 to go...

Modifying the sails - Part 1

Why are we modifying the sails?

While the weather has been too cold and wet to work on the boat we have been spending our time stiching, unpicking, sewing and hammering our sails. This was quite a large job, and, once started offered no chance to go back! In short, it seems plausible you may be wondering why we are doing this?

New stainless grommets

Old...

... and new