COMMENT
SOMETIMES THERE’S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED TRYSAIL – BUT IT’S NOT JUST FOR STORMY WEATHER
When it comes to sailing I’m not much of a traditionalist. Yes, centuries-old customs and ways of doing things often have some logic behind them. But tradition can also come with baggage. Even if meant with the best intent, being steadfastly traditional can reinforce how sailing has historically been exclusionary and elitist. When it comes to finding solutions, saying ‘This is the way we do it because it’s the way we’ve always done it’ is not sound reasoning, nor is it welcoming to a newcomer. So I try to keep an open mind to new ideas and perspectives.
Originally, this column was to be called ‘Why the trysail is dead’. But two weeks before I wrote it I was test sailing 59° North’s freshly refitted Farr 65 Falken and found myself flying that seemingly outdated fluorescent orange sail from the mast’s dedicated trysail track. Even more surprisingly, it wasn’t a training exercise – I was flying it because I chose to, or at least, because I had to.
I’ve never actually used a trysail for which it is designed: to keep the boat sailing and the bow to the wind in heavy weather. So in this regard I could uphold my argument that the trysail is indeed superfluous. Almost every boat I’ve sailed offshore has had a main with the option to put in a 50% or smaller third reef, and that has been my ‘go-to’ storm set up. I find it a hassle to rig the trysail in calm weather before a Fastnet Race start. So the thought of doing it all in a Force 10 – figuring out how long the tack strop should be, fiddling around with loading the cars into the maintrack, and then problem solving how to lead the sheets back to the aft quarters without decapitating the helmsperson – felt like it would be too much of a struggle to ever be safer than just popping in reef No3 and pinching in the gusts.
I have used the trysail on a few occasions out of necessity – in the Southern Ocean rounding Tasmania, and a few months later in a hurricane in the North Pacific, both on the Clipper Race. And just recently, in the English Channel in a gradually diminishing 15 knots of wind. But my trysail flying career, excluding mandatory safety inspections and crew training exercises, has always been because I needed a replacement or supplementary mainsail.
On every occasion I’ve used it because either the mainsail or mast track has suffered damage that meant we couldn’t fly the main. So while photos of the time make it look as if I was being incredibly cautious, and that I had t
