Main Sail and Mast Musings

Against my better judgement, when I purchased the Astus 20.2, I elected to stay with the stock Dacron sails. The expensive option would have been the mylar sails. The Dacron main has five full battons. The mylar mainsail holds it wing shape without battons, obviously faster upwind and rolls up more compact than the Dacron sails. I read as much as I could about the Astus before making the purchase. I sailed Windrider's 20.2 sport model demo a few times in Sarasota. And from what I could determine, the Dacron sails were really ok for my type of leisurely cruising sailing style. Two other owners in Florida have the mylar sails on the same model but sport boat, and they are really after maximum performance when going out.

So as previously written in this blog, I struggled with getting the main sail down, confidently in short order when by myself. On the bolt rope, I could get the main up in a about 10 seconds rolling off the boom. Getting the main down was a sorry affair by my self. An on more than one occasion, dumped the main right into the companion way just to get it down in a hurry.

Then came the sail slide modifications, which worked pretty well. Had to fashion lazy jack lines. That was ok and not pretty. I studied the various sail slide systems then commissioned Masthead Enterprises to add Bainbridge sail slides, and also change the baton caps to accept the slides. Ten came lazy jack lines. I lashed up a pair of microblocks to both port and starboard spreaders to support the lazy jack lines. It worked, but just did not give me confidence.Then came the lazy jack bag. I commissioned Masthead again for a red lazy jack bag. Now that looks sharp and works well. However, I was having a time getting the main sail fully up. Seemed to go up reasonably well when pointed exactly nose up into the wind, but trimarans do not like to go directly into the wind. When attempted, the boat will stall in irons, then start sailing backward, then point somewhere else, and that's not pretty with the main not quite up there. With the help of a very experience sailor friend, I determined that baton caps had a bad habit of jamming on the way up, The sail pushing forward on the mast was jamming the baton cap slides sideways creating enough friction to prevent the sail from easily going fully up. After the top slides, the next three down are on baton caps. Literally, what a drag. That was the problem, the baton slides jamming, and not so much when pointed nose into the wind.