August 25, 2016
I was thinking about our most recent passage – we put up our double reefed main when we left New Zealand and didn’t touch it until we took it down when we arrived in New Caledonia. All in all, it was a very comfortable passage.
We haven’t used our full mainsail in quite some time. Legacy is easily driven. If the wind is light, the extra sail just flops around and doesn’t really help anything (maybe that wouldn’t be the case in flat water, but flat water is just an urban legend!).
More importantly to us, it seems that as you apply energy to the boat (wind on sails), after a point somewhere around hull speed, the boat speed increases very little but the discomfort shoots way up. I’m pretty sure that all the extra energy that isn’t used for speed is converted directly to misery and suffering. -Rich
