Gale Sails!

      Or, The Inventor is One Clever Dude!

One important strategy if you get caught in a storm is to have less sail up. It makes sense – if the wind is pushing and pulling your boat harder, it will take less sail area to move the boat when the wind is strong. If you have too much sail up for the weather conditions, we say that your boat is “over-powered.” The boat will heel too much, travel sideways as well as forward, and, if the situation becomes serious, become significantly unstable. It could even tip over a full 90 degrees (called a "knockdown"), possibly damaging the rig and with the real risk of injury to you and your crew. The bow can swing around wildly with the boat rocking forward and backward as well as side to side, an unpleasant ride. It’s important to reduce the amount of sail you have up if you’re in a significant storm – and to me, “significant” means any storm where your standard sail plan overpowers your boat.

In addition to reducing sail surface, reducing the size of both sails helps to keep the boat in balance. When the boat is in balance, the amount of sail up matches the weather conditions, and the headsail and mainsail are working well together. Neither one is too big. A boat that is in balance will respond more reliably to the helm and give the people on the boat a more comfortable ride. You might not think that is important, but some storms last a long time (we had a big storm here about seven weeks ago that lasted for hours), and seasickness is more than nausea – it can make you dizzy and even disoriented. It can seriously incapacitate you or valued crew members. I know a skipper who actually tied a crew member to the mast for her own safety once when she became so seasick, and so disoriented, that the rest of the crew was afraid she might not be able to keep herself on the boat.

On most boats, it should be easy to reduce the size of your mainsail with a good reefing system. The headsail, however, can be more problematical. If you have a hank-on sail, it means going forward, taking the old sail off, and raising the new sail. That’s going to be tricky if you’re by yourself, and best done before the wind picks up (which may happen before the full storm hits you.)

If you have a roller furler, you have different choices. It can be tricky to change sails. You can usually partially furl your headsail, but if you do that often, it is likely to deform your headsail in a significant way, stretching it out and making a pouch in it where there should not be one. Sail fabric near the clew is very stretchy because it’s on the bias, and it will stretch out, especially in a strong wind.

On my boat (and many other boats of that era), it’s more complicated. My roller furler cannot be partially furled. Even if I wanted to take that step, I could not. No matter how you secure the lines, it will fully deploy, a bad thing to have happen in a storm.

But in addition, on boats where the headsail can be partially furled, one has to use the furling line to keep it partially deployed, and that line takes a lot of strain in a storm. Unfortunately, one has to use small-diameter line for the furling line because it all has to fit on the drum. It’s not as strong as thicker line. Sometimes that line breaks, and then you will have an uncontrolled headsail in a storm, not a good situation.

My solution is the ATN Gale Sail. To use a Gale Sail, you completely furl your roller furler, wrapping it only once and letting the sheets hang straight down. The Gale Sail has a leading edge that wraps around the roller furler and is secured with stout barrel clasps. A pendant attaches it at the bottom (I use stainless steel hardware through a hole already drilled into the anchor roller). Five barrel clasps (on my sail) wrap the orange leading edge securely around the roller furler. A spare halyard or spinnaker halyard is used at the top.

 The ATN Gale sail, with its trademark orange

wrap-around luff, deployed

I tested mine last week when we were having a lot of wind. I had an injured back, so although my main was reefed, I did not raise it. While waiting for a bridge to open I was in a wide, deep space, and I sailed the boat around using just the 60 sq ft Gale Sail, the size recommended for my boat.

I was impressed with two things. First of all, it was remarkably easy to handle the sail in the 25 mph winds I was experiencing. My 135% headsail by comparison is a real handful under those conditions and takes considerable strength to manage, even with self-tailing winches and a good winch handle.

More impressively, that very small sail moved my boat at up to 4 knots. What this means is that the sail can pull its weight and really help keep the boat balanced in higher winds.

The Gale Sail does have one drawback: it isn’t a piece of cake to put up (the advertising suggests otherwise). You had better pay attention to the weather and give yourself time to get it deployed, and practice using it before you need to. The more wind a sail is designed to take, the heavier the fabric used is, and the Gale Sail fabric is stout and extremely stiff. It’s tricky to learn how to maneuver the barrel bolts and it won’t go up quickly the first time you use it.

I suggest you use snatch blocks if you can to guide your sheets back to the cockpit. If your boat has rear blocks, as mine does, make sure the sheets you put on your Gale Sail are long enough to use them, because that rear block assures that whatever line you’re using will come to the winch at the proper angle, helping to avoid winch wraps. A winch wrap would be a dangerous complication in a significant storm, another reason to practice how you’re going to handle this sail.

My Gale Sail folds easily and easily fits in its storage bag.

I go a little for the overkill when it comes to safety, and I will keep the Gale Sail on deck, lashed to the starboard lifelines (I keep all obstacles, including spare rope, fenders, etc., on the starboard side, and then know I can always go up the port side unimpeded.) I don’t want to have to use precious time going below and digging it out from under a settee.

I am going to practice with it more and will post an update about how fast I can reasonably expect to get the sail up by myself. Even sailing with someone else, that person would be on the helm while I was putting this sail up. Unless three people are on the boat, I could not be certain I would have help with it.

I am not unequivocally recommending the Gale Sail over other solutions. Most people won’t practice putting it up and might not have enough time to get it up, especially if they haven’t been paying attention to the weather (and unfortunately, many people do not).

A quicker solution is to use a staysail on a second forestay between the mast and the bow, but this is also complicated. That second forestay has to be installed properly, and the added stresses on the mast have to be accounted for. You can’t just put another stay on your boat, then put a sail on it in storm conditions, and not look at the effect on your overall rigging.

However, if you choose this option, you can then have a hank-on sail already latched on to the stay and held over to the side with a bungee (it would be the starboard side on my boat to keep the port side clear) if you anticipate possible bad weather. In a sudden storm, you can get a hank-on sail up faster than you can get a Gale Sail over your roller furler. There’s absolutely no doubt about it.

A staysail has another advantage because its position, slightly closer to the mast, can be a more effective spot for a storm sail than one deployed from your forestay or attached to your roller furler. However, that advantage may be a small one, important if you are a racer but less significant if your goal is simply to get through a storm as comfortably and safely as possible.

If you don’t have a roller furler, the Gale Sail is not suitable for you. But you can have a smaller headsail secured and ready by your forestay. You may even have room enough on the forestay to have that smaller headsail at least partially hanked on before you leave the dock. That depends on the cut of the headsail you use most of the time.

Before making a choice, educate yourself fully regarding how you want to modify your sails in a storm. Don’t just take someone’s word that you “have” to have a staysail, or that hank on headsails are “best,” or that the ATN Gale Sail is the right answer for everyone.

The important thing is to have a storm plan. If it’s warm enough for most people to be sailing, there will often be at least a small chance of a storm. See my soon-to-be-finished entry titled “Storm!” Only a 30% chance of storms was forecasted for that day. It wasn’t typically a time of year where we experience strong storms here. But we experienced a very significant storm that lasted for hours with very little warning. Storms happen, so have a well-thought-out plan.

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