They Theirs wrote:ALX357
Sounds like you know your boat and your sailing comfort. I believe the Hunter 22 is a Masthead rig which gets most of its drive from the larger headsail (headstay to top of the Mast) Your X is a Fractional Rig, which produces most of their drive from the Mainsail. The Fractional rigged X is known for balancing better with the Mainsail and headsail. Sailing Baldheaded with main alone is a benefit of the fractional rigged sloop, as the Mainsail is much easier to handle than bringing a genoa around. Sailing with a genoa suffers from a poor sheeting angle (Having to sheet around the large spreaders and the wide chain plates mounted outboard) but is further compounded as the boat will not point well, being a tender boat with a high freeboard, a genoa with a poor sheeting angle, the excess heeling brings a considerable tendency to round up and encumber tacking and pointing.
Maintaining a better sheeting angle (use the #3 working Jib, as it is able to sheet inside the upper and lower with the wide chain plate shroud rigging and swept back spreader. Some have a second Jib track, spaced somewhat outboard, providing options for a better sheeting angle when reaching with the jib.
I like the idea of having a high clew. There is always something about improving your view and confidence, that makes deck sweeping sail performance less desirable for day sailing and cruising, but sails are horsepower and sails cut full hoist improve performances.
Ted Brewer in Good Old Boat March 2005, stated that boat designers in the 1950s through 1970s, himself included, were influenced by ocean racing design rules. These rules ignored the advantages of fractional rigs because there was a rating advantage in going with a smaller-sail-area mast head arrangement. His controversial article claims that vessels designed in this time period were purposefully under canvassed for ocean-racing-rating advantage and that Genoas became popular because they represented a way of getting more suitable sail area on these designs. Genoas provided a loop hole in the design rules in other words. A Genoa is usually 50 percent larger than the standard jib for that vessel.
Today many view mast head sloops as ocean crossing vessels and fractional rig vessels inappropriate for that work. But there are no physics supporting this belief. Mast head sloop rigging is an artifact of ocean racer design rules and nothing more because a fractional rig sloop can assume mast head configuration just by reefing.
Brewer states that - in the absence of the design rules - there will be a trend to smaller head sails and larger mains (like on the M). His statements are based on old head sail technology, however.
Prior to 1999, head sails on rollers did not include necessary reinforcement so that they could be rolled in further than jib size. This meant that it was easier to reef the main when conditions warranted that. Because head sails like those standard on a MacGregor Yacht can be rolled to storm sail size, they are easier to reef than the main. This is probably true on most sloops with roller reefing (as opposed to furling) systems. They also can be rolled in while tacking and backed out again so that there is no disadvantage (in comparison to a jib) in maneuvering. Brewer in Good Old Boat August 2005 argues against roller furling head sails in smaller offshore yachts. He challenges his readers to disagree, which I now do.
The added weight aloft of the roller mechanism is minimal (about the amount of a pulley). There is no problem there. Rolled head sails can be removed from their stays just as a sail using a tuff luff is. It need not remain on the stay as Brewer implies. In fact, sailors now know to remove the sails from the rollers even when in port during storms and hurricanes. The owners manual for the Mac26x instructs operators to drop the mast in extreme conditions. This is analogous to chopping down masts which captains would order when caught in extreme conditions during the days of commercial sail. This valuable heavy weather technique is not available to a vessel with a keel mounted aluminum mast. Deck stepped masts are superior when such mounting allows the mast to be dropped.
The only potential disadvantage to a rolled Genoa on the Mac26x is that when the Genoa is rolled in to a smaller size there might be a decrease in performance. However, a rolled head sail is like a vertical batten, its performance might be better in some conditions and often reduced performance is not a concern when the objective is to depower anyway.
The Tape Drive sail currently on my boat has padding in that virtical batten so that its shape is proper even when partially rolled in. The idea that a storm jib can be positioned low to the deck is silly when you think of sea spray that requires the storm jib to be raised anyway. Macgregor Yachts instructs its operators to use the rolled Genoa as a storm jib.
I will say that most folks are sailing the San Juans with Genoa only. The boats like the M will sail main sail only because of balance. On the X you achieve ballance by retracting the swing keel. That can be done I suspect to some extent on the M but the centerboard on the X really is an upwind performance item when fitted with a 150 Genoa. This is because the extra head sail area allows you to wrap around the shrouds for better pointing.
Anyway. I hope these comments are helpfull. The X really is not a beginner's boat. Beginners often are trained on keel boats not because that is the best training for the new sailor but because it is easy on the instructor who can move crew to different positions without fear of thrills.
I would love comments on the above. A good sailor always gets his/her information from more than one source. When fitted with a 150 Genoa, the X rig's main sail becomes the Genoa because it is the largest sail. This changes much about sailing technique.
Frank L. Mighetto
One problem, and the solution I think......
