Now that we have the standing rigging in place, let’s ‘bend’ those sails!
OUR SAILS
Antara has a single mast, on which the Mainsail is put up while the big headsail, the Genoa, is put on a furler around the fore stay. She also has a shorter stay on which we plan to put a smaller headsail, the Jib, as soon as we can. Our sails are made of a material called Dacron, the most commonly used sail cloth material.
You can see the furled Genoa and the lowered main sail in this image:
Pictured below is Antara sailing out of Pawas Bay, Ratnagiri. The sail in front is the Genoa and the one behind the mast is the Mainsail.
PARTS OF A SAIL
Both the main and headsails are triangular in shape with three sides named Luff, Leach and Foot. The narrow top of a sail is the Head while the wide bottom is the Foot. The edge attached to the mast/ forestay is called the luff and its lower end the tack. The third side of the triangle is called the Leech and its lower end the Clew.
MAINSAIL
Antara’s Mainsail is attached to the mast; with one end attached to the aft of the boom, away from the mast. In the previous newsletter I mentioned that the aft side of the mast has a track and a series of sliders for fitting and raising the Mainsail. The Mainsail, manufactured by North Sails, is stitched with many panels, to give the sail right shape with rows of sewing for added strength at the edges and corners. Battens at intervals along the height of the sail help give it the desired shape.
Sails help propel a sail boat using wind energy. As the wind speed increases, the wind energy on the sails increases proportionately. Beyond a certain wind speed the boat can get overpowered causing serious damage. The only way to deal with increased wind speed is to reduce the size of the sail so as to reduce the force of the wind on the boat. The process is called reefing the sail. There are different ways to reef a sail such as mast reefing, boom reefing or the simplest and most uncomplicated, used on Antara: slab reefing.
When the winds increase, we lower Antara’s mainsail in two stages. The triangular sail shape ensures that it’s size is reduced from the top and aft simultaneously. Reducing the top area prevents the boat from heeling (tilting to one side) too much; while reducing the aft area reduces the boat’s tendency to turn into the wind. This in turn reduces the amount of rudder required to keep her on course, reducing the drag in the water and making her sail better.
Depending on the wind speed we can use one or both reefs on Antara. The image below has Antara sailing, in Mumbai harbour, with one reef on the Mainsail and the Genoa furled up.
GENOA
Our headsail, the Genoa, is fitted on a furler mounted on the forestay. In the Clipper Race, of which I sailed a leg in 2017-18, we had multiple headsails which we had to change often to suit the varying wind speeds. These sails were hanked on to the forestay; so for any sail change the crew had to go forward to the bow, often in heavy weather, to manually pull the sail down, take it off the forestay and replace it with the new sail. Thankfully we have a furler on Antara which can furl or unfurl the headsail from the safety and comfort of the cockpit.
FUNCTIONAL SAILS
Besides these two sails, most boats also use large, light sails for downwind sailing in light winds: the spinnaker and the gennaker; and, a small sail for bad weather called the storm jib. We don’t have the large sails yet, but the orange storm jib was mandatory for our registration.
Once the sails are up, she’s a dream to sail on; have a look…
Antara and her sails are also the inspiration for a lot of my paintings.
And of course, Antara herself is inspired by Dilip’s circumnavigation: Project Sagarparikrama.
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