After our experience on Yeoman on the Fastnet one of the crew had a good idea about how to set a trysail effectively. After reading one of the books about the Sydney Hobart race a few years ago I took away the thought that tying the boom down on deck caused damage and some safety issues and if possible it was better not to have to do this. A few boats had problems when the booms were lashed to weather and the helm as a result couldn’t see the waves coming from the weather side. Waves hit the boom and broke it loose taking out stanchions, helm stations and people.

 So when we went to hoist the trysail we sheeted it to the end of the boom using the outhaul which we had pre set while at the dock. What I didn’t think about was that the outhaul didn’t have enough slack in it to allow the trysail to be ‘flogged’ while luff tension was taken up so instead you had to use the mainsheet to let the boom out but the boom was really low and therefore was a bit dangerous. We did get it effectively hoisted but it then pulled out of the track due to an over size luff rope – a different issue all together.

 So the idea that was put forward and makes sense is to put grommets in the luff and wool the trysail passing the wool through these grommets and around the rolled up sail. You would then store the trysail as a banded snake. Using a reef line you have unreaved from reef 1 you tie that to the clew before hoisting the sausage up the main track. After getting the luff tensioned how you want it you then pull the reef line to unband and ‘sheet’ the trysail. When I next have the undesirable chance to try it out I will tell you if it works in reality.