That means that even when you’re sailing deep angles, the luff of the sail sets well to windward and is able to catch more breeze that would have passed to windward of the boat. Sailmakers have managed to design these asymmetric sails so that they have more volume aloft. Most modern catamarans choose to fly an asymmetric spinnaker and tack it to the weather bow. The wide deck platform provides outboard sheeting points that makes downwind sails more efficient and the windward hull provides a tack location when sailing deeper angles is desired. Our preferred downwind sail is the assymmetrical spinnaker but a wing-on-wing configuration with dual head sails is very effective and, in many cases, safer and easier to handle for shorthanded crew. Therefor a regular cruising cat, much like a monohull, needs a lot of sail area and has to sail deep downwind if it is to achieve a decent speed made good (VMG), typically between 160° and 170°. But multihulls offer a unique wide platform for setting and sheeting downwind sails that set it apart from monohulls and make it a lot easier to sail downwind. Whether a monohull or multihull, sailing dead downwind doesn’t usually make great VMG (velocity made good), because the apparent wind speed (AWS) is limited to true wind speed (TWS) minus your speed over the ground (SOG.) So, generating any apparent wind to help increase wind speed, is impossible. Performance cats are a different animal of course. Like on monohulls, you will pretty much sail to hull speed provided your catamaran is not overloaded. It is the same downwind route that we took when we sailed our own boat back from France to the Caribbean in November 2019.Īlthough sailing downwind in the trades in a cruising boat has its challenges, it is a relatively pleasant and fairly easy experience on a catamaran. Assuming that your catamaran is a regular production cat like a Leopard, Bali or Lagoon, well equipped with cruising gear, you’ll perform much the same way as an equivalent monohull with either a conventional symmetrical spinnaker or asymmetric sail. One such migration is from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean across the Atlantic Ocean in November / December every year from east to west. Because the Earth is warmer at the equator and colder at the poles, and because of Earth’s rotation, this flow is generally westerly (from the west) near the poles and easterly nearer the equator.Įvery season there is a migration of cruising boats that follow the trades when the trade winds are steady. It does not store any personal data.There is a more-or-less continuous flow of air across the Atlantic called the trade winds. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Performance'. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Necessary'. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Functional'. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Analytics'. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. If you are fractionally and your mast is strong enough to take the lateral loads of a masthead code zero, you can gain a lot of sail area vs a genoa. Hard on the wind, your genoa will be much more efficient, and your VMG will be better. The objective is to optimize reaching at relatively tight angles to the wind. Talk to your sailmaker and discuss the pros and cons of a fractional, overlapping headsail boat using a code zero vs a flat A3. In cases like this, it can be more efficient from cost and rating perspectives to go with a very flat A3 that you can carry at very tight angles, particularly if the sail has a Kevlar luff rope to get the luff nice and firm.

Also, code zeros add extra points to your IRC rating. In reality, this is not a significant gain, and it is hard to justify the extra expense of the sail and systems for this incremental sail area. Typically, a fractional code zero would only add about 25% to the sail area compared with a genoa. If the fractional headsails are overlapping, then the extra sail area gained by setting a code zero will only make a slight difference.

Rigging a code zero sail