The annoyingly confusing and contradictory sailmaker’s parlance can lead to a Kiwi’s Genny being a Brit’s Spinnaker and a Frenchman’s Spinak. A solent is not the water the separates the Isle of Wight from England, but a small jib, unless it’s a maxi-solent in which place takes the place of a genoa, which is normally a big jib. The confusion continues as each sail loft uses a different terms to describe their products, and sailmakers in the same company who work in different countries can use terms that are different again from their colleagues on the other side of the world.

Things have become further muddled in the last decade as ever increasing boat speed has lead to spinnakers becoming increasingly flatter and tight luffed, thereby encroaching on the territory of upwind sails. Indeed, the last America’s Cup provided an excellent example as the apparent wind angles while in VMG downwind mode would be more familiar to the average sailor while going upwind!

Should any of the terms thus far prove to be unfamiliar, I suggest reading Dee Caffari’s excellent guide to points of sail.

In an effort to clear the waters I have attached below a North Sails sail crossover chart, which looks a little like the product of a messy night between Andy Warhol and Microsoft Excel. It shows that as wind strength increases, upwind sails go from Wind Seeker to Light Jib, Medium, Heavy, J4, J5 whereas downwind trimmers will be ramping up from Asymmetric  Zero to A1, A2,A3, and A5 for when its really exciting.

The bit in the middle was traditionally taken care of by reaching sails like the a Jib Top or Genoa Staysail that are hoisted either inside a spinnaker or Jib when looking for extra horsepower with the wind on the beam. However, dedicated reaching sails, popularized by multihulls and IMOCA monohulls, are becoming more popular. Which brings us to the subject of Code Sails.

For simplicity’s sake, I will define a code sail as a tight luffed furling sail that is hoisted with its own stay (forestay) attached to its own luff. Given this, a Code Zero is a very flat sail with a completely straight luff that can be used in similar angles as a jib on the forestay in lightwinds and can generally be used down to 100 degrees true wind angle (TWA) for reaching when in stronger conditions. The other popular code sail, the Five, takes over from the zero as a reaching sail in lighter conditions and is used in place of a spinnaker (TWA 130-145) when in very strong conditions.

It is this last sail that I have just made for my Mini as I realised during the Mini Pavois race that I had too much of a gap between my smallest spinnaker, A5, and my code 0 to allow me to sail all the angles I needed when the wind was up.

I am fortunate to work on and off for Gerry Faram at Medina Sailcare who is the certified North Sails repair loft in Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Gerry, formerly a sailmaker for various America’s Cup programs for the two editions in New Zealand, and his team of Al and Ben run a great loft that look after the fancy rags of the IRC fleet that calls Cowes home. This is not the place to come for pearls of wisdom sotto voce, as Metallica plays loud if Al is DJ-ing and beer flows if its after 4pm. The work is top notch however and and Gerry is a Cowes institution.

Reports will on sail testing will follow, but its great to take pointy shards of spinnaker cloth and assemble them into a working sail. Thanks to North Sails for the design and Bainbridge International for the AIR-X 900 sailcloth.