In fact, we have seen more and more boats converting to this rig. In 1998, we bit the bullet and installed a big Furlex 300S furler on the inner forestay. While I was hoisting, Maryann would start to trim the sail while it thrashed about and threatened to tie its sheets in knots. By this time, mind you, it would always be blowing 30 knots or more, and headed upwind, the foredeck would be pretty wet and wild. Setting the sail required unzipping the storage bag, hooking on the halyard, then going back to the mast to raise the sail. I dreaded going on the foredeck to set the staysail, and often put it off until far too late. I merely reefed the genoa before tacking to make it easier to pass between the inner forestay and the headstay. On the few occasions when we tacked upwind in light air-offshore, you might go days without tacking, even when the goal was dead to windward. In practice, we never removed the inner forestay. With the inner forestay on a release lever, I could remove the forestay to make it easier to tack the fairly large genoa when not using the staysail. When it started to blow hard, we would furl the headsail, and I would go forward to raise the staysail, which was kept hanked on in a bag at the inner forestay. My thinking was that the big genoa would be useful in light air, and could be reefed for heavier air. I would call this an adaptation of the coastal cruising rig, with a nod towards offshore sailing. We had a relatively large (135%) roller-furling genoa, and a removable inner forestay with a fairly small, hank-on heavy-weather staysail. When we left Rhode Island in 1997, westbound round the world, Calypso’s foretriangle was a bit of a compromise. For safety, convenience, and performance, the only choice for the foretriangle configuration on most boats is the double-headsail rig, with a relatively small roller-furling genoa on the headstay, and a roller-furling heavy staysail on an inner forestay. There’s one tenet of cruising dogma, however, that we have found to be so true so repeatedly that we are convinced of its validity. What we’ve found is that given careful preparation and a modicum of good luck, you can sail around the world in almost anything. Others scoff at anything so old-fashioned, and say that a modern, lightweight boat is the only way to go. There are those who claim that the only suitable offshore boat is a deep, heavy, traditional boat with a long keel. One lesson we learned during our circumnavigation was the danger of the dogmatic approach to almost anything, from the choice of a boat to the selection of a rig.
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