The Bosun
Question: When is a storm jib not a storm jib?
Answer: When it’s a staysail. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The confusion arises from the sneaky attempts by super-competitive offshore crews to exploit an ambiguous rule, and the attempts by the rule-makers to then close that loophole.
This gets complicated, so please pay close attention.
Storm sails – trysail and storm jib – are mandated safety equipment for any major ocean race. Made from heavy material and brightly coloured for visibility in emergencies, their role is to make it possible for yachts to keep sailing when conditions are so extreme that racing is secondary and survival becomes the primary concern. As such, they are not measured and rated as part of a boat’s handicap number.
That’s entirely fair, or at least it was fair until canny skippers realised they could set their storm jibs as ‘free’ extra sail area on an inner forestay, or with the luff hauled tight on a halyard. This practice of deploying storm jibs as unrated staysails soon became common. Owners ordered pretend ‘storm jibs’ made from lighter cloth, some even with square tops and battens. The abuse of the loophole was blatant.
Last November, the Oceanic and Offshore Committee of World Sailing responded with a rule change (OSR Rule 4.27.1). It states: “A storm jib may not be set in conjunction with any other sail set forwards of the forward mast spar”. In other words, you can’t now hoist a storm jib while any jibs, genoas or spinnakers are still set. There are additional conditions banning battens, and setting minimum strength standards for the cloth. The option to carry a legitimate, and rated, staysail remains.
Simple? Not quite. National authorities and organising clubs can set their own equipment compliance standards, and even choose when to introduce a World Sailing rule change. Shortly before the last Sydney-Hobart Race, which starts on December 26, the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia applied for, and was granted, temporary dispensation from the new storm jib rule – not from WS, but from the IRC office in the UK. That waiver, ever so conveniently, extended until December 31 (by which time the bulk of the fleet had finished).
It also seems that, in practice, the rule is sometimes applied on a discretionary basis – or is not enforced at all. The storm-jib-as-staysail trick has been used in regatta events this year (see: picture, above, of Wild Oats X competing in a recent Category 3 series). A conventional J5 is more efficient, and legal, but has to be included in a boat’s rating. At the Grand Prix level, any ‘click’ saved is precious.
Laying aside the questionable principle of allowing the IRC, a ratings agency, to determine what is a safety issue, there is another – albeit extreme – loophole. What if a clever sailmaker made a trysail that could be set as a staysail?
