Waiata loves sailing wing on wing (or Goose-wing for those brits out there) when the wind is directly behind.

We’ve developed a few skills about keeping it all going and keeping it manageable.. so here are some tips.

We go wing on wing with the Asymmetric and our Genoa. Attempting it with the mainsail is always fraught with problems, not the biggest of which is that the mainsail on a L450 will not go very far out before the sail is hitting the shrouds, you can’t get it flat. We often just take it down once the wind comes back further than 130 degrees.

• Sheet the Asmetric on the down wind side if there is a bias
• Keep the luff rope tight as if sailing upwind, loosening the luff will allow it to float more and will upset the wing on wing.
• Pull your Genoa out on the windward side to allow you to get to the clew only
• Tie a Spinnaker sheet lead from the spinnaker blocks and outside the shrouds onto the Genoa clew (sheeted as if it were a Asmetric)
• Tie it with a very long bowline, so that you can, if you need to, release it from the deck even when the clew might be flying quite a way out.
• To accomplish this we leave the lazy sheet attached to the Asym, but remove it from the winch and block and tie it off on the rail ready for reuse if we need to reverse the situation.
• Take the tension onto the outside sheet and release the Genoa lines (allowing them enough line to be free, but closing the clutch so they don’t pull too much through).
• The air from the windward side will spill down the Genoa and across the inside of the Asym (hence having a tight luff rope to keep that tucked in front of the forestay) and will stabilise and fill the Asym.

I am sure the Asym is doing all the actual work, but the Genoa is acting as a stabiliser and shovelling air into it.

With this setup we can reach as high as 150 degrees apparent before we have problems and have, amazingly, done better than wind speed with a little current helping out. We try to ensure the Genoa is windward biased so that if the wind moves forward its only the Genoa we have to deal with which is an easy, release the Spinnaker sheet from its clew, take control with the Genoa sheet and furl it in. Re-route the Lazy Asymmetric sheet we took of the winch and we’re back to Asymmetric alone.

NOTE: we do not do this with the main up, it just disturbs the air and creates issues.