Adam Loory
August 10, 2021
Trimming a staysail properly has been made difficult on newer boats. To save weight, in terms of deck hardware, many boats don’t have a lot of choices on where to trim staysails to. Older boats had tracks or toe rails that allowed for infinite sheeting positions. Most modern boats, however, only have a few pad-eyes placed on the rail, and most of the time they are not in the right spot. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve the right leech tension on a staysail. You just have to be a little creative.

A twing or a tweaker (two names for the same thing), can be used to deflect the sheet to the proper angle to trim the leech and the foot properly. When I set my spinnaker staysail in the 2020 Vineyard race, we noticed that the pad-eye to which we had initially sheeted (in front of the shrouds) was too far forward. The result was that it made the leech of the staysail too tight, while the foot of the sail was too loose. The next pad-eye aft sheeted the foot too tight and the leech too loose.

To create a midpoint sheeting angle and fix this problem, we led the sheet to the more aft of the two pad-eyes and then deflected the sheet down with a tweaker set up from the forward pad-eye.

You can determine that the trimming angle is correct the same way you would determine if the genoa sheet lead cars are in the right place on the track – get the upper, middle, and lower luff telltales to stearm the same.

Since the staysail block is not on a track, you have to change the angle of the sheet with tweakers or twings which is probably an easier adjustment than moving a jib car on a track. Give it a try and see how this will work for you.Trimming a staysail properly has been made difficult on newer boats. To save weight, in terms of deck hardware, many boats don’t have a lot of choices on where to trim staysails to. Older boats had tracks or toe rails that allowed for infinite sheeting positions. Most modern boats, however, only have a few pad-eyes placed on the rail, and most of the time they are not in the right spot. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve the right leech tension on a staysail. You just have to be a little creative.

A twing or a tweaker (two names for the same thing), can be used to deflect the sheet to the proper angle to trim the leech and the foot properly. When I set my spinnaker staysail in the 2020 Vineyard race, we noticed that the pad-eye to which we had initially sheeted (in front of the shrouds) was too far forward. The result was that it made the leech of the staysail too tight, while the foot of the sail was too loose. The next pad-eye aft sheeted the foot too tight and the leech too loose.

To create a midpoint sheeting angle and fix this problem, we led the sheet to the more aft of the two pad-eyes and then deflected the sheet down with a tweaker set up from the forward pad-eye.

You can determine that the trimming angle is correct the same way you would determine if the genoa sheet lead cars are in the right place on the track – get the upper, middle, and lower luff telltales to stearm the same.

Since the staysail block is not on a track, you have to change the angle of the sheet with tweakers or twings which is probably an easier adjustment than moving a jib car on a track. Give it a try and see how this will work for you.