Every point of sail. The one you use most.
Sails
Five sails. One boat record.
Every sail starts in the same place: your boat, how you sail it, and what the cloth must survive out there.
Find your boatChoose the sail
Five sails.
Upwind and reaching. Jib, genoa, storm jib.
Headsails
A furling genoa suits most cruising boats. A foam luff helps if you often sail it part-furled.
Tight reaching in light air.
Code Zero
Works best when it can be tacked well forward — a bowsprit or a suitable fitting. Worth checking what your boat can carry before you choose one.
Cruising downwind, short-handed.
Gennakers
A good single downwind sail for cruising, and the easier one to handle with a small crew.
Racing downwind, with crew.
Spinnakers
Symmetric spinnakers work best with a pole and crew. Short-handed, a gennaker is usually the simpler answer.How you sail
The same boat, three different answers.
Usage is what the sail is designed to do. It is not the same question as how strongly it is built, or which cloth it is cut from — those are separate choices, and the configurator keeps them separate.
Cruising
Coastal and long-distance cruising, often short-handed.
- Design goal
- Reliable, durable, easy to handle, low maintenance.
- The question it answers
- How long will it last, how easily does it handle, and how simply can it be repaired?
Performance Cruising
You cruise, but you also care how the boat goes.
- Design goal
- Better shape holding and performance, without giving up cruising durability.
- The question it answers
- How far into the breeze does the shape hold, and what does that cost in weight and in life?
Racing
Racing, from club level upward.
- Design goal
- Race performance, weight, shape holding and rating targets.
- The question it answers
- What wind range, what weight, how adjustable, and what does the rule allow?
Cloth and construction
Three ways to build the same sail.
Panelled
Cloth cut into panels and stitched. The seams carry load across the sail. Proven, repairable anywhere, and the least expensive.
Laminate
Film and fibre bonded into a sheet, then cut into panels. Holds shape longer than woven cloth for the same weight.
Membrane
Fibre laid continuously along the load paths, then bonded into one surface. No seams carrying load. Holds shape longest.
Four decisions
Four questions, not one.
These are separate on purpose. A cruising sail built to a heavy standard in a performance laminate is a perfectly sensible thing to want, and collapsing the four into a single good-better-best ladder would make it impossible to ask for.
- 01 · Sail typeWhich sail. Mainsail, headsail, Code Zero, gennaker or spinnaker.
- 02 · UsageWhat it is designed to do. Cruising, Performance Cruising or Racing.
- 03 · Build StandardHow strongly it is built. Standard, or Heavy-Duty where the rules call for it.
- 04 · ClothWhat it is cut from. Woven, laminate or membrane, in the weight the sail needs.
Storm sails are not a sixth category.
They replace the sail they stand in for.
Where it starts
Your boat decides more than you'd think.
Rig dimensions, sail area, what your mast and boom already carry — most of the sail is settled before you choose anything. What's left is the short list only you can see.
Find your boatCloth
The cloth decides how long it holds its shape.
Dacron, laminate and membrane aren't a good-better-best ladder. They're three answers to different questions about how you sail, and how long you want the shape to last.
Construction and materials
A human check
A sailmaker reads every order.
Whichever sail you configure, the same check happens: dimensions, fittings, hardware, and whether the thing will actually go on your boat.
How buying works