Loose Foot vs. Attached — What's Best?

"Racing sailors in particular are keenly aware that once the breeze pipes up, you need to make certain adjustments to keep your sail shape optimized. With a mainsail, that begins with tweaking the halyard to achieve a luff tension that's in the ballpark for the given conditions. Then—if your boat has a standard Marconi rig—you'll begin making adjustments to the backstay, outhaul, and cunningham to fine-tune the sail's overall shape. Of course, the most frequent adjustments are made using the traveler and the mainsheet, and on board the most aggressively raced sailboats, the latter is rarely cleated."

"Of all these controls, perhaps the one most overlooked by non-racing sailors is the outhaul. Most boat owners follow the 'set it and forget it' approach with this control line. But a properly attended outhaul can afford you surprising control over the lower portion of most mainsails. I say most mainsails because there are different design approaches to the foot section of these sails. On the vast majority of mainsails, you either have a foot that's attached to the boom via slides or a bolt rope, or you have what is known as a loose-footed arrangement wherein just the tack and some portion of the clew are attached."

Off Season Sail Care

"Most boat owners know to winterize their engines, send messenger lines up the rig to keep their halyards out of the elements, and generally batten things down for the off season. But fewer are aware of the important steps required for properly storing sails. Too often, mainsails are left on the boom, and roller-furling headsails left wrapped around the headstay for the duration of the winter. This kind of exposure to mother nature will ultimately lessen the lifespan of those sails."

"Most sailors know the damage that continuous exposure to ultra-violet radiation can do to sails. But keep in mind that the heat from the sun can also be damaging, and it's difficult to gauge. The ambient temperature might be 95 degrees in the boatyard, but it's not uncommon for the surface temperature on an object — say a mainsail under its cover on a boom—to be 115 degrees. The cumulative effect of days spent in that kind of heat will be structural damage."