Modern cruising boats rely on their roller furling genoas in a wide range of conditions and in a wide variety of wind angles. Gone are the days when cruisers changed the headsail every time the wind strength varied by 10 knots. Our roller furling headsail now has to do the job for us and has become a multi-purpose sail. But the development of smaller and even self-tacking headsails, and easy-to-use reaching and running sails, have changed the game in recent years.

Five leading sailmakers – Steve Cruse, a sales consultant for North Sails, Robbie Doyle, founder and president of Doyle Sails, Butch Ulmer, president of UK Halsey Sails, Bob Pattison, co-owner and technical director of Neil Pryde Sails and Dave Flynn, marketing director of Quantum Sails – were asked to cover what goes into a good, all-purpose headsail and what other options you may want to consider when building a headsail system for your boat.

A new generation of cruisers from builders such as Hanse have powerful mainsails and self-tacking jibs.How can you tell when it is time to replace your roller furling genoa?

Butch Ulmer: The life of a headsail will depend on its age and where it is used. After five years of sailing, it will be time to give the sail a thorough evaluation. For those with boats in the northern climates, where the season is short and UV is not such a problem, you may get a few more years. In southern climates, a sail gets used more and is exposed to more UV so it will deteriorate more quickly.

All sails require repairs from time to time, so the first thing I do when I take a sail into the loft to repair stitching or a tear is to pull the stitches or the tear to see how bad the thread or fabric might be. Like humans, sails tend to go gray as they age and that means the sail is getting weaker and is more likely to give problems.

The shape of the sail is another indicator. You can look up at the sail with the naked eye and see if it has lost its shape. Even better, you can take a lot of digital images of the sail and then use a program called AccuMeasure that can be downloaded from the UK Halsey website. Plug in the pictures and you get a good evaluation of the sail's shape.

Then there are the more subtle signs that a genoa is past its prime. Look at its performance. An old sail will be slower, it will cause more heel and it will not be as close winded as a new sail. A good test is to adjust halyard tension in a breeze. If the sail does not flatten out, it is ready to be replaced.

For both cruising and the occasional rally or race, what fabric would you recommend for a new genoa?

Robbie Doyle: I would prefer to build a sail that offers better performance, probably a laminated sail of about 130 percent that fits the roller furling unit and the deck configuration. The good thing about the composite sails with inlaid fibers is that you can engineer strength into the sail at the reefed positions.

I still prefer Vectran fiber sails since they hold their shape well and, even after five or six years, will give you better performance than a Dacron sail. A less expensive option is to use high quality cross-cut fabric such as Flex from Dimension Sail Cloth and then build a cross-cut sail design. With multiple threads to support the sail in both directions, this type of genoa holds its shape better and longer than a miter-cut or tri-radial Dacron sail.

When you consider the expense of fitting out a boat, it just makes sense to include a sail that will hold its shape for a long time and will perform well when you want to enter events or regattas. And, a well made laminated sail is still great for cruising, too.

What do you think of luff pads and other systems to help the sail maintain its shape as it is reefed?

Bob Pattison: Years ago, cruisers carried several headsails for different wind conditions. These days, sailors basically carry three sails aboard, a main, a genoa and a cruising chute, unless they plan to go offshore. Because of that the headsail has to be an all-purpose sail that has enough power for light airs but is built to be rolled up and reefed when the wind increases. I've read that in North America, sailors spend 78-percent of their time sailing in winds under 10 knots. So, we need to build sails that are powerful in light air but can be reefed successfully. That's where foam luff pads come in.