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.

At Neil Pryde we have been using foam strips instead of wide pads for the last 25 years or so. We use up to six or more strips that are one-inch wide and five-eighths of an inch thick and sewn into the luff. These start out parallel to the luff but as you go out from the luff we form them in an elliptical shape that matches the shape of the draft built into the sail. As the sail rolls up, the head and tack naturally roll tighter than the middle because of the shape of the sail. The elliptical shape of the luff pads fills the belly of the sail so it rolls evenly with the tack and head. This keeps the sail flat as it rolls up which flattens the sail while reducing the area.

This system works so well that we now can build a sail that is powerful when rolled all the way out for light wind and then can be reefed as needed to remove area and power. We mark the sail with three reef points and then help owners to figure out the preset positions for the genoa cars, which have to be moved forward as the sail is reefed to maintain the correct tension on the leach and foot.

With this system you can build a nice powerful 140-percent genoa that will work well even when reefed down to less than 100-percent of the fore triangle.

For sailors who want to step up from a basic Dacron headsail to get better performance, what are the best options?

Dave Flynn: The decision on a performance headsail will depend a lot on the size of the boat and the owner's budget. There are two steps above Dacron and both are laminated composite sails with inlaid fibers for reinforcement. Composites for cruising applications consist of two exterior skins of woven polyester (taffetas), which provide some strength but more importantly all around durability against chafe and UV, sandwiching a fiber grid designed to bear the primary loads, and a sheet of polyester film (Mylar) to address secondary loadings. Polyester or Pentex fibers in the sandwich provide the first step up in ability to resist stretch and better shape holding. If an owner wants to go to the next level, high modulus fibers can be used. Vectran, carbon and Technora, or a blend, are common choices for high-performance cruising sails.

For larger boats, the high-tech laminates really make sense because the sails will retain their shapes under the much higher loads. But even middle range cruising boats can benefit from a high tech headsail since it will dramatically affect upwind performance. A composite sail provides better control; it will reduce heeling and works better on a roller-furling unit. Off the wind, a composite sail doesn't really help very much.

Neil Pryde uses multiple foam luff strips which makes the genoa flatter as it is reefed.How high should the foot and clew of the sail be off the deck for dual-purpose sailing–cruising and rallies?

Bob Pattison: On most cruising boats, the roller furling drum is above deck so the genoa tack starts 15 to 18 inches off the deck. Clew height from there depends on the size of the sail and the length of the genoa tracks, basically the geometry of the boat.

Since upwards of 80 percent of all cruising and offshore sailing is off the wind, cruisers really don't need a true upwind sail that is low to the deck. An upwind genoa starts to lose efficiency as it is eased off on a reach because the top of the sail falls off and loses power and the leech becomes slack. A genoa with a higher clew will work better on a reach. Plus it will give you better visibility forward, will work better in a much wider range of wind angles and won't catch water that breaks over the foredeck.

If you have ever sailed a cutter rig with a high-cut Yankee and a staysail, you will know how good a Yankee is reaching, even in a strong breeze, since it holds its shape as it is eased. So for a typical cruiser who may be also interested in entering an offshore event, we would suggest a fairly high clew. And for long offshore work, a cutter rig with a staysail and Yankee makes a lot of sense, too.

If you were building a genoa for a circumnavigation, what type of sail would you recommend?

Butch Ulmer: First, I would specify a woven Dacron sail instead of a laminated sail because you will be able to find someone to repair Dacron just about anywhere in the world. You won't find many who can repair high-tech composite sails. I would specify the best Dacron available with a weave that fits the sail shape.

I would increase the weight of the fabric to improve durability and reduce the likelihood of UV damage. Then we would set out to overbuild the sail to make it as strong and durable as possible. I would consider using a heavier-than-usual sail thread and then would most likely go with triple stitching instead of double rows of stitches.

I would take extra care with corner patches to make sure the corners were as strong as possible and ensure that the clew, tack and head will stand up to years of steady and heavy use. We would use tensioned webbing where appropriate to reinforce the corners and the corner ring attachments points.

For a client who is going to be sailing south to the Caribbean for the winter, where the wind often blows 15 to 25 knots, what two headsails would you recommend?

The Dacron genoa on the Jeanneau 42 is a basic multi-purpose cruising sail.Dave Flynn: First, we would look at the balance between the mainsail and the headsail on the boat to see if we could go with a smaller headsail. If the boat has a long boom (longer than the J dimension of the foretriangle), then it will sail well with a smaller headsail. For many modern cruising boats, this will be the case.

A smaller headsail will be easier to tack and will offer plenty of power in the stronger breezes. In a perfect world, I'd like to see a non-overlapping headsail that sheets inside the shrouds. Even though the smaller headsail has less area, it will still provide enough power and will have narrower sheeting angles so the boat will point higher.

The second sail we would recommend would be a big reaching sail, similar to a Code Zero, that can be rolled on a furling unit. Hopefully the clients will be doing a lot of reaching and running in the trade winds between islands, so a good reaching sail will make sailing fun and fast.

For smaller or non-overlapping headsails, what trimming issues will a sailor be dealing with?

Steve Cruse: From my point of view the ideal sail plan has a large mainsail that can be controlled from the cockpit, swept-back spreaders so you don't need running backstays and a small, 105-percent jib. If your headsail plan is non-overlapping, the jib will be a high-aspect sail, which means it has a long luff and a short foot.

Many of the new daysailers and several new cruising boats have self-tacking jib systems. The issue with these is you do not have forward and aft lead adjustments. However, at North we have developed a multiple-position clew plate that can be adjusted for different lead angles to the clew. What this accomplishes is the ability to adjust leech tension.

The Wauquiez 45DS has a cutter rig with a Solent jib and a reacher on roller furling units, as well as a cruising chute flying free.Reaching off with a small jib you will find that the sail loses power as the sheet is eased and the leach twists off. One solution to this is to rig a second set of sheets outboard of the shrouds. As you ease off, you have to go forward and attach the second sheet, which is led farther aft so you can maintain leech tension and sail shape.

The Solent Rig, with a high aspect roller furling jib and a roller furling reacher, has gained popularity in Europe. What do you think of the rig?

Robbie Doyle: A high-aspect ,100 percent jib works well for a cruising boat. The sail is easy to tack and can be powerful if it is well made. For offshore sailing, I would like to see the Solent jib have a nice high clew for more powerful reaching and a good shape for sailing up wind in light winds. If the sail is cut too low to the deck it will lose performance as it is eased and won't have a good shape when reefed part way.

But I have some issues with putting a large reacher on a roller furling unit right in front of it. The rolled up reacher creates a lot of windage and disturbance right at the leading edge of the jib, the most important part of the sail. I would like to see some separation between the jib and the reacher. A better way to do this is to have the reacher on a roller unit that can be hoisted and lowered easily.

Looking at the Solent rig concept, what advice do you have for cruisers who want good performance through the whole range of wind angles?

Steve Cruse: For sailors who are looking at sails for the whole range from upwind to off the wind, a smaller or even non-overlapping jib will be great going upwind. They are efficient and useful in a wide range of wind strengths. Many cruisers will add a down wind sail such as a genniker or cruising chute that they launch from a spinnaker stuffer. But between these two sails there is a gap where neither works particularly well.

The jib will be effective from about 30 to 50 degrees apparent wind and the cruising chute works well from 90 to 160 degrees. To fill the gap between 50 and 90 degrees we suggest sailors looking for good performance carry a roller furling reacher that is like the Code Zeros used by racing crews but adapted to the needs of cruisers. The North version is called the G-Zero. These should be flown on soft luff furlers that are hoisted free and tensioned with a halyard. There are several models of these furlers that work well.

With three headsails, you can get the best from your boat in a wide range of wind strengths and sailing angles.

A version of this story was originally published in Blue Water Sailing magazine.