It was during my eighth and most recent transatlantic, this one a classic trade wind route from Mindelo, Cape Verde, to Barbados in the Eastern Caribbean, that the beauty of rigging a downwind pole really shone through.
“The bonkers tradewind sailing continues, faster and steadier than ever,” I wrote in the log during the middle of that passage. “Each time I check the log for the previous 24-hour distance run, the numbers get bigger. From 10pm yesterday until 10pm today we’ve covered 213 miles. That’s an average pace of almost 9 knots, and just with the white sails. We haven’t laid a finger on the mainsheet since jibing the rig around back on Day 1! Lying in my bunk down below I can just feel the boat accelerate down each wave, the water rushing by my head against the hull and the Watt & Sea hydrogenerator taking off with a spinning, buzzing ZIIIIIIIINNNNG! which sounds uncannily like a big fish taking out all the line off a deep-sea reel. The sailing is at once exhilarating and effortless.”
The exhilarating part of that equation is thanks to our Farr 65 Falken, a fantastic and fast sea boat designed for big downwind ocean passages. But the effortless part is 100% thanks to flying the big, high-cut blast reacher (aka Yankee) sail on the spinnaker pole, running wing-on-wing down the trades and eating up the miles, right on the rhumb line, with just a fingertip on the helm.
Why Set a Pole?
Modern cruising boats seldom carry poles these days, largely due to modern sail plans, which I alluded to in my story on reefing (“The Line on Reefing” June/July 2024). In fact, Falken’s enormous, beautiful, carbon fiber spin pole was a bargain-bin hand-me-down from a Swan 66 that I bought for $1,500 from a broker who’d had it laying around his backyard.
As boats have gotten bigger, sailhandling systems have had to get smarter and easier, so there’s been a trend towards mainsail-driven boats with proportionally smaller, often self-tacking jibs and usually with integrated bowsprits for flying code sails. Even Hallberg-Rassy, perhaps the most traditional (and to me the best) cruising boatbuilder out there, has adopted this layout.
Off the wind, these boats are underpowered with the white sails, and so an asymmetric spinnaker is meant to be flown from the bowsprit. Asym sails are easier to rig and jibe than their old-school symmetric counterparts, but they force you to sail higher wind angles and therefore more miles to get downwind. Even in cruising mode without flying kites, you’ll need to sail higher wind angles— and more distance—to keep the jib full on a broad reach.
For probably 90% of the folks who will never sail a long offshore passage, this is likely the correct setup. But if you want to make downwind passagemaking easier and faster, and with less wear and tear, a pole is an absolute must-have, a mission-critical piece of equipment in the ocean.
Setting a headsail on a pole accomplishes several things simultaneously. You’re setting the jib to windward and putting it in clean air; this means you can sail deeper apparent wind angles without blanketing the jib behind the main. You’re better balancing the boat for the helmsperson or autopilot, making steering much easier. You’re stabilizing the headsail and sheets to prevent chafe, and not inconsequentially quieting everything down, making it easier for the off-watch to sleep, Finally, you’re able to make faster passages because you’re sailing fewer miles by pointing almost dead downwind instead of sailing jibing angles.
The Gear
If there is any downside to carrying and setting a pole, it’s in the added gear required to do so safely and efficiently. This, I’d guess, is probably why most boats coastal cruising or daysailing don’t bother—though the pole can come into play when making even a short coastal passage. (The only caution here is keeping an eye on traffic so you have time to furl the headsail if needed to maneuver.)
The Pole: First, you’ll obviously need the pole itself. Many cruisers are talked into a retractable whisker pole. Don’t be. A solid, fewer-moving-parts spinnaker pole, properly sized for your boat, works better, is more robust, and requires less maintenance. In racing rules, the size of the pole is limited to the length of the J measurement, the distance on deck between the base of the mast and the headstay. For pure cruising though, a little longer is OK— and better than too short.
The best way to stow the pole is on the mast, with the inboard end attached to a car that slides up and down a vertical track. This way, you’re not tripping over it on deck, and you only ever have to work with the outboard end; the inboard end remains attached to the mast at all times, making the pole easier to handle. If your mast doesn’t already have a track, or a long enough one, on the front of the mast, install one. If you can’t, or don’t have the budget, simple fittings can be bolted through the deck or attached to lifeline stanchions (more vulnerable offshore) to store the pole horizontally. With this arrangement, you still will need an adjustable fitting on the front of the mast as an attachment point for the inboard end.
On bigger boats or boats with fixed inner forestays or baby stays, the ultimate setup is twin poles on twin tracks (or a single track with in-line pole end cars), one for each tack, so you’re never having to wrangle the pole back and forth around the inner forestay to rig it. This also gives you the option to set two headsails and get rid of the main altogether, which can lower the accidental jibe stress level.
If this sounds daunting or expensive, consider that Falken carries a 20-foot-long pole with a 9-inch diameter on deck fittings and with a fixed inner forestay, so there is quite a bit of maneuvering to get it into position. But it’s all quite doable with practice (and simpler and cheaper than retrofitting the mast). The beauty is that since most boats don’t carry poles anymore, they are in abundance on the used market and often can be had for free. If you can, get carbon fiber for the weight savings and ease of wrangling.
Control Lines: Unlike flying a symmetric kite, when we’re flying headsails on a pole, we want the pole and the sail to act independently of one another. This allows us to reef or unreef the headsail, depending on conditions, while the pole remains in a fixed position. In a squall, for example, we can furl the jib entirely and leave the pole happily riding out to windward, locked in place with its control lines until the weather blows through, then re-set the jib. One person on a solo watch can usually manage this.
To accomplish this, the pole requires three control lines (plus the mast-mounted control lines for the inboard-end car): a topping lift, an afterguy, and a foreguy. I’m not counting the headsail sheets here because they run through the jaws of the pole and are not attached to it.
On our boats at 59º North, we rig twin preventers for the mainsail, one on each side led through fairleads near the bow and aft to a winch or rope clutch in the cockpit. The lazy preventer then doubles as the foreguy for the pole, so regardless of which tack you’re on, you’ll have that line pre-rigged. The topper can be its own dedicated halyard, usually rigged about two-thirds of the way up the mast, or you can use a staysail or spare jib halyard. Beware using masthead halyards for a pole top though, as you risk catching it in the top swivel of the headsail furler and causing a wrap. Lastly, the afterguy runs from the end of the pole through a fairlead amidships then aft to a winch, or simpler yet, just to the midships cleat. This line will never have any load on it once the sail is set and is just used to position the pole fore and aft.
Note that the headsail sheet will need to be re-led from its normal inboard track position. It will go through the jaws in the end of the pole, then should be led to a block all the way aft in the cockpit, then to a winch. Make sure the headsail sheet is aft of the afterguy.
Hardware: The difference between what I call the downwind rig (pole plus headsail or kite and prevented-out mainsail) versus the fore-and-aft rig (the white sails) is in the sheer number of lines needed. And when you’ve got a lot of lines, you need a lot of winches. Falken has three winches on each side of the cockpit coaming (and a whopping 13 total winches in her cockpit), but when we’re going hard downwind, every one of them is in use. That’s not to say you need that many. Our Swan 48 Isbjørn, conversely, has two per side in the cockpit, plus winches under the dodger for halyards, and they suffice. If your boat only has one winch on either side of the cockpit coaming, I’d highly recommend adding a second set of winches.
As for blocks, nowadays low-friction rings do the job quite happily for pole controls. Take about a 3-foot length of 1/4-inch dyneema and splice it to a ring, then lash it to a padeye or the toerail and you have a simple, cheap, and very strong fairlead. Typically blocks are required in high-load, dynamic situations (like at the masthead, when the line turns a full 180 degrees and is carrying a loaded-up sail), but the lines we’ll use to set up the pole are basically static once set and don’t carry a ton of load, so the fairleads work fine.
If you are short of winches, you can more easily install some rope clutches in the cockpit coamings like we did on my dad’s boat Sojourner before he went offshore. Both the foreguy and the mainsheet preventer can happily live on clutches rather than a winch.
Setting the Pole
When the pole is set and the sail is flying, it’s pretty easy to visualize how all the lines lead. But when you’re on a pitching foredeck, maybe in the dark with a headlamp, with the end of the pole wedged in the bow pulpit and a spaghetti tangle of lines that needs sorting, it can feel daunting. Practice at the dock!
For the purposes of what follows, let’s envision this scenario: You’re offshore, sailing on a starboard tack beam reach, when the wind starts to go aft. You ease the sheets and set the mainsail preventer to stay on course, but soon the wind goes so far aft that the jib is now flapping about behind the shadow of the mainsail. If you head up to keep it filled, you’re now off course, so instead, you decide to set the pole. Here’s the procedure—start by furling the jib.
1. Rig the Pole: If the pole is stowed on the mast, disconnect the outboard end and slowly walk it forward while another crew lowers the car on the inboard end track. If the pole is stowed on deck, carefully guide the inboard end onto the mast car. In either case, maneuver the outboard end to the starboard side of the headstay (we’re on starboard tack in this example) and wedge the outboard end of the pole in the bow pulpit. I often use a sail tie to secure it in place just in case.
2. Run the Lines: The goal here is to get all three control lines attached to the end of the pole so that we can position it exactly where we want it fore-and-aft and vertically. But first, we need to snap the headsail sheet into the jaws of the pole, to ensure the sheet is led fair and that the two guys are below the sheet. Typically, the jaws will open with a pull-string near the end of the pole. When you lay the sheet in there, a trigger in the jaws will snap it shut, allowing the sheet to slide freely through the end of the pole. Ensure the sheet is running fair and not twisted (you’ll know as soon as you start to raise the pole). Pole jaws should always be facing up.
Now clip the topper to the outboard end of the pole. Both the foreguy and the afterguy will attach to the bottom of the pole, and most pole end fittings will have a bail or something to clip a shackle or tie a bowline to on both the top and bottom. The thing to remember here is that as the pole is resting inside the bow pulpit, your control lines will need to come outside and over top of the pulpit before you secure them to the pole end.
3. Raise the Pole: As you take up on the pole topper to raise the pole end away from the pulpit, you’ll need to ease the foreguy and afterguy. However, be careful not to let the pole slam against the headstay, something that will easily happen in a seaway. I usually like to keep someone on the bow to keep a hand on the pole end as the topper is taken up and the afterguy is held so the pole can’t swing forward.
As the pole top goes up, the afterguy will come aft and the foreguy will be eased. The goal here is threefold: 1) Level the pole with the horizon; 2) Set the pole to the height of the headsail clew using the topper and the inboard end car control lines; 3) Bring the pole aft enough so that it’s in line with the mainsail boom—deep downwind this will be almost squared off. Pole position also depends on headsail size (more on that in a second). At this stage, the only load on the three control lines is the weight of the pole itself.
4. Set the Headsail: The beauty of setting the pole and the sail independent of one another is you get a chance to make sure everything is set up properly before putting any load on the pole. Now’s your chance to inspect the control lines, make sure the pole is level and at the correct height (which we can fine tune once sailing), and most importantly, that the headsail sheet is running freely through the jaws and is led over and aft of the guys to a block towards the back of the cockpit.
Once you’re happy here, simply unfurl the jib as you would normally, being careful to keep some tension on the furling line to ensure a smooth set. Grind the sheet until the clew is right at the pole end—you don’t want any play here that could chafe the sheet.
Sailing the Downwing Rig
Though it excels at dead downwind running, the pole can be effective at a range of wind angles. And, it’s not always set and forget.
Out of an abundance of caution, to lower the risk of an accidental jibe we never actually sail dead downwind offshore. Rather, we have the helmsperson steer a course to keep us on about 150 degrees apparent. This way, we have room for a 30-degree error on either side of that goal course—we can not only safely drift down to 180 degrees apparent (and even sail by the lee for a few moments with the main properly eased and prevented) but also drift up to 120 degrees before the headsail will backwind.
Wing-on-wing, it’s easier to get confused about where the wind is coming from, especially at night when steering by the compass. I drill the crew into reminding themselves which way to steer for safety, regardless of what tack we’re on: Always away from the main boom! I’d much rather backwind the headsail and risk breaking the pole than inadvertently sail into an accidental jibe and risk taking someone’s head off.
We can tweak the pole position and the sail size for the conditions. We want as little movement in the jib as possible, so oftentimes on boats that carry big overlapping genoas, like Isbjørn, we’ll actually roll in a bit of sail once it’s set on the pole to keep the sailcloth flat and tight. As the wind gets up, you can roll in more and more sail—the smaller the sail area, the more forward you’ll need to position the pole to keep the clew right down at the pole end.
As you can see in the photo of Falken on page 70, a high-cut reacher or Yankee is best suited for setting on the pole. You can see better under the foot, and with the pole much higher there’s less risk of dunking it in the ocean on a big roll.
We can, and often do, carry the pole right up to 120 degrees apparent wind. As the wind goes forward, so does the pole—ease the sheet and afterguy, take up on the foreguy, and happy days. This may sound counterintuitive, because at 120 degrees apparent we’re firmly broad-reaching and should have no trouble keeping the jib from collapsing behind the main. That’s true in a flat sea, but in a seaway, it’s super easy for the autopilot or helmsperson to get pushed down for a few moments, blanketing the jib and causing all sorts of racket on deck and decimating the lifespan of your headsail and sheets. Secure and stabilize all that on the pole!
That magical trade wind transatlantic continued on Falken for 10 straight days. For the last two we put the big 3,000-foot symmetric kite up—on the pole of course—and freight-trained our way to Barbados. On that passage we averaged more than 200 miles per day and only sailed a few more miles than the rhumb line, keeping the bow pointed at Barbados nearly the entire way.
Our best day’s run was 225 miles—that’s without the kite, just sailing wing-on-wing with the Yankee and full main—and our fastest surf was 16.1 knots.
“And so it goes onboard Falken,” I wrote in the log, halfway through the passage. “The watch changes. The helmspeople take turns. The coffeepot is refilled. And on.”
October 2024
