We have a photo of Mahdee from a late 1950’s newspaper clipping.  In it, she is sailing downwind under staysail, reefed foresail, and Swedish mainsail. In the pic, according to the caption, she is passing near Gloucester, MA and will touch at Newport and make landfall at Hamilton on her way to the West Indies. A Swedish mainsail is different from the regular one in that its seams are vertical and its size is smaller — much like a winter sail or a sail permanently reefed. We wondered about the use on Mahdee of a Swedish mainsail in that picture until we sailed Mahdee for a bit over a year. Then we totally understood. Her fore-and-aft sail balance is such that it’s desired to frequently sail with the mainsail reefed. Only in the typically mild Southern California sailing have we been able to consistently use the mainsail without a double reef in place. Everywhere else, she’s reefed and I’m thinking about a smaller mainsail. A good part of this is because we sail short-handed: just David and me. With only two of us, we’re extremely cautious about getting too much sail area up and having to deal with it if the wind suddenly pipes up. If we take the jib down, as it is in the newspaper photo, we must take the reefed mainsail down as well in order to keep the helm balanced. A small sail set on the mainmast is the solution.

I put it on my list of things to buy for Mahdee: Swedish mainsail or a trysail. Back and forth my thoughts go with whether the choice should be one or the other. Right now, I’m leaning towards the trysail and I just happened to run across this lovely video of the Schooner Adventuress with her trysail in use. A perfect example of a trysail in other-than-storm-use! Now I just wonder where they had it fabricated…

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