HOW TO ... Handle a Spinnaker Wrap around the forestay
A sailor's guide to prevention, response, and recovery.
Let’s talk wraps. Not the kind that tangle on a winch, nor the tortilla substitute we all rely on offshore … but the spinnaker kind. The dreaded wrap around a forestay.
Yes. I’m shuddering too.
The idea sprung to mind just last weekend, where I spent a fabulous few days helping lead the first ever collaboration between RORC and The Magenta Project - a womens’ offshore-race training weekend.
On one of the evenings a participant was telling me a story from her recent Fastnet Race. After four hours trying to un-wrap their spinnaker from their forestay, her crew retired from the race. They pulled into the nearest port to sort out the chaos aloft (I never did ask how - maybe she’ll read this and tell us one day…) before rejoining the course to round the Rock and sail on to Cherbourg. I loved that. Retired or not, they still finished. A reminder that in the end we are all just looking for an excuse to an enjoy an epic week on the water.
As for me, I’ve had plenty of wrap encounters. I remember a mighty unwrapping effort on the North Pacific during the Clipper Race — which, if memory serves, involved removing a forestay. I remember racing south to Panama, looking back to see a competitor still unwrapping after two full days. A year or so ago I heard a story of a couple duct-taping their kite to their forestay after realising it was well and truly stuck - that one was particularly entertaining. And a former student told me they once drove in circles under engine to unwind the sail (please don’t try this at home).
The plethora of stories reveals two truths:
No one, no matter how experienced, is immune to the threat of a spinnaker wrap.
Spinnaker wraps - once securely knotted - are extremely hard to unwrap.
So, rather than shy away from this nightmare of a topic which would only make it scarier - let’s dive in. There are ways to avoid wraps, and there are techniques that can help you deal with them when (not if) they happen.
And yes … I apologise in advance for the pun opportunities.
Screaming out of the Port Townsend Wooden boat festival on my Race-to-Alaska ride, Gray Wolf - one of her beauties being her freestanding rig aka no wrap-risk at all (if you take the forestay off which we haven’t in this awesome reel by Jonathan Drake [@buildandexplore])