Recutting a Spinnaker Staysail into a Code 0
Tucked in the back corner of a sail container at the yard, there was a spinnaker staysail nobody wanted anymore — built by North Sails for the Swedish Victory Challenge’s 2007 America’s Cup campaign. Over fifteen years old, worn in places, and exactly what we needed.
What a spinnaker staysail actually is
The sail’s designation, SS 2-3, tells its own story — spinnaker staysail, design number 2, the third one built to that design. A spinnaker staysail is a small, full-shaped headsail flown alongside an asymmetric spinnaker and mainsail for downwind sailing. “Small” is relative — on a 70-foot America’s Cup yacht, this sail was still substantial.
Constructed radially, like the panels of the sail fanning out from each corner the way rays spread from a sun, the head, clew, and tack are each built up from smaller panels stitched together in that radial pattern. It’s a genuinely strong way to build a sail, taking advantage of the directional strength in the cloth rather than fighting against it. Where those radial sections meet, you get a vertical join between clew and tack, and a horizontal join between the tack-clew section and the head — and it was exactly that horizontal join that made this recut possible.
Why this sail, and what it needed to become
A Code 0 does a completely different job to a spinnaker staysail. Where the staysail is a small downwind helper flown with the kite, a Code 0 is a large overlapping headsail — useful from close reaching through to filling the gap in light air, exactly the range where a spinnaker isn’t practical and a working headsail and main aren’t quite enough. It’s the sail that closes a real hole in Paikea’s inventory.
The original staysail had a 25-metre luff. Paikea’s Code 0 needed 18 metres. That’s not a small trim — it meant removing a whole section from the middle of the sail, known as the belly, and rejoining what remained at the new length.
Getting the measurements right on a boat that had already changed
Before any cutting started, the luff and foot lengths needed confirming from scratch — not from old records, but from the boat as it actually is now. With the new front beam, longeron, and bow pole all recently added to Paikea’s front end, none of the boat’s original measurements were still valid. The distance from the bow pole to the masthead halyard had to be remeasured properly. Since the goal was also to sheet the sail as far aft as possible — the defining feature of a Code 0, with its clew overlapping the main and sheeting well aft of the mast — the foot length needed the same careful attention.
Cutting the sail down
With the new lengths confirmed, the luff tape came off first — two layers of zigzag stitching, unpicked by hand, patient work that’s easy to underestimate until you’re the one doing it. The sail had two large clear windows in the luff that we didn’t want to keep, which made the decision on where to cut the horizontal join straightforward: cut through that section, removing as much of the window material as possible in the process.
That left two pieces — a top section and a bottom. The foot length was already correct, so that stayed untouched. The real work was in overlapping the top piece against the bottom, testing the shape before committing to a cut, fairing the new join in by hand until the curve looked right rather than just mathematically correct. Once the shape was right, the excess got trimmed away and the new horizontal join was sewn.
Reworking the leech, luff, and head
With the sail now one piece at the new length, the leech and luff needed reshaping to match. The torsion cable running through the luff got reused, cut down to the new size rather than replaced. The head was where the plan changed. We’d originally hoped to reuse the existing head reinforcing, but the new sail came out fuller than the original design — the old head simply didn’t suit the new shape. Rather than force a fit that wasn’t right, a new head reinforcement was built from scratch, and the old cable — twisted after years locked into that luff tape — was fed through fresh rather than fought with.
The clew needed only minor adjustment to match the new leech profile, and from there it was down to finishing the leech and luff tapes.
On the boat
The finished sail fits Paikea properly — deep-shaped, fuller than the original design, and exactly the sail we needed to close the gap in the inventory. What started as a discarded America’s Cup staysail, headed nowhere useful in a sail container, is now doing real work getting Paikea from close reaching through to light-air upwind sailing. We’re glamouring to get out and actually use it.Recutting a Spinnaker Staysail into a Code 0
I was lucky enough to stumble across an old spinnaker staysail tucked in the back corner of a sail container at the yard here. It was originally built by North Sails for the Swedish Victory Challenge campaign in 2007.
A spinnaker staysail or in this case a SS 2-3 refers to the type and design number of the sail. In this particular case it is a spinnaker staysail design number 2. The number 3 means it is the third one of this design built.
SS is the abbreviation for spinnaker staysail. A spinnaker staysail is a small, full shaped headsail that is hoisted when using an asymmetric spinnaker and mainsail. It is used for downwind purposes. Of course when I say “small” headsail, when it belongs to a 70 ft America’s Cup yacht it is actually pretty BIG.
Although this sail was over 15 years old and was worn in a few places it was perfect for our needs as we could remove the unwanted pieces in the recut. The sail is a radial construction which means that it is made with smaller panels stuck together into a radial shape much like the rays of the sun. Each corner of the sail: the head, clue and tack are each made in this radial formation which gives the sail it’s shape and allows the sail maker to construct a much stronger sail as you are able to take advantage of the directional strength of the cloth used. Each radial “corner” of your sail (or triangle if you like) is then sewn together. The vertical join between the clue and the tack is known as your vertical join and the seam between the tack and clue pieces and the head is a horizontal join.
This radial sail was a perfect choice for us to recut into a Code 0 for our catana catamaran. The staysail had a luff of 25m and our Code 0 needed to be 18m so it was simply a job of removing some of the middle of the sail (or belly section) and reducing the overall size of the sail to make it fit our boat. A Code 0 does have a different role than the spinnaker staysail. As I have already mentioned, a spinnaker staysail is a small headsail used in conjunction with the spinnaker for downwind sailing, a Code 0 is a large overlapping headsail that can be used for everything from upwind to tight reaching in light airs. It is something that we would use to fill in the gap in our sail inventory for those times when we are unable to use our kite (asymmetric spinnaker) but it’s not quite headsail and main upwind weather.
The first part of the process was to measure the distance from the bow pole to the mast head halyard. As we have modified the boat quite dramatically by adding a new front beam with longeron and bow pole so all our existing measurements were no longer correct. We also wanted to be able to sheet the sail at the back of the boat. The description of a Code 0 being an overlapping headsail refers to the clew of the sail overlapping the mainsail and sheeting aft of the mast. We wanted to sheet as far aft as we could so we needed to know our foot length measurement as well.
Once we had confirmed our new luff and foot lengths it was time to remove the existing luff tape from the sail and decide which horizontal join we were going to cut. There were two large windows in the luff of this sail which we did not want to keep so it was decided to cut at this point and remove as much of the windows as we could during the process.
With the sail cut into two pieces ( a top and bottom) it was simply a matter of joining the two pieces back together at the new length. We spent a bit of time overlapping the top piece with the bottom piece to get the shape we wanted before we cut the excess fabric off. The foot length was already perfect so we left that part untouched.
Once we had sewn the new horizontal join and had our new Code 0 in one piece we could reshape the leech and luff of the sail. We reused the existing torsion cable which we also cut to the new size for our boat. Once that was complete we recycled the old head patching and made a new head reinforcement for attached the cable to the sail. We were unable to reuse the existing head as we had originally planned as the new sail was much fuller.
The clew only needed a slight bit of modification to bring it into line with the new leech profile and then I could see the leech and luff tapes back on to the new sail.
The sail fits beautifully on the boat and we now can’t wait to take Paikea out for a sail.
To see more on our sails visit our page Paikea’s Sails