Has Anyone ever used a Mule Sail?

[Dave Herndon]

My Mule Sail is loose footed. I considered a wishbone spar, but a wishbone spar was not compatible with my roller-reefing-furling system. A photo of my ketch-rigged Fisher 25 motorsailer, Wayward Wind, flying a Mule Sail is attached below. [Dave Herndon - dhherndon@aol.com

 

[Laminar Flow]

My Mule Sail is loose footed. I considered a wishbone spar, but a wishbone spar was not compatible with my roller-reefing-furling system. A photo of my ketch-rigged Fisher 25 motorsailer, Wayward Wind, flying a Mule Sail is attached below. [Dave Herndon - dhherndon@aol.com

Thank you for that.

How much of a gain in speed do you recon you get from it?

 

[geem]

Have you considered an 'ordinary' mizzen stay sail yet/first? I keep toying with the idea for our Neptunian ketch. It would be good to have a bit more easily handled sail to keep up speeds in lighter winds. I have read, however, that you should aim for a similar sail area to the main and am having difficulty in designing something to approach this.

We use our mizzen staysail a lot. It is the same size as the main. We never use it with the mizzen set. Instead, we sheet the mizzen staysail to the end of the mizzen boom. With the genoa, main and mizzen staysail set, we carry a lot of sail. The mizzen staysail is 400sqft. Compared to the mizzens 150sqft you can see why it adds plenty of power in light conditions. We can use it up to about 15 kts of wind when the wind is behind the beam