Insights from Phil Berman, Patrick Shaughnessy, and Herb McCormick on Catamaran Conversations
If you’re speccing out a new cruising catamaran, the sail inventory is one of the most personal — and potentially expensive — decisions you’ll make. In the latest episode of Catamaran Conversations, Phil Berman of Balanced Catamarans, naval architect Patrick Shaughnessy, and sailing journalist Herb McCormick break down how to think about it practically.
Start With the Basics: Main and Jib
Every boat leaves the yard with a mainsail and a jib. That much is straightforward. What’s less obvious is the fabric choice. While most builders offer a base boat with Dacron sails, Phil notes that no Balanced Catamaran owner has ever actually ordered them — and for good reason. Dacron simply doesn’t have the torsional rigidity to support the high-roach, heavy-leech shape that catamaran mainsails demand. The loads on a cat’s rig are enormous, which is why full battens and radial-cut panels are standard.
The good news? Phil points out that moving from Dacron to a radial-cut sail in a performance-oriented fabric gets you roughly 90% of the benefit. You can spend significantly more on string sails or carbon laminates for that last 5–10%, but the gains diminish quickly. The more race-oriented you are, the more that marginal performance may be worth it. For cruisers, durability tends to win over raw speed.
Balanced Catamarans has settled on a fabric developed with Ullman Sails and Dimension Polyant in Germany — chosen for what they see as the right balance of performance, longevity, and cost.
The Headsail Question: Where It Gets Interesting
The real decisions start when you move beyond the main and jib. What are you going to fly off the bowsprit? Your options include asymmetrical spinnakers, symmetrical spinnakers, code zeros, screechers of various sizes, and furling reachers. Each covers a different slice of your polar diagram, and the trick is covering as much of that diagram as possible with as few sails as you can afford and store.
Sailing the Caribbean? The tradewinds blow reliably, so a smaller screecher — one you can carry inside the shrouds and use both upwind for a boost and on a reach — may be all you need.
Heading to the South Pacific? Winds in places like the Cook Islands often sit between 8 and 12 knots. That lighter air calls for bigger sail area — a large code D screecher or an asymmetrical spinnaker.
Patrick and Phil both note that a big code D screecher and an asymmetrical spinnaker cover a lot of the same wind range. You don’t necessarily need both. The question is which style of sailing suits you.
If You Could Only Pick One Extra Sail…
When pressed, both Phil and Patrick land in the same place: a big furling reacher. It’s versatile, manageable, and covers a wide range of conditions. Patrick prefers a continuous-line furler over an electric one — not because the electric option isn’t nice, but because he wants to be able to repair it at sea.
Phil would opt for a large code D screecher as his third sail. For long-passage couples who want simplicity, he acknowledges the appeal of a symmetrical spinnaker — tack it to both bows, ease the main out, and point downwind. It’s relaxed and easy. But it doesn’t generate apparent wind, and as boats get faster, the advantages of asymmetrical sails grow.
The Sail Handling Trade-Off
Patrick raises an important point about sail handling that goes beyond performance. As sails get bigger and more balloon-shaped (higher mid-girth), you move past the range where a top-down furler works. That pushes you into snuffer territory, which brings real complexity.
His personal philosophy leans conservative: he tends to avoid sails that could become dangerous to handle if something goes wrong. That’s a personal call, not a universal rule — but it’s worth thinking about honestly before you buy.
Square-Top Mainsails and Reefing
The square-top main sometimes gets dismissed as a racing feature, but Patrick argues it earns its place on a cruising cat. The shape allows the top of the sail to depower itself as load increases, and it creates a more elliptical — and therefore more efficient — area distribution. The trade-off is some added complexity at the headboard and higher batten loads.
On reefing, Patrick recommends at least three reef points. The first reef often isn’t deep enough to make a significant difference in heavy weather, so you may find yourself going straight to the second reef in serious conditions. The third is there for when things get genuinely rough.
A useful rule of thumb from Phil: find the boat’s optimal upwind speed in smooth water, and once you hit it, reef to hold it. On the Balanced 526, that’s around 10 knots of boat speed, which typically means putting in the first reef around 15–16 knots of true wind.
Self-Tacking Jibs: The Cruiser's Best Friend
All the Balanced boats use self-tacking jibs on the larger models, and both Phil and Patrick are enthusiastic about them. The practical advantage is enormous: set your stoppers and tack all day without touching a sheet. On a daggerboard-equipped cat, the boat whips through the wind effortlessly.
The compromise? In light air between about 8 and 12 knots upwind, the blade jib could use a bit more area. That’s where an optional screamer sail — tacked to the bowsprit and sheeted to the track — fills the gap for owners who want more performance in that range.
The Bigger Picture: Performance Is Safety
Patrick makes a point that resonated throughout the conversation: on a passage, performance isn’t about bragging rights — it’s about getting where you’re going before the weather changes. Adding a knot of boat speed by flying a double-headsail rig while reaching can mean arriving hours earlier, and hours matter at sea.
The bottom line? There’s no single right sail inventory. But if you understand your polar diagram, know where you’re sailing, and are honest about how you and your crew actually handle sails, you can make smart choices that cover the conditions you’ll face without overcomplicating your life aboard.
This post is based on Episode 6 of Catamaran Conversations. Catch previous episodes starting with Episode 1: Designing a Catamaran from the Inside Out.
