02/08/2026
To most sailors a trysail looks very odd, as it meets two conflicting demands: it needs to sit above the bulk of your mainsail so that it can fly in clean air, yet the centre of effort needs to be as low as possible to reduce heeling.
The result is that most trysails will be as long in the foot as they are in the luff, thereby gaining sail area horizontally rather than vertically. The sail also needs to sheet down to the deck, so it will have a long leech with the clew position considerably lower than the tack. In many respects it’s more like a second jib than a small mainsail.
