The first part of the sailing special is about comfortable setting, reefing and recovery of the mainsail: More and more owners want the undisputed ease of use of a furling genua for the mainsail as well. The reasons are obvious. Whether at Beneteau, Hanse or X-Yachts: For years the trend has not only been towards larger and larger yachts for small crews, the sail area is also increasingly concentrated in the mainsail.
Modern booms work reliably and make the handling of large sail areas much easier
But the growing size of the boat makes handling the mighty mainsail generally uncomfortable - because a lot of cloth piles up high when recovering. From 40 feet, the halyard can hardly be attached or knocked off the deck. Not to mention the rigging of the tree cover. With smooth-running mast slide systems and lazybags, the handling can be defused, but sometimes new obstacles also arise. The more elaborate the slide system, the more space the carts take up, and the higher the headboard remains when mounting sails above deck.
Solutions have been refined for years so that the mainsail can be reefed and stowed just as comfortably as a furling genoa. Comfort-oriented cruising yachts are often equipped with roller masts, which are now very sophisticated systems and which, with the appropriate sailing wardrobe, also look good in terms of performance.
Shipyards like X-Yachts, on the other hand, prefer roll booms. "The additional weight is closer to the deck, and the big one can still be salvaged conventionally in an emergency," says Torsten Bastiansen from the Danish shipyard. X-Yachts already delivers around a third of the orders for the still handy XC 38 with a roll boom, more than 60 percent of the XC 45 is ordered with a roll boom. The situation is similar with the sportier XP 55.
In the large market overview, we present the latest models, explain why roller trees are becoming more and more popular and what needs to be considered when selecting and using them.