A Nonsuch has no jib, no winches full of headsail sheets, and nobody up on the foredeck. What it has instead is four lines that shape a single very large sail — and four more that shorten it when the wind pipes up. Shape is speed and pointing; shortening is staying in control. Learn these and you can sail this boat single-handed, in almost any weather, without ever leaving the cockpit.
Almost everything you have read about sailing assumes a mast held up by wires and a jib in front of it. A Nonsuch has neither. Five differences matter on day one.
The mast holds itself up. There are no stays or shrouds. The mast is a tapered aluminium spar that bends as the wind builds — and that bending is a feature, not a failure. As it bends it flattens the sail and lets the back edge open, spilling wind exactly when you want it spilled.
The boom is a wishbone. Two curved arms straddle the sail, one each side, meeting at a point aft. The sail sits between them. Because the arms are fixed to each other, the "boom" can't be vanged down the way a normal one is — a line called the choker does that job instead.
There is no headsail. Nothing to furl, nothing to change, no sheets to trip over. It also means no jib to back against the main, which has one consequence worth knowing before you need it: you cannot heave-to in a Nonsuch.
You control shape, not sail choice. On a sloop you swap headsails. Here you reshape one sail with four lines, and reef it when reshaping isn't enough.
Everything happens from the cockpit. Hoisting, reefing, dropping, docking. The sail flakes itself into cradle lines when you drop it. This is why people single-hand these boats into their eighties.
Fourteen words cover every instruction you will be given on this boat, and they fall into five groups. Tap any marker on the drawing — or any name in the list — to find out what it is and why you would touch it.
Two curved arms, one on each side of the sail, joined at the aft end where the sail's back corner is attached. It does the job of a boom, but because the sail runs between the arms it can also be pushed forward and back to change the sail's depth.
These are the four you touch every time you sail. Each pulls on a different corner of the same piece of cloth. Learn them one at a time — the colours here are the colours used in every diagram below.
Controls: luff tension — the tightness of the front edge, and where the deepest part of the sail sits.
It hoists the sail, and then it keeps tensioning the front edge. Tighten it and the sail's belly moves forward, toward the mast. Ease it and the belly slides aft.
Too loose: horizontal wrinkles, or scallops between the sail slides. Too tight: a hard vertical roll of cloth just behind the mast — which is exactly right in a heavy breeze and far too much in light air.
Controls: depth — how full or flat the sail is. It is the outhaul and the vang in one line.
Haul it and the wishbone goes aft, stretching the sail flat and pulling down on the back edge. Ease it and the sail bellies out — in very light air it should belly right over the top of the wishbone arm.
Too loose in a breeze: a bag of a sail, lots of heel, no drive. Too tight in light air: a board with no power in it.
Controls: the leech — how open or closed the back edge of the sail is.
The wishbone is heavy. In light air its own weight drags the back edge of the sail down and shut, and a shut leech stops the boat dead. Take some weight off with the topping lift and the leech opens and breathes. In a breeze the wind does this for you.
The rule that catches everybody: going to windward there should be no topping lift tension at all. None.
Controls: angle — where the sail sits relative to the boat, and how much the top twists off.
Downwind it simply lets the boom out and pulls it in. Going to windward it pulls down as much as in, which controls twist. It has more effect on the boat's feel — weather helm, angle of heel — than any other line.
Quick test for too much sail: dump a lot of sheet. If the boat speeds up, you're overpowered. Flatten the sail, or reef.
And the one that decides which way to trim: belly aft to point higher. Belly forward for maximum drive.
Ease the choker completely whenever the boat is not sailing. Plenty of owners leave choker tension on at the dock to hold the mainsheet clear of the bimini frame and canvas. All that does is stretch the bottom of the sail, permanently — and once it is stretched, the sail will never take up a proper shape again. Slack choker in the slip. Every time.
These four don’t shape the sail, they subtract it. You might touch them a handful of times a season, and always in the same order. They come in pairs — one pair per reef, one line at each end of the sail — and a pair is only ever used together.
Controls: the new front corner — hauls the first reef ring down to the tack fitting at the mast.
Reefing promotes a pair of rings sewn partway up the sail. This line takes the front one and pulls it down to the fitting at the mast base, where the ordinary tack lives, and holds it there. A pure downward pull, and the first of the pair to go on.
Too loose: the front of the reefed sail sags and the draft wanders aft. This is one of the few lines on the boat you take up as hard as you can and leave there.
Controls: the new back corner — hauls the leech reef ring in toward the wishbone.
The mirror of the tack line, at the far end of the sail. It is anchored at the aft end of the wishbone, runs up through the reef ring and back down, so two parts pull on the ring. Second of the pair, and the one that finishes the reef.
Too tight: you can collapse the wishbone arms inward. Stop about a foot short of the spar, and never take it up hard at the dock with no wind in the sail to hold things in shape.
Controls: the same job, one reef higher — a ring further up the front edge.
The second reef takes away a further 31% on top of the first reef’s 36%, leaving roughly a third of full sail. That is genuinely heavy-weather canvas, and most owners go whole seasons without needing it.
Check it exists: plenty of boats sail all summer with only the first reef rove. Find out in the spring, not while you are reading the forecast.
Controls: the same job, one reef higher — the upper ring on the back edge.
Deep-reefed and rolling in a seaway, the outer end of the wishbone can dip into the water. Slacken the choker while you haul this one in: that pushes the wishbone forward and shortens how far it reaches out behind the mast. Take the choker back up once the reef is set.
Same twelve inches: the gap above the wishbone matters more here, not less, because the loads are higher by the time you are on the second reef.
And the one that decides when: if you are wondering whether to reef, you already know. About 20 knots is the limit of un-reefed sailing on this boat.
On almost any other boat this size, shortening sail means going forward, standing on a moving deck, and wrestling with cloth. Here all four lines end in the cockpit alongside the other four, the sail folds itself into the cradle lines as it comes down, and nobody leaves the seat. That is the whole argument for the rig, and it is the reason a single-handed sailor can take this boat out in weather that would keep a comparable sloop at the dock.
Choose a point of sail and a wind strength. The dotted marks on the sliders show where the four lines want to be. Move them and see what happens to the shape, to the drive, and to how far over the boat lies.
The dotted magenta line across the sail is a speed stripe — real Nonsuch sails have them sewn in so you can read the shape from the cockpit. The dashed grey line in the plan view marks the rail. Sighted from astern, the clew close hauled wants to sit about above the corner of the transom, and outside that line in very light and sloppy going.
A sail does two things at once: it drives the boat forward and it pushes it over sideways. The split depends entirely on your angle to the wind — and it is far more lopsided than most beginners expect. Tap a point of sail. Red is the ninety degrees you simply cannot sail in; amber is the narrow band at the edge of what the boat will do; everything blue is free sailing. The dashed lines sit ten degrees outside the red edge: point right at the limit and that is where you actually travel, so the red zone is effectively wider than it looks.
Boats tack through apparent wind, and sailing towards it adds your own boat speed to what you feel — so upwind is always windier on deck than it is over the water, and your angle to the true wind is wider than the number on the diagram. Running away from it subtracts your speed, which is why a run feels gentle right up until you turn around. And heel costs you sail: at 20° of heel you have lost 6% of your sail area, at 25° about 10%, at 30° about 14%. Past roughly 20° the hull shape underwater changes too, and the boat needs more power to push the same speed.
And the boat does not go where it points. One owner beating up the Chesapeake swung his heading through only 60° but reckoned leeway added ten degrees a side, giving eighty between the courses actually made good. The consolation is that a Nonsuch tacks cheaply — no jib to trim means less speed lost each time — so more tacks cost you less than they would on a sloop.
These are the routines you will do every single time you sail. Each step now carries the clutch it lives at, taken from your own rigging plan — port 1 is the halyard, stbd 3 the choker, and so on. They are all in the same order for a reason: the choker comes off first and goes on last, because nothing else can move while the sail is stretched flat.
If it is already blowing when you look at the harbour, put the first reef in tied up, and go sailing calm instead of wrestling.
Do not tighten the reef line while you're still at the dock. With no wind load in the sail it is very easy to over-tighten it, and over-tightening can collapse the wishbone inward.
Wind pressure does not rise in step with wind speed — it rises with the square of it. Double the wind and you have quadrupled the load on the sail.
| Conditions | Speed | Pressure on the sail |
|---|---|---|
| Pleasant sailing breeze | about 10 kn | ~ ½ lb / sq ft |
| Limit of un-reefed sailing | about 20 kn | ~ 2 lb / sq ft |
| Bad storm | about 60 kn | ~ 15 lb / sq ft |
| Hurricane | 100–120 kn | 40–50 lb / sq ft |
The Nonsuch has two fairly shallow reefs. The first takes away about 36% of the sail. The second takes a further 31%, so double-reefed you are down to roughly a third of full sail.
Most crews leave it far too late, and downwind almost everybody does, because a run in rising wind feels deceptively easy. Err on the safe side. The only thing to balance against it: keep enough sail up to drive the boat through a confused sea, even if that is not the comfortable choice.
Deep-reefed and rolling in a seaway, the outer end of the wishbone can dip into the water. Slacken the choker while you pull the clew down: that pushes the wishbone forward and shortens how far it sticks out behind the mast. Take the choker back up once the reef is in.
You will hear that a Nonsuch cannot be gybed. It can. What it cannot survive is an uncontrolled one — with this much sail area on an unstayed mast and no way to rig a preventer, letting that wishbone fly across on its own is how rigs get hurt. Both turns below are safe, and both put the boom across with the load off it. The difference is which end of the boat goes through the wind, and how far round you turn to do it: a gybe swings the stern through and turns about 80°; the chicken gybe puts the bow through and takes roughly 270° the other way.
These are the things that break sails, break rigs, or ruin an afternoon. Read them before your first sail, and again before your first windy one.
Every term used on this page, in the order you'll meet them.