mood or convenience. Gear failing under the stress of high loads can also be dangerous, so we prefer to stay with suppliers and products which have proved themselves at sea. The depth of experience has not been extensive, for there have been relatively few large sailing yachts built. Hood sailmakers have learned much about fully battened sails from the large French unlimited multihulls, the only other craft afloat today with similar working loads in their rigs. They have profited from this development and reduced empirical decisions in their design. However, cruising sails have the big advantage of not needing the excessive roach curve which gives the multihulls so much of their sail power. By cutting the roach straighter we diminish the engineering problem. If the sliders, headboards and clew fittings can handle the extreme geometry of a racing mainsail, we know that our more conservative sailplans have a built-in safety factor.

Hood was also the first to make internal furling mainsails, which did so much to make the sailing of large yachts possible with small crews. Now we have two options, the almost fully automatic internal furling system or the more elegant and efficient fully battened mainsail, which gives a better performance with only a slight compromise of convenience.

The New Zealand company Maxwell Nilsson, influenced by the great popularity of yachting in Auckland have produced a world-class anchor and ground handling system. By balancing practical and engineering requirements they have designed windlasses which are considered the best available and which have operated faultlessly on the 100 foot ketch, 'Gleam'.