We got rid of our boom and added a Profurl to the staysal.  This has proven to be a great improvement for cruising. Not only does it allow us to handle head sails from the cock pit it allows infinite adjustments for fine tunning. 

We have had an Aires and replaced it with a Moniter five years ago.  The Aries did a great job but the Moniter has finite control where the Aris was 2-1/2 degress per click on the adjustment.  The Moniter is also all S.S. construction.  I believe the Moniter to be the best built but any will do the job.

Jim

Ahoy Danny,

You have been given some misinformation concerning the Staysail.  You can not get 1/2 knot more boat speed by getting rid of the Staysail boom.  If you re-sheet perfectly using the existing sail without the boom you will gain nothing when close-hauled, and you will lose performance when reaching or trying to run.  If you eliminate the boom and get a new reshaped Staysail you could possibly get .1k when closed-hauled but you will still lose when reaching or trying to run.  There are a number of reasons, to eliminate the Staysail boom.  Sailing performance is not one of them.  The biggest effect on performance concerning the Staysail is to not use it.  Just recently, Gary Burton and I were out on Elizabeth Ann and trimmed to a close-haul to the best of our ability with the Main, Staysail and Yankee.  We then dropped the Staysail and lost .75k.  We re-set it and recovered our .75k.

About the windvanes:  All of the servo pendulum windvanes will work equally well on the Westsail-32.  (I haved used just about every production Windvane made for at least one long haul delivery).  With long term use, all of them have their short comings.  All of them their strengths.  If you're looking for one, keep your eye open for a Fleming also.

Good luck, and let us know what you do,       Dave

Ahoy Jay,

Concerning our test sail on Elizabeth Ann:  We did not record on paper the details of out test, but Gary and I have reviewed our memories and they are in agreement pretty close.  The apparent wind was 12k at 45 degrees off.  Our boat speed was 6.5k into a little chop.  Dropping the Staysail dropped the speed to about 5.7k.  Raising it back up returned the speed to 6.5k.  The True wind was 8.7k.  It is important to note that we were NOT pointing as high as possible on purpose.  We could easily get the apparent wind to 35 degrees but the boat speed dropped to about 5.5k  We were going more for VMG and the slightly wider angle is where the W-32 is going to do its best - against other boats.

Thanks for the response,     Dave