For most  sailors using a code Zero, the sail must measure as a spinnaker. If it is to go on  furler, then where does the girth come from? The same place as on a mainsail,  it is mostly all on the leech in the form of roach.

I have several sails in house at the moment from a mate and customer who is preparing a 50 footer for the Bermuda Race, sailing double handed. I picked up the sails last week with a view to helping him get his arms around the boat’s inventory-It is not his boat and he has not seen the sails.

There are several spinnakers and the one identified as a Code Zero-A looks like this:

It is pretty straight on the luff (seen to the left of the picture) with a robust Spectra luff rope installed and strong head and tack rings. It shows all the signs of having been intended to be used on a furler. More on this later. This particular sail is made from a laminated fabric of some type-hence the shiny gloss to it in the picture.

But recalling the discussion on the girth issues with a “spinnaker” when the luff is as straight as this one, then the girth must be in the roach, as seen more prominently here:

The Yellow line is a tape measure laid between the head and the clew. Would not be a bad roach for a mainsail would it?

Here is a closer look. The Yellow ruler is a yard stick, so the actual roach is:

Nearly 33 inches.

Compared to a “light air headsail” which it is supposed to be performing the function of-that is the idea of the sail in the first place-this sail strikes me as being kinda deep:

Something on the order of 20-25% by our collective eyeballs versus perhaps 14-16% for a “proper” “light air” headsail. This sail strikes me as being better served as a close reaching sail, like the old Drifter/reacher of the I.O.R. rule days

On this particular boat, for reasons not to do so much with the sail, but with the layout and installation of hardware and equipment on the boat, there is actually no where to rig the sail on a furler, thus it will go in an ATN sock.

For instance there is no halyard above the head stay, that can easily be made into a 2:1 halyard, there is no location on the stem that is clear of: the bow rail, the stem head fitting and the head stay, so that the furler could be installed and readily be used.

I expect to sail on the boat in the next couple of weeks and I look forward to seeing it in its assumed natural habitat.