When you have a look in our Forepeak, you'll notice a big pile of sails and you wonder, why do we carry so many sails? Well, obviously our sails are our engines and our way of propulsions so when you tear a sail in a storm, we would like to replace it with a spare so we can continue. In the meantime we fix the sail and replace it again whenever ready.

When you have a look in our Forepeak, you'll notice a big pile of sails and you wonder, why do we carry so many sails? Well, obviously our sails are our engines and our way of propulsions so when you tear a sail in a storm, we would like to replace it with a spare so we can continue. In the meantime we fix the sail and replace it again whenever ready. 

Since the Europa is making long distances and experiencing different types of weather in specific regions, we adjust our sails to where we are. In the Southern Ocean it is highly likely we will meet strong winds and the sails need to be strong. To preserve these good sails and making sure they are not worn down the minute we want to use them, we change them around with a 'second hand' older sail.

So when we come out of the Southern Ocean, we change our Courses and Topsails for lesser quality sails but still good enough to use. In the Tropics the sun is vicious and in the Doldrum and Horse latitude areas you can have periods of no wind or very light variable winds. The sails will not be filled by wind and chafe on the rigging. For this we'll use the old sails. At the moment we are on our way South and approaching the Roaring Forties, time to change our sails again! The stronger sails come from the Forepeak and they replace the 'weaker' sails. Before we store the lighter weather sails, we'll repair them, check if we can still use them and are stored in a big pile down below. Ready to use again in the more gentle wind regions.