Inverted headsail?

[flyingwelshman]

Last weekend I saw a boat with its headsail (jib) hanked on up-side-down.
It looked very strange.
At first I thought the guy was a total twit and didn't know how to rig his boat.
The winds were light and he was on a broad reach / run.
It looked as though, by inverting the sail, he was able to get more lift from the jib as the wind was able to come over the top of the main and fill the jib.
I began to wonder if this is a valid strategy, or if the guy just made a mistake and lucked out given the existing conditions.
Does anyone know of using this technique?

[MARC2012]

Looks like it would be difficult to do.marc

[sailingdog]

The sheeting angles would be awfully strange.

[jcalvinmarks]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

The sheeting angles would be awfully strange.

I suppose it depends on whether the foot is relatively flat or whether it is a high-clew jib. In the latter case, I can see it working out to run the sheets well aft, maybe as far back as the stern docking cleats, since the more oblique angle from the foot to the clew would allow a better line.

Still sounds weird. Probably more trouble that it would ever be worth.

[bobmcgov]

Some schooners fly yankees, along similar lines:



(But schooners are weird, they often seem to make stuff up as they go, and they do have second or third masts behind the yankees to control twist. Triatic staysails, mules, gollywobblers, spinnaker staysails, 30 degrees of mast rake.... It's like dodgy software, with more patches than original code. "Just grab any piece of cloth you see and tie the corners off to random parts of the boat. Wayhey, we're sailing.")



Yeeeeaaahhhh ... I can kinda see where your maverick jib flipper was going with that. Reckon a few hunnert sqft of nylon out front is a better answer. How about this! Go all old school and hoist a YARD to the masthead. 30 feet of telescoping carbon fiber. Then fly your spinnaker upside down on that. Keeps it clear of the mainsail foot and puts lots of sail up where the good wind is.

[Omatako]

The only time I have ever seen a sail hoisted upside down was when, during a high profile race, the foredeck guy on our boat hooked a spinnaker up wrong and it was inverted when it went up.

That was 30 years ago and I think he's still buying the beers.