Heavy weather sails

Continuing with PCER's, and of course, just a smart thing to have on an ocean race, is 8.2 which requires boats to carry at least two of three sails: trysail, storm jib, and heavy weather jib.  I'll save you the details, but the maximum size of each sail is defined by the rule based on the boat's J, I, P, and E measurements.  Naturally, we didn't have any of these sails.  Fortunately I connected with another J120 owner who just happened to be cleaning out his garage and looking to get rid of a lot of equipment he didn't need.  I was at his place looking at a smaller spinnaker when I happened to notice a storm jib and trysail in the pile.  Me: "Are you looking to get rid of those too?".  Him: "Sure.  Do you want them?".  Me: "Absolutely!"  Him: "They're yours!".  SCORE!  The trysail was setup to attach to a separate external track on the mast (which we don't have), so we replaced those slugs with ones that will run up the mainsail groove.  We are also required to have sail numbers on the trysail - so another order to Sail Rite for stick on numbers.  The storm jib is a 100 square foot ATN gale sail.  These are set up to attach around a furled head sail or a bare head foil.

So that's two of the three.  The more we thought about the return trip the more we wanted a smaller head sail heading out of Hawaii (a #4, which typically meets the requirements of a heavy weather jib, rather than a #3).  We had a dacron #3 used for cruising and deliveries that's beefy and in great shape, but in the SF Bay can be a hand full on summer afternoons in big wind.  What if we cut that down to make a heavy weather jib?  A trip to the sail loft and a ~100 square foot haircut - presto, a heavy weather jib.

So at the end of the day, we have three of three heavy weather sails.