A pennant has two quite separate meanings on a sailing boat. First, and most familiar, it is a small tapering flag – longer than it is tall, often pointed or swallow-tailed – flown from a masthead, a backstay or a flag halyard. Yacht club burgees, class flags and the numeral pennants of the International Code of Signals are all pennants. Second, pronounced and sometimes spelled “pendant”, it is a short length of rope or wire with an eye or fitting at one end that bridges a gap: a tack pennant lifts a headsail off the deck, a reefing pennant pulls the leech cringle down to the boom, and a mooring pennant joins a mooring buoy to your bow. Beginners need to know both meanings; experienced sailors know that a tack pennant is one of the cheapest ways to change how a headsail sheets, and that a race committee’s pennants can tell you whether to start, wait or go home.
Pennants as flags
The tapered shape is the point. A rectangular flag is an ensign or a signal flag; a triangular or swallow-tailed one is a pennant or burgee. On most yachts the everyday pennant is the club burgee, traditionally flown from the main masthead but nowadays usually from the starboard spreader flag halyard because the masthead is crowded with instruments and lights.
Racing uses pennants heavily. The ten numeral pennants of the International Code (0 to 9) are tapering flags, and race committees commonly use them as class flags: “Class 3 starts on numeral pennant 3”. The answering pennant, red and white vertical stripes, means postponement when flown alone and means the postponement is over when it comes down, with a sound signal. The three substitute pennants repeat letters or numerals in a hoist.
Pennants as short strops
The second meaning is where the sailmaker earns a living. A pennant in this sense is a fixed-length link, usually of wire, Dyneema or webbing, that positions a sail or a load.
- Tack pennant: a strop between the stemhead fitting and the tack of a headsail. It raises the whole sail so the foot clears the deck and the clew rises, which changes the sheeting angle and lets the sail sheet to a further-aft lead. UK Sailmakers often specifies a pennant when a genoa is cut with a high clew for offshore work or when one sail must set on more than one boat.
- Reefing pennant: the line rove through the leech reef cringle and down to the boom that pulls the reef point aft and down. Also called a reef line or leech reefing line.
Why the sailmaker cares about tack pennants
Headsail geometry is a triangle set by the luff length, the LP (the perpendicular from luff to clew) and the position of the tack. Change the tack height and you change everything downstream. Lifting the tack on a pennant raises the clew by the same amount, so the sheet lead needs to move aft to keep the sheeting angle bisecting the clew. The foot lifts off the deck, so you lose a little of the end-plate effect that a deck-sweeping genoa enjoys upwind, but you gain visibility under the sail, a clew that clears the lifelines when the sail is eased on a reach, and a sail that does not fill with green water when the bow buries. Cruisers and offshore racers generally think that trade is worth it.
A pennant is also a cheap fix when a sail is slightly short in the luff for a new boat or a replaced headstay. Rather than recutting a perfectly good sail, a sailmaker can supply a pennant of exactly the right length so the head reaches the top swivel of the furler and the halyard still has room to tension the luff.
Frequently Asked Questions about Pennant
Is a burgee the same thing as a pennant?
A burgee is a type of pennant: a small triangular or swallow-tailed flag carrying a yacht club’s design. All burgees are pennants, but numeral pennants, the answering pennant and class pennants are not burgees.
What does the answering pennant mean on the committee boat?
Flown alone it signals that the race or races not yet started are postponed. When it is lowered with a sound signal, the warning signal follows one minute later. With a numeral pennant beneath it, it indicates the length of the postponement in hours.
Will a tack pennant hurt my upwind performance?
Slightly, because the foot lifts off the deck and the sail loses some end-plate effect. For most cruising and offshore boats the gains in visibility, reaching trim and dryness outweigh that loss, and the sheet lead can be moved aft to keep the sail trimming correctly.
Whether it is a scrap of coloured cloth at the masthead or a length of Dyneema under the genoa tack, a pennant is a small thing that changes what happens around it. Read the flags on the committee boat and you will not miss a start; measure your tack pennant carefully and your headsail will sheet where the sailmaker intended. Neither job takes long, and both make you a better sailor.